Ayisha Siddiqa

Ayisha Siddiqa (born 8 February 1999) is a Pakistani-American scholar, environmental and human rights defender, and researcher on rights of future generations. She was appointed as the Youth Climate Advisor to United Nations Secretary General from March 2023 until March 2025,^[1] and has been actively involved in Climate Justice advocacy since 2019 when she went on to found her university’s branch of Extinction Rebellion that led a strike involving around 300,000 youth in New York City,^[2] and then co-founded Fossil Free University and Polluters Out,^[3][4] a global youth coalition for climate action. She is the recipient of multiple climate justice and human rights advocacy honours including TIME Woman of the Year 2023,^[5] The Independent Climate 100 List for two consecutive years 2024 and 2025,^[6][2] and Business Insider’s Climate Action 30 of 2023.^[7]

Siddiqa left her mark on environmental international law, from developing policy submissions and working on texts on the UN’s Mitigation Work Programme, Just Transition pathways, and the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance, to founding a groundbreaking legal Future Generations Tribunal in 2023 to codify rights of future generations.^[8]

Currently, Siddiqa is pursuing a law degree as a Juris Doctor candidate at UCLA School of Law, where she specializes in human rights and international law.^[9] Siddiqa utilizes her UN policy experience and legal research background to produce publications and lead initiatives that advance the advocacy for environmental rights and climate justice. She served as the expert author on human rights for the People’s Petition a landmark legal document submitted to the International Court of Justice as it deliberates on states’ human rights obligations in the context of climate change.^[10]

In 2023, Siddiqa founded Future Generations Tribunal (FGT), a youth-led initiative advancing legal personhood for future generations.^[11] Siddiqa and her team have begun collecting citizen testimonies from young people around the world, starting with the People’s Assembly in 2024 and followed by the East Africa Future Generations Tribunal in 2025,^[12] on how the climate crisis is taking away their human right to a healthy environment, to safety, to clean air, with the objective of collecting evidence to produce legal declarations defining the rights of future generations.^[13]

Ayisha Siddiqa was born on 8 February 1999, in Jhang City, Pakistan.^[14] Growing up in a matriarchal, tribal community near the River Chenab in eastern Pakistan helped shape her outlook.^[15][16][5] At 13, Siddiqa realized how unsafe the environment can be after witnessing the illness and death of her grandmother that came from her community’s polluted river water, followed by the death of two of her cousins and her uncle developing kidney failure.^[17]

Siddiqa moved to Coney Island, Brooklyn when she was a child.^[18] She graduated from Hunter College and received a Bachelor of arts in Political Sciences and English in 2021.^[19] While at Hunter College, she was part of the Thomas Hunter Honors program.^[20]

Now, Siddiqa is a Juris Doctor candidate at UCLA School of Law, where she specializes in human rights and international law as a merit-based Achievement Fellow and Public Interest Scholar. Her scholarship sits at the intersection of law, intergenerational justice, and global climate governance.^[9] Along with her legal career advancements, Siddiqa has focused on her legal environmental advocacy through her publications “What Does Equity Mean to You?” in The Climate Book edited by Greta Thunberg (Oct. 2022),^[21] “The Youth Activist’s Perspective,” in The Revolution Will Not Be Litigated (Nov. 2022),^[22] and “The Kids Are Alright,” in What If We Get It Right (Sept. 2024).^[23]

