The African Union has declared 2025 the Year of Justice for Africans and People of African Descent through Reparations. The African Court of Human Rights is considering the current request for an advisory opinion on states’ human rights obligations related to climate change, and has an opportunity to make this more than just a slogan. We have the opportunity to present groundbreaking opinions affirming the link between colonialism and the harms of climate change to people across the continent. Such an opinion would be a major step forward in the fight for the International Court of Justice and restorative justice in Africa.
On July 30, 2025, Amnesty International released a report detailing how, during the French colonial period in Madagascar, authorities deliberately released a harmful genetically engineered cochineal parasite into approximately 40,000 hectares (98,850 acres) of drought-tolerant vegetation in the Androi region of Madagascar’s deep south. From 1924 to 1929, the parasite destroyed approximately 100 km (62 miles) of vegetation each year.
This was no small ecological loss. This plant has sustained the Antandroy people for generations, providing food and helping protect groundwater from chronic drought. Its destruction eliminated those important natural defense systems against drought. More than a century later, the destruction has exposed the people of Antandroy to mass starvation, displacement, and death, which is repeated with each drought.
Moreover, Madagascar’s drought is being exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change, primarily caused by historically high-emitting high-income countries such as France, the very suzerain that left the Antandrowa people vulnerable.
When science leads and politics lags behind
The scientific link between colonialism and climate change vulnerability has long been established. In 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which advises the United Nations on science related to climate change, highlighted how colonialism not only contributed to the climate crisis itself, but also how its enduring damage has left many communities in former colonies vulnerable to climate impacts such as droughts, floods, cyclones and sea level rise.
Effective climate action requires more than science. Political support is also needed for states, especially those that have historically held significant responsibility for climate change, to address mitigation, adaptation and financing strategies. If that does not happen, the countries with the least historical responsibility and those most affected by climate change will have no choice but to seek clarity and accountability through the World Court, in this case the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The ICJ has the ability to influence the political process. In particular, the ICJ can lend global legitimacy to scientific evidence. Indeed, the ICJ has considerable moral and persuasive authority and often shapes state behavior in the international political arena.
The opportunity for the ICJ to exert this influence came in March 2023, when Vanuatu, a former colony of both France and the United Kingdom, convened the United Nations General Assembly and requested an advisory opinion from the ICJ on countries’ legal obligations regarding climate change. Former colonial countries such as Africa are also joining the effort, many of which are explicitly highlighting how colonial harms and climate injustice are interconnected.
When the ICJ issued its opinion in July 2025, there were glaring omissions. The word “colonialism” did not appear anywhere in the main opinion or in the justices’ 12 separate opinions or declarations related to climate change. The ICJ also sidestepped an important question: how far back can climate change obligation claims go? This issue is extremely important because former colonial powers often argue that at the time colonialism was practiced, it was not prohibited under international law and therefore there is no legal obligation to make reparations. They also often defend their role in causing climate change, claiming that until recently they were unaware of the harm and faced no legal limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
Customary international law crushes colonial defense
Despite its unfortunate silence on the issue of colonialism, the ICJ provided some reassurance to countries suffering from the combined consequences of colonialism and climate change by affirming that countries’ climate change obligations are not limited to the Convention on Climate Change. They also derive from customary international law, which provides that if a tort continues to affect the enjoyment of human rights, the liability of a state may extend to the present day, regardless of when the act occurred.
Drawing on customary international law is important because it reframes the questions courts should ask about colonial climate legacies. In this context, the relevant question is not whether states can be held accountable for the intertwined effects of colonialism and climate change. Nor is there a question of how far back to look to determine who is responsible for greenhouse gas emissions that remain in the atmosphere for centuries. The question is whether the harms that shape climate vulnerability, with their colonial roots, are driving human rights violations today.
The simple answer is yes. The greenhouse gases that currently heat the planet and fuel a series of rights violations have been trapped in the atmosphere for generations. These are a direct legacy of the industrial rise of former colonial powers from the 1750s onwards and the burning of fossil fuels that powered economic recovery after World Wars I and II. In Madagascar, the French colonial government destroyed the drought-tolerant vegetation that had long supported the Antandrowa people, removing their natural defenses against repeated droughts. This left them dependent on the colonial cash crop economy and forced into cheap labor. All of this helped expand the formation of European economic channels and markets powered by the combustion of fossil fuels, emitting unprecedented amounts of greenhouse gases and causing climate change.
ICJ’s half-hearted measure: Open the door and then close it.
By confirming that customary international law can serve as a basis for climate-related compensation claims, the ICJ appeared to open the door to climate change claims related to colonial harm. But in the same opinion, the ICJ reinforced one of the very arguments that those who benefited from colonialism have long used to deny responsibility.
The ICJ stated that full reparation by compensation, compensation, or satisfaction is possible only if a “sufficiently direct and certain causal link” between the tort and the damage is established. But it is nearly impossible to make such a definitive link between the myriad acts of colonial violence and their impact in exacerbating climate change vulnerabilities.
Requiring such a definitive relationship as a precondition for colonial reparations, without limiting how it actually works against the effects of colonialism and climate change, would provide guarantees to countries like France. In the case of Madagascar, for example, the French government could easily argue that, “A century after the colonial destruction of drought-tolerant vegetation, factors such as population growth have come into play, and actions such as greenhouse gas emissions and ecosystem destruction are not considered violations. As UN experts have pointed out, “the greatest barrier to reparations for colonialism and slavery is that the primary beneficiaries of both lack the political will and moral courage to make them a reality.”
Will African courts conform to the ICJ’s silence or break it?
Since May 2025, the African Court of Human Rights has been reviewing requests for advisory opinions on the human rights and peoples’ rights and obligations of African countries in relation to climate change. This is more than just a procedural exercise. The request highlights the link between climate change and colonialism, a point that human rights activists plan to highlight in their submissions to the court.
This is therefore an opportunity for the Court to make clear what the ICJ did not hold: that the fight for climate justice is inextricably linked to the fight for restorative justice in Africa. Such a stance would expose the plight of people like Entandrowa who continue to suffer from the intersection of colonialism and climate change. It contributes to galvanizing the Year of Reparations and is in line with the African Commission’s 2022 Resolution on the African Reparations Agenda, which provides the African Court with a mechanism to encourage African states to pursue justice against trade and trafficking in enslaved Africans, colonialism and colonial crimes, and racial discrimination. There are still possibilities. It may also encourage a return to the ICJ for a chance at redemption before the World Court.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
