Naima Taafaki-Fifita

About/Bio

Naima Taafaki-Fifita is a Tuvaluan-qualified lawyer with over a decade of experience working across human rights, climate justice, and ocean governance. She currently works as a lawyer at Ocean Vision Legal, where her practice focuses on international ocean protection and environmental justice, with a particular emphasis on advancing legal and policy frameworks that reflect the rights, knowledge systems, and lived realities of ocean-dependent, island, and Indigenous communities. Her work spans advocacy, legal research, community engagement, and international environmental governance processes relating to climate and marine protection. She holds a JD from the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, specialising in international law, Environmental Law, and Native Hawaiian Rights. She is also the founder of The Moana Tasi Project, a Pasifika-led organisation dedicated to ensuring climate dignified futures for Oceanic peoples through legal empowerment, advocacy, storytelling, and strengthening community-led and culturally grounded approaches to ocean governance and climate justice.

Recently Published

Is Deep-Seabed Mining Compatible with the Human Right to a Healthy Environment? Insights from the ICJ and IACtHR Climate Change Advisory Opinions

In 2025, following the 2024 advisory opinion (AO) of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea on Climate Change (here), the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) issued their AOs on Climate Change (here and here, respectively). These historic AOs have generated extensive commentary. This blog…

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