Pacific Youth, Climate Justice, and the Myth of Political Change in Fiji

2026 promises to be an eventful voting year for Fiji. Campaign noise is rising, and the country’s political parties are courting young candidates in an effort to mobilize a disengaged youth vote.

Across Asia, youth-led movements have driven political upheaval, from Sri Lanka in 2022 to Bangladesh in 2024 and Nepal in 2025. Human Rights Watch’s Meenakshi Ganguly observed, “These movements weren’t driven by a desire for political change alone. They were driven by young people seeking better lives.”

Young people across global contexts are demanding structural change that meets existential needs, outlasting political parties and regimes. Yet with a national median age of 28, Fiji’s male-dominated, gerontocratic political class bears little resemblance to its demographic reality. If the familiar adage that the young must learn from their elders holds true, it is also worth considering that elders might learn from the young – not merely when electorally convenient.

Six years ago, Fijian youth were among the 27 Pacific law students who blazed an audacious trail from a Vanuatu lecture hall, through the Pacific Islands Forum and the United Nations General Assembly, to what is deemed the most significant climate opinion in international law.

The Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) and World’s Youth for Climate Justice (WY4CJ) spearheaded a landmark Advisory Opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), affirming states’ legal responsibilities to prevent climate harm, cooperate internationally, and protect human rights.

PISFCC’s journey has been one of sharing power and enabling succession – an anomaly in Pacific societies like Fiji’s, where young people lack models for genuine intergenerational handover.

As PISFCC’s director, 29-year-old Fijian Vishal Prasad, recalled, “To be really youth-led, we had some support in the beginning, but very quickly we had to figure out succession, how people would exit as they aged out, and how to do that responsibly.”

With succession as a core principle instead of an afterthought, those involved from the outset carried the weight of outsized expectations.

“We always had this thought in our heads: ‘We can’t mess this up,’” Prasad said. “The doors that opened for us through this campaign, we can’t close them for the people coming behind us.”

In conventional politics, solidarity over popularity is a losing strategy – not so for the ICJ AO campaign. With early backing from the Vanuatu government and networks like the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network (PICAN), young proponents eschewed solitary visibility in favor of collective solidarity.

“Making inroads in Asia-Pacific was very difficult,” Prasad recalls. “Our Asia colleagues said the Pacific has it good. In much of Asia, civil society isn’t viewed positively, and young people even less so – together, that’s a double no.”

Forging connections through the WY4CJ, Asian and Pacific youth worked cross-regionally to build relationships with governments, leveraging their expertise in international law, diplomacy, community building, and activism.

In the Pacific, Vanuatu’s early adoption of the youth-led cause, followed by the backing of regional institutions, allowed the movement to spill into global arenas. Progress did not hinge on partisan political popularity, but on young people collaborating to secure political will from their governments in support of a livable future. 

“Vanuatu was the outlier,” Prasad said. “From the first meeting, they told us, ‘We’re taking this on, and you will be equal partners.’”

In Prasad’s home country, it took far longer.

“For Fiji, it took two years. We did events, wrote op-eds, everything. No one was interested. The Pacific Islands Forum was the tipping point. Once that happened, suddenly the climate justice AO was ‘a thing,’” Prasad recalled.

Weeks after the long-awaited ICJ Advisory Opinion, the movement’s gains were tested when Vanuatu’s Climate Minister Ralph Regenvanu warned that Australia’s approval of the Woodside North West Shelf gas project could breach the court’s findings. While disappointing, it was not surprising to close observers that the Fijian government was silent. Fiji had in fact missed the ICJ submission deadline on the question of states’ responsibilities regarding climate change. In stark contrast, Fiji did appear before the ICJ in a separate case in support of Israel, on the matter of its activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. 

Pressing on with expanding the impact of the ICJ’s landmark advisory opinion on climate change, and continuing to work closely with Pacific youth, Vanuatu has introduced the zero draft of a U.N. General Assembly resolution. Drafted by a cross-regional global committee, the resolution aims to clarify and strengthen legal obligations for climate action, and advance climate justice by operationalizing the Advisory Opinion.

“What Vanuatu is trying to do post-COP is reinforce the Advisory Opinion,” Prasad explained. “To create mechanisms for implementation, and to address the structural injustices blocking progress. It’s about shifting the climate conversation into spaces where small island states have real power.”

Similarly, young Fijians confronting strained health and education systems, a drug crisis, an HIV epidemic, and escalating gender-based violence are calling for structural, intergenerational change, not merely a change of government. Experience has heightened these demands, given that Fiji’s most recent government transition began with a vote from ministers to raise their own salaries. Three years later, prospects for young people remain as precarious as ever. 

As with the borderless nature of climate change, young people also recognize the interconnectedness of struggles across the globe, as well as the connection between climate change and human rights. This expansive outlook has enabled Pacific youth climate advocates to build global alliances, avoiding the myopic thinking that dominates national partisan politics.

The year ahead will show whether Fiji’s political old guard can cede to a new generation, or will merely continue feeding on the aspirations of the young. Fiji’s aging demagogues would do well to heed what the youth-led climate justice movement is demonstrating – that political office is not a prerequisite for impact.