ELSA Day and the Annual Human Rights Campaign – Human Rights and Climate Justice Across Germany
Nathalie Ankenbrand is the Vice President in Charge of Marketing of ELSA Germany. Florian Steinkamp is the Vice President in Charge of Seminars and Conferences of ELSA Germany. Pia Hellwage is the Director for Public Relations for ELSA Germany. In this article, they recap the Annual Human Rights Campaign activities across Germany.
Human Rights are not sustained by legal texts alone but by the awareness and active engagement of society. Each year, ELSA’s Annual Human Rights Campaign (AHRC) and the ELSA Day highlight this responsibility, bringing together thousands of law students across Europe to reflect on our shared commitment to human dignity, the rule of law, and social responsibility. Within this European framework, ELSA Germany acts as a key contributor by coordinating activities at national level and supporting local groups across the country. Through lectures, discussions and interactive formats, German Law Students actively engage with current Human Rights Challenges and connect them to their legal education.
A European Moment of Collective Action
Nathalie Ankenbrand is the Vice President in Charge of Marketing of ELSA Germany
Florian Steinkamp is the Vice President in Charge of Seminars and Conferences of ELSA Germany
Every year on the last Wednesday of November, the entire network and within members across Europe devoted themselves again to a specific topic. This year’s on the theme Human Rights and Climate Justice. Under the motto “all different, all together”, the network embraced its diversity while reaffirming the shared values that unite us. The coordinated timing of events across numerous European universities fosters a strong sense of transnational solidarity and highlights how deeply young legal professionals across the continent engage with the same Human Rights Challenges. This year’s AHRC theme reflects the reality that climate change directly affects fundamental rights: from life and health to property, cultural identity, and intergenerational justice. The campaign encourages students to explore these intersections in greater depth, evaluate legal responses and discuss the responsibilities of states and institutions.
How Germany Marked ELSA Day 2025
Within the European framework of the Annual Human Rights Campaign, the ELSA Day holds a distinctive position in Germany: coordinated at national level by ELSA Germany, the ELSA Day serves as a unifying moment for the German network, bringing together numerous Local Groups under a shared theme while leaving room for regional diversity and creative implementation. By embedding national activities into the Europe-wide campaign, German law students are encouraged to engage with Human Rights Issues not in isolation, but as part of a broader transnational discourse. As part of the ELSA Day 2025, ELSA Germany organised a national event that aimed to provide a comprehensive and differentiated legal perspective on the theme Human Rights and Climate Justice. The event was deliberately designed to bridge academic analysis and legal practice, thereby reflecting the dual mission of the ELSA Day: to deepen legal understanding while illustrating the practical relevance of human rights in contemporary legal challenges.
The programme was structured around two complementary lectures, each addressing Climate Justice from a distinct yet interrelated angle. This structure allowed participants to explore the topic both as a matter of legal doctrine and as a field of practical application, highlighting how Human Rights considerations increasingly shape legal responses to the climate crisis.
Pia Hellwage is the Director for Public Relations for ELSA Germany
The first lecture approached Climate Justice from an international and human rights law perspective. It focused on the question of how existing Human Rights frameworks can be applied to the challenges posed by climate change. The speaker, Prof. Dr. Nele Matz-Lück, emphasised that international climate law remains largely intergovernmental in nature, with key instruments such as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement primarily addressing states and lacking direct individual enforceability. Against this background, the lecture examined the growing relevance of human rights law as a complementary framework capable of addressing the human consequences of climate change. Particular attention was paid to the evolving recognition of environmental protection within human rights discourse. The acknowledgement of a right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment at the international level was discussed as an important interpretative development, even in the absence of direct legal enforceability. The lecture highlighted how climate-related harms can already fall within the scope of established human rights, such as the right to life, the right to health and the protection of private and family life, provided that a sufficient degree of individual impact can be demonstrated. At the same time, the lecture critically addressed the structural limits of human rights-based climate litigation. Participants were encouraged to reflect on the challenges of individualising harm in the context of a global phenomenon and on the procedural obstacles that often arise in climate-related cases. By addressing both the potential and the limitations of human rights law, the lecture offered a nuanced and realistic assessment of its role in advancing Climate Justice.
