Cláudia Agostinho (24 years old), Martim Agostinho (20), Mariana Agostinho (11) and Catarina Mota (23), born in Leiria, and Sofia Oliveira (18) and André Oliveira (15) from Almada, Portugal, sued 32 countries for lack of satisfactory actions to promote significant changes against the effects of global warming. The young people have the support of the non-profit organization Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) based in London and involved in actions against human rights violations in different countries.
On September 27th, the first hearing took place at the European Court of Human Rights with the presence of 22 judges and 86 defense lawyers representing the countries involved in the collective action, including the 27 members of the European Union, England, Switzerland, Norway, Russia and Turkey.
The legal proceeding began in September 2020 and the main motivation is to hold governments accountable for insufficient actions to address the effects of climate crisis and environmental degradation. Young people also argue that States have not adopted measures to comply with important international agreements, giving as an example the Paris Treaty signed in 2015.
According to several news broadcasts the initial idea for the process occurred in 2017 following the forest fires that occurred in Portugal and burned around 500,000 hectares, causing the deaths of more than 100 people. The effects associated with rising temperatures also constitute one of the central dispute of the action.
To follow the actions promoted by the group of Portuguese activists visit the website: www.glanlaw.org
For more information byou@ics.uminho.pt