Greta Thunberg pushes legal complaint against five countries at UN

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and a group of 15 other young climate activists have hit back at the attempt to throw out their climate crisis case.

They have pushed forward their legal complaint at the United Nations against against five countries, including Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey, which they accuse of backing fossil-fuels and endangering children's well-being through the climate crisis, despite attempts to have it thrown out.

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The countries have ''breached their obligations under the international Convention on the Rights of Child, by promoting fossil fuels and failing to curb greenhouse gas emissions for decades, despite knowing about the risks of climate change,'' the group said in a press release.

Brazil, France and Germany replied to the petition response and said that the UN cannot hear complaint against ''five countries of flouting child rights to clean air.''

With the filing, Thunberg and her fellow activists are escalating a confrontation with the five countries that stemmed from a lawsuit they formally filed to the UN Convention back in September 2019.

The group focused on these countries, as they are the biggest climate polluters of the 45 nations that have adopted an optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The 2019 complaint alleges that the countries knew about the negative impact on the environment of their carbon emissions and did nothing to prevent it.The lawsuit joins a growing number of attempts to bring climate cases to court, alleging that government or businesses have flouted the law or failed in their international obligations.

One of the most successful has been in the Netherlands, in the Urgenda case, in which judges found the government must change its policies to tackle emissions and the climate crisis.