The I.C.J. was also an appealing venue, Yeo recalls, because theoretically at least, the path to get there was as open to small countries like theirs as it was to the world’s most powerful nations. “Learning about the international process, especially the U.N., you come to understand that, you know, the United States has one vote, not two, not three — one vote. Same as Solomon Islands, same as Fiji, same as Vanuatu.” And he knew there must be many countries, beyond the Pacific, that were also feeling the effects of climate change and looking for accountability. What if they could get them all onboard? Earlier in his legal education, Yeo became obsessed with a previous attempt to reach the I.C.J., in the 1990s. Then, the question was whether the use of nuclear weapons was permissible under international law. (The court eventually answered that it generally wasn’t but didn’t rule out self-defense in extreme cases.) That, too, had been a long-shot attempt, initiated by Pacific Islanders armed only with fax machines, but Yeo had noticed the language of that opinion making its way into new documents and policies — and even an international treaty. Motarilavoa Hilda Lini, a tribal chief who served as Vanuatu’s minister of health and championed the case, became one of his personal heroes.
And finally, the politics of climate change had shifted radically since 2011. Climate-driven disasters were becoming bigger and more deadly, displacing millions around the world and transforming how the public understood the urgency of the threat. The scientific consensus on the mechanisms and dangers of climate change had advanced considerably, as had the science necessary to attribute specific harms to specific emissions. It was looking increasingly likely, as Tim Stephens, a professor at the University of Sydney Law School, wrote in 2019, that the I.C.J. would be called in anyway when states started suing one another over failure to comply with climate treaties. And then there was the growing international frustration with the limitations of international climate negotiations, which were dominated by large emitters.
Rose consulted with friends who were experts in international law, some of them the same people who previously cautioned against going to the I.C.J. “They were now saying, ‘Well, you know, this spaceship is about to crash,’” Rose remembers. “Time to pull all the levers we haven’t pulled yet.”
The students wrote a letter and a brief to the leaders of the nations in the Pacific Islands Forum. “We look to an intervention by the I.C.J.,” they wrote, “to endorse at the highest level our fundamental moral and legal rights; to live with dignity without fear of climate change denying us and our children of that freedom.” It wasn’t easy, especially given the end-of-semester stress, to gather everyone’s signatures in person. Muliaina, who was traveling to the Tonga campus for lectures, tracked down the students there, sometimes sneaking into the rooms where they were taking exams. In the end, they attached two pages of signatures from 27 students.
It felt a little silly, Lavemai remembers: “At the time, we didn’t think the adults would take the youth, or young people, seriously.” Makasini looked down at the page and laughed a little to herself. “These little names! I didn’t think anyone’s going to care who we are and what our names are.”
