This is all wrong,” said Thunberg, who was visibly emotional as she spoke on a panel at a U.N. climate summit Monday. With tears in her eyes and her face flushed, the 16-year-old activist — who began skipping school in her native Sweden a year ago to protest inaction on climate change — chastised the world leaders who had gathered in New York.

“I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean,” said Thunberg, who traveled for two weeks on a solar-powered sailboat to reach the United States this month. “Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you?”hunberg continued her campaign Monday, as she and 15 other young people filed a legal complaint with the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child arguing that major countries — Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey — have known about the risks of climate change for decades but have failed to take sufficient action to curb their emissions. The petitioners range in age from 8 to 17 and hail from Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, India, the Marshall Islands, Nigeria, Palau, South Africa, Sweden, Tunisia and the United States.

“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” WP