Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) and Julian Aguon are receiving the 2025 Right Livelihood Award for bringing frontline Pacific climate struggles before the International Court of Justice, yielding a landmark Advisory Opinion that offers the world a path to climate justice.
For 45 years, the Right Livelihood Award has honoured and supported courageous people leading the way to a just, peaceful and sustainable world for all. To date, 203 Laureates from 81 countries have received the Award, including Ukrainian human rights defender Oleksandra Matviichuk, Congolese gynaecologist and women’s rights advocate Dr Denis Mukwege and American public interest lawyer Bryan Stevenson.
Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change and Julian Aguon discussed their work during an online press conference on October 1. Watch here.
PISFCC, a youth-led Pacific organisation that transformed lived frontline realities into a world-shaping legal case, and Aguon share the 2025 Right Livelihood Award. Together with the global coalition World’s Youth for Climate Justice (WYCJ), they drove the campaign that led the UN General Assembly to request, and the International Court of Justice to deliver, a historic advisory opinion on states’ climate obligations. Born in a Vanuatu classroom and carried by island youth, the movement united Pacific leadership and global civil society behind a simple demand: put people and future generations at the centre of climate law. Aguon and the students worked in tandem—PISFCC and its allies building a mass, youth-led coalition across the region and beyond; Aguon, through his firm Blue Ocean Law, leading the legal strategy on behalf of the Government of Vanuatu, that helped secure a strong opinion with worldwide relevance.
Their work arises from the Pacific’s frontline reality: a region bearing the intersecting burdens of climate breakdown, nuclear legacies and militarisation. By marrying grassroots mobilisation with Indigenous-led legal action, the Laureates’ campaign led to important legal clarifications that communities and states can now use in courts, negotiations and loss and damage funds and other climate finance processes. The joint award recognises a powerful alignment of movements—youth leadership and Indigenous jurisprudence — at a timely moment when the world needs enforceable accountability, based on practical and decolonial pathways to justice.
Right Livelihood’s jury said that PISFCC and Aguon were receiving the Award jointly “for carrying the call for climate justice to the world’s highest court, turning survival into a matter of rights and climate action into a legal responsibility.”
PISFCC President Cynthia Houniuhi said:
“We are humbled to receive the Right Livelihood Award. This recognition belongs not to us as individuals, but to the communities across the Pacific who carried this campaign from a classroom to the world’s highest court. It shows that youth power and bold ideas can help change the course of climate justice.”
Julian Aguon said:
“I am honoured to share this Award with the students, who are the true heroes of this campaign. We were two sides of the same coin, working closely together from start to finish. For me, the Award is about going back to the Indigenous communities who gave their stories to the court, and making sure they understand what this historic opinion means for them.”
Ole von Uexkull, Right Livelihood’s Executive Director, said:
“The students and Aguon trusted our multilateral institutions with the question of their very survival, and they were proven right. Their legal arguments and frontline testimony convinced first the UN General Assembly and then the world’s highest court. The Court’s historic ruling, which the Laureates made possible, establishes clear obligations for climate protection. No state can evade responsibility anymore.”
The other 2025 Right Livelihood Laureates are:
- Emergency Response Rooms (Sudan). Watch post-announcement press conference
- Audrey Tang (Taiwan). Watch post-announcement press conference
- Justice For Myanmar (Myanmar). For security reasons, contact us directly to request an interview.
The 2025 Laureates will be honoured during a televised Award Presentation in Stockholm on December 2.
Nominations are now also open for next year’s Award!
Find more information about the Laureates.
Photos and videos of the new Laureate can be found here.
Media contacts
- International media: Emoke Bebiak, emoke.bebiak@rightlivelihood.org, +41 78 333 84 84 and Temis Tormo, temis.tormo@rightlivelihood.org, +46 72 923 3182
- German media: Julia Naumann and Nina Tesenfitz, presse@rightlivelihood.org, +49 170 5763 663
- Spanish media: Nayla Azzinnari, nayla@rightlivelihood.org, +54 9 11 5460 9860
- Scandinavian media: Vanessa Marko, vanessa.marko@arenaopinion.se, +46 76 321 66 37
Photos, videos: Mikaela Fredrikson, mikaela.fredrikson@rightlivelihood.org