The second lecture, held by Dr. Elisabeth Zinke-Heßler shifted the focus to legal practice and the operation of climate and nature protection within a multi-level governance system. Drawing on practical experience, the speaker illustrated how European Union Environmental and Climate Law increasingly translates into concrete obligations at national level and directly affects administrative procedures, planning processes and judicial review. The interaction between EU law, national administrative law and Human Rights Obligations was presented as a defining feature of contemporary environmental litigation. This practice-oriented perspective demonstrated how Climate Justice is negotiated not only in landmark court cases, but also in everyday legal work involving regulatory compliance, permitting procedures and strategic litigation. The lecture highlighted the growing importance of interdisciplinary legal reasoning and showed how lawyers are required to navigate complex legal frameworks that span multiple levels of governance.
Together, the two lectures provided participants with a comprehensive understanding of Climate Justice as a legal concept that operates across different legal orders and professional contexts. The national ELSA Day event thus succeeded in illustrating how Human Rights Considerations permeate both abstract legal doctrine and concrete legal practice. For many participants, the event offered valuable insights into how their legal education connects to pressing global challenges and how future legal professionals can contribute to the protection of Human Rights in the context of Climate Change
By creating a space for in-depth legal reflection and informed discussion, the national event organised by ELSA Germany exemplified the added value of the ELSA Day within legal education. It demonstrated how student-led initiatives can complement university curricula and foster critical engagement with complex societal issues. In this way, the ELSA Germany ELSA Day event not only addressed the theme of Human Rights and Climate Justice but also embodied the broader commitment of the ELSA network to promoting legal awareness, responsibility and respect for human dignity.
Local Groups Tackling Human Rights and Climate Justice
Across Germany, Local Groups demonstrated remarkable creativity and commitment in bringing this year’s theme to life. ELSA Heidelberg together with ELSA Augsburg, ELSA Kiel, ELSA Marburg and ELSA Hagen provided an insight into the professional field of Climate Law by inviting an ELSA alumna to speak about her work. In Hamburg, a well-attended panel discussion examined the growing field of international climate litigation, while ELSA Berlin offered a space in which academics and practitioners discussed the possibilities and limitations of the legal system in addressing the climate crisis. ELSA Bonn contributed a lecture on climate litigation in front ofadministrative courts, enriched by interactive case analyses that allowed participants to apply the concepts directly. ELSA Frankfurt am Main approached the topic through film, screening the documentary The Territory and creating room for an engaged conversation afterwards. ELSA Göttingen brought together Luisa Neubauer and Prof. Dr. Dr. Felix Eckardt for a widely noted event that combined academic input with interactive elements such as a quiz and open discussion. Further formats broadened the spectrum: ELSA Münster organised a pub quiz exploring Human Rights dimensions of Climate Justice, while ELSA Frankfurt (Oder), in cooperation with Amnesty International, hosted a campus-wide Human Rights Quiz in the days between ELSA Day and International Human Rights Day.
Taken together, the ELSA Day in Germany exemplified how a coordinated initiative can generate meaningful local engagement while remaining firmly embedded in a European context. The combination of a central national event and a wide spectrum of locally organised activities allowed the topic of Human Rights and Climate Justice to be addressed from multiple angles and at different levels of depth. For many participants, the ELSA Day provided an opportunity to connect their legal studies with pressing societal challenges and to reflect on their future role as legal professionals in a world increasingly shaped by climate change. By fostering dialogue, critical reflection and creative engagement, the ELSA Day in Germany contributed to strengthening Human Rights Awareness within legal education. It highlighted the potential of student-led initiatives to complement university curricula and to prepare future lawyers for the ethical and legal responsibilities they will face in practice. In this way, the German contribution to the ELSA Day underscored the broader mission of the ELSA network: to promote a just world in which respect for human dignity and human rights forms the foundation of legal practice
A Shared Commitment Across Europe
The ELSA Day 2025 and this year’s AHRC once again demonstrated the impact of a coordinated European network dedicated to human rights. The collaboration with the Council of Europe, the dedication of Local Ggroups, and the intellectual and creative energy seen across Germany reinforce the understanding that climate justice is not only a political challenge but fundamentally a Human Rights one.
ELSA continues to prepare future legal professionals for a world in which legal expertise and human rights awareness must go hand in hand. The ELSA Day has shown once more how deeply this commitment is embedded in the network and how powerfully it unfolds when students across Europe act all different, all together.