UN panel says it can't rule on climate case brought by Thunberg

Geneva: A UN panel said it could not immediately rule on a complaint by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg and others that state inaction on climate change violates children's rights, adding that they should have taken the case to national courts first.

The complaint was filed with the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2019 and the 18-member panel has been conducting hearings and deliberating since.

The 15 activists, aged between eight and 17 at the time, had argued that France, Turkey, Brazil, Germany and Argentina had known about the risk of climate change for decades but failed to curb their carbon emissions.