The claimants, including people living with disabilities, First Nations leaders and a firefighter, say Australia is in breach of a prominent human rights treaty by continuing to expand coal and gas exports.
Nyikina Warrwa and Warlungurru woman Anna Poelina said government approval of coal and gas projects was failing both people and Country.
"In 2023 we had the largest flood ever in the history of Western Australia, and our community went underwater," Professor Poelina, chair of the Martuwarra Fitzroy River Council in Western Australia, said.
"Not being on country, country gets lonely, we lose the ability to transfer culture," she told reporters in Canberra.
"We are standing here asking the Australian government to be accountable for the climate fugitive emissions that we are releasing and burning overseas."
Australia is chasing ambitious domestic climate and renewables targets but remains the world's second-largest exporter of coal and third-largest of gas.
While the Paris Agreement is focused on in-country emissions reductions and other countries are still buying Australian coal and gas, an advisory opinion issued by the world's highest court in mid-2025 specified fossil fuel production could constitute an "internationally wrongful act".
Australia was among the 141 favourable votes endorsing the International Court of Justice legal opinion at the UN General Assembly in May.
The "hard truths" case before the UN Human Rights Committee argues Australia is in breach of obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which specifies ratifying states must protect the right to life from foreseeable threats.
La Trobe University senior lecturer at the School of Law, Julia Dehm, said climate change fits that description.
"What makes this claim significant is that it connects Australia's specific conduct, approving and subsidising fossil fuel exports, to measurable harm to people living here now," Dr Dehm said.
"The Human Rights Committee is the right body to scrutinise that connection."
Cases lodged with the body can take years to reach final determination but claimants and their legal team are hopeful for an accelerated process ahead of the next UN climate conference in Turkey in November.
Multiple new and expanded coal and gas projects have been granted approval by the Australian government in the decade since the Paris Agreement.
This includes the controversial extension on Woodside's North West Shelf out to 2070, a project described as a "climate bomb" by environmental groups.
Sunshine Coast-based claimant, scientist and firefighter Barry Traill said he had observed massive increases in climate weather disasters over the past two decades.
"When I was on deployment in the Black Summer fires in 2020, I narrowly missed being killed or severely injured when a very large burning tree came down on a fire truck," he told reporters in Canberra.
"We believe that the Australian government, like all governments, has a duty to protect."
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