Mr. Vishal Prasad is the Campaign Director of the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change, a youth-led organization campaigning for an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on climate change and human rights. He is from Suva, Fiji, and has studied international politics and law at the University of the South Pacific. He has been part of the ICJ advisory opinion movement since 2019 and is also part of the global ICJ advisory opinion movement under the World’s Youth for Climate Justice. As part of the ICJ advisory opinion campaign, he has a strong focus on securing the Pacific youth demands on the protection of the rights of current and future generations from the adverse effects of climate change.

"Jump on Board the Vaka" Vishal Prasad on climate justice and the ICJ advisory opinion

Sumudu Atapattu is the director of research centers at the University of Wisconsin Law School in the United States. She talks to us about the connection between climate change and human rights and why it matters.

Climate change is not just an environmental issue

Grain

In our latest episode of “On Human Rights," we sat down with James A. Goldston. He is the executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative and a leading practitioner of international human rights and criminal law. He has litigated cases before the European court of Human Rights and United Nations treaty bodies. For example, he has worked on issues of counterterrorism, racial discrimination, and torture.

Goldston says the challenges that illiberal movements and leaders pose to human rights is a moment of reckoning for many. 

He says: “I think it’s a moment for self-reflection perhaps on strategies for things we might have pursued or things we’ve overlooked.  And a moment of genuine possibility for us to reimagine what the human rights movement can be, how it can relate not just to the grand architecture and formal laws and institutions which are created, which are important, but also to how people experience rights in practice, or the absence of rights in practice.” 

In addition, Goldston believes increasing attention to the connection between the formal laws and institutions and the conditions of people on the ground is where parts of the human rights movement are headed. “And I think that’s a positive thing,” he says.

Amolto Call Recorder

Is This Where the Human Rights Movement is Heading?

In this episode of “On Human Rights” we speak with Dennis Mungo, the executive Director of Youth Alive Kenya, a youth led non-governmental organisation that advocates for and supports youth participation in development processes. We discuss Dennis' work and talk about youth inclusion and human rights in Kenya.

"Jump on Board the Vaka" Vishal Prasad on climate justice and the ICJ advisory opinion

On Human Rights

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