Siddiqa’s environmental advocacy started when she moved to the U.S. after experiencing the direct impacts of the climate crisis on her community in Pakistan.^[17] During her college years, she co-organized regular youth gatherings for climate justice for two years as part of the Extinction Rebellion movement. On September 20th of 2019, Siddiqa co-led New York’s biggest youth climate gathering of more than 250,000 people demanding environmental justice ahead of the 2019 United Nations Youth Climate Summit.^[24] In 2020, she co-founded Polluters Out, a global youth advocacy coalition demanding global climate negotiations free of fossil fuel lobbyists, and helped launch the Fossil Free University as the Research and Law Fellow for EarthRights International in 2021, an environmental justice training course on energy transition law and policy, sustainable development frameworks, and civil society mobilization strategies.^[25][26] In 2021, Ayisha attended COP 26, her first UNFCCC Conference of the Parties, where she utilized her initiative Polluters Out to represent the youth’s demands of a conflict-of-interest policy within the UNFCCC to stop corporate sponsorship, prevent fossil fuel lobbying, and halt the line edits in the Paris Climate Agreement.^[27][28] Her efforts garnered media spotlight including features for Atmos Earth, Vogue, and The Guardian, in which she explained the urgency of working towards intersectional climate justice focused on addressing root issues of climate change through policy, and centring the diverse voices of Indigenous, Black, and brown communities.^[28][27][29]

By 2022, Siddiqa’s role as an international environmental and human rights defender expanded as she paved her way towards rights-based intersectional justice studies and legal research. She started her research fellowship at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at New York University School of Law, where she designed and implemented capacity-building programs for 50 grassroots advocates on international human rights law, climate science methodologies, and UNFCCC procedural frameworks to enhance civil society engagement in multilateral climate negotiations.^[9] During her fellowship, Siddiqa published peer-reviewed articles on climate vulnerability in Pakistan and the mental health impacts of climate change on youth worldwide, situating findings within climate justice frameworks.^[25] As a leading voice of human rights defenders at COP27, Ayisha spoke of the loss and damage still occurring in Pakistan due to recent floods: “The losses and damages as a result of the floods have kept accumulating. They have not stopped. The rain might have, but the losses and damages are increasing every day,” She said in a NY Times side event, “We’re demanding that the climate risk finance framework be finalized and that we secure trillions of dollars in climate finance for the “developing” world over the next five years.”^[30] In a feature for TED Ideas, Siddiqa emphasized that the single most contributor to the climate crisis is the extraction of fossil fuels, and that it is imperative for human rights and climate justice efforts to provide solutions tackling the root causes of the problem.^[31]

In 2023, Siddiqa was awarded the TIME Woman of the Year title by TIME Magazine for making the world think differently about climate action. As a human rights and climate defender, she demonstrated how poetry and stories represent hope—a way to bring humanity back into the staid, high-level conversations that increasingly occupy her time.^[32] While working as a research fellow NYU School of Law, she continued telling stories of local devastation of her community in Pakistan by the climate crisis at international high level meetings, speaking about the 2022 Pakistan Floods as a keynote speaker at the 2023 World Economic Forum (WEF), as well as the 2023 Leaders Summit, held by the UN Global Compact.^[33][34]

Siddiqa first became involved in climate activism when she launched her university's branch of extinction rebellion in May 2019.^[35] The organization held a strike on 7 October 2019 in Lower Manhattan, New York City.^[36] The strike included about 300,000 participants.^[37] As part of that protest, strikers doused fake blood on the Charging Bull, located on Wall Street.^[38]

In response to the 2019 United Nations Climate Change Conference, she founded Polluters Out with Isabella Fallahi and Helena Gualinga.^[39] The organization was created in response to the realization that fossil fuel industries play a big role in the COPs.^[40] Fossil fuel companies who fund the COPs include Endesa, Iberdrola, Banco Santander and Acciona.^[41] As a result of this campaign, COP26 didn't include big oil companies as sponsors. British Petroleum was one such oil company denied sponsorship.^[42] Ayisha Siddiqa also joined the walkout at the TED Countdown Conference, which happened in Edinburgh in response to the speaker role given to Shell plc Chief Executive Officer, Ben van Beurden, and other fossil fuel executives.^[43] She is also the co-founder of Free Fossil University.^[44]

Siddiqa also attended the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in November 2021, where she critiqued the inaccessibility of the COP, especially for people from the Global South.^[45] In 2022, she became one of the speaker for 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference at the Children and Youth Pavilion.^[46] In March 2023, she was named as one of Time magazine's Women of the Year.^[47] In 2024, he became one of 100 list of Climate 100 that is published by The Independent.^[44]