The United Nations General Assembly voted 141-8 on Thursday to endorse the International Court of Justice's advisory opinion finding that states are bound under international law to curb greenhouse gas emissions driving the climate crisis and to protect the states most affected by its fallout.

The resolution carries the ICJ's findings into the UN's principal political body, formalising the opinion's core holding that states must prevent significant harm to the climate system. "Climate change is an unprecedented challenge of civilisational proportions," the resolution states. "The well-being of present and future generations of humankind depends on our immediate and urgent response to it."

Voting against were Belarus, Iran, Israel, Liberia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United States and Yemen — a coalition of major oil and gas producers, sanctioned states, and close US allies. A bloc of 28 countries abstained, spanning emerging emitters and traditional petrostates, including India, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Nigeria, the Czech Republic and Turkey, which will host COP31 in November.

The 141 states in favour included Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom — wealthy historic emitters and current fossil fuel exporters now formally on record backing the court's findings.

"The world's highest court has spoken. Today, the General Assembly has answered," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, calling the vote "a powerful affirmation of international law, climate justice, science and the responsibility of states to protect people from the escalating climate crisis." He added: "Those least responsible for climate change are paying the highest price. That injustice must end."

From Port Vila classroom to The Hague

For Vanuatu, the low-lying Pacific island nation that filed the original case at the ICJ and championed Thursday's resolution, the vote capped a seven-year diplomatic campaign to place climate change within the framework of binding international law. The effort began in 2019 with 27 law students at the University of the South Pacific in Port Vila, who lobbied Pacific governments to take the climate crisis to the world's top international court.

Vanuatu took up the cause in 2021 and led an 18-month diplomatic push that produced the General Assembly's unanimous request for an advisory opinion in March 2023. The court's unanimous ruling, issued in July 2025, drew the heaviest participation of any advisory case in ICJ history: 96 states and 11 international organisations took part in oral hearings, alongside a record 91 written submissions.

Vishal Prasad, director of the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change, called Thursday's vote "a turning point in accountability for damaging the climate." He said: "The journey of this idea from classrooms in the Pacific to The Hague and the United Nations gives us continued hope that when people organise, the world can be moved to act."

What the resolution demands

The resolution calls on all states to comply with the ICJ opinion by "preventing significant harm to the environment by acting with due diligence" and "using all means at their disposal to prevent activities carried out within their jurisdiction or control from causing significant harm to the climate system."

It recalls the court's finding that a breach of those obligations is "an internationally wrongful act" that can require the responsible state to provide "full reparation to injured States in the form of restitution, compensation and satisfaction."

It also urges states to implement the Paris Agreement's 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature goal, including by "tripling renewable energy capacity and doubling the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030, transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner and so as to reach net zero by 2050." The resolution further calls for the phase-out of "inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that do not address energy poverty or just transitions as soon as possible."

For practitioners, the practical consequence is significant. ICJ advisory opinions are not legally binding, but they carry weight as authoritative statements of international law and are frequently used to substantiate legal arguments in national courts. The July 2025 opinion is already being woven into climate litigation worldwide, with judges beginning to cite it in their rulings. States that endorsed the resolution have now placed themselves on record accepting the opinion's framing of climate obligations, which litigants can invoke in domestic and regional proceedings.

Camille Cortez, senior campaigner on climate justice at Amnesty International, said the resolution "paves the way for governments to show they stand for climate justice and has the potential to shape global climate accountability for years to come." She noted that fossil fuel infrastructure poses risks to the health and livelihoods of at least 2 billion people globally, roughly a quarter of the world's population.

US challenges the court's authority

Washington led the small bloc voting against the text and used its floor time to challenge the legal foundations of the ruling. US Ambassador to the UN Tammy Bruce called the resolution "highly problematic" and dismissed the "so-called 'obligations'" contained in the ICJ's advisory ruling. The United States had opposed seeking an opinion from the court in the first place, she said.

"This resolution is highly problematic in calling on States to comply with so-called 'obligations' that are based on non-binding conclusions of the Court on which UN Member States' views diverge," Bruce told the assembly. The resolution, she argued, "improperly treats the Court's opinion as irrefutably authoritative and as setting out binding obligations on States" and "amplifies legal errors from the Court's opinion." The duty to prevent transboundary climate harm, she said, "would impermissibly interfere with each State's sovereign rights to regulate and manage its own energy policy."

"The opinion does not invent new law; it clarifies the law that already binds us," said Odo Tevi, Vanuatu's UN ambassador. "The ruling matters because the harm is real, and it is already here — for low-lying islands and coastlines, for communities facing drought and failed harvests, for people whose homes, livelihoods and cultures are being reshaped by forces they did nothing to set in motion."

Saudi Arabia, which sided with the US, had earlier called any reference to the ICJ opinion in negotiating texts at COP30 in Belem a "deep, deep, deep red line." That dynamic now sets the stage for COP31 in Antalya in November, where Turkey — among Thursday's abstainers — will preside over talks already shadowed by the collapse of fossil fuel language at the previous summit. With the Arab Group, Russia and the United States lined up against the court's findings, and key emerging emitters refusing to back them, translating Thursday's legal victory into diplomatic outcomes faces steep obstacles.

"Climate change is an existential problem of planetary proportions that imperils all forms of life and the very health of our planet," Guyana's representative said, speaking on behalf of the Caribbean region. "It is crucial that we not only welcome the opinion in this moment but also ensure meaningful follow-up."