In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Ecocide: Environmental Crime of Crimes or Ill-Conceived Concept?

29 Jul

Michael Karnavas is a criminal-defence attorney and former President of the Association of Defence Counsel of the ICTY. He currently represents Paul Gicheru at the ICC. This post first appeared on his personal blog. … man has consciously and unconsciously inflicted irreparable damage to the environment in times of war and peace.   Richard A. Falk, 1973 And will continue to inflict irreparable...

|
21 Jul

[Carlos A. Cruz Carrillo is a PhD Candidate at the University of Basel. Twitter: @Carcru1118.] The rule of law for oceans faces the challenges presented by climate change. Scientific evidence shows that climate change is causing menacing issues in the oceans. For example, sea-level rise, acidification, and deoxygenation of the oceans, amongst others. (see: 2019 IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate). In...

|
16 Jul

Despite the publication of the MMIWG Report and its findings of an ongoing “race-based genocide” against Canada’s First Nations, issues of indigenous genocide and (neo)colonial oppression have remained side-lined from political discourse in the rest of the American continent. In fact, the situation has arguably worsened: at the same time as Canada protested the unmarked graves of hundreds of indigenous...

|
11 Jul

[Valerie Oosterveld is a Professor at the University of Western Ontario (Western University) Faculty of Law in Canada and a faculty member with her university’s Institute for Earth and Space Exploration, also known as Western Space. Anne Campbell is a recent graduate of Western University and a current Western Space summer intern.] Plans for the extraction of water and minerals in outer space – particularly...

|
30 Jun

Young Park is a JD Candidate and International Law and Human Rights Fellow at New York University School of Law. Currently she is an intern at the International Commission of Jurists, Africa Regional Programme.Onen Cylus is an LLB finalist at Makerere University. He is also currently working as an intern with the International Commission of Jurists, with a passion for...

|
28 Jun

[Iain Scobbie is the Chair in International Law at the University of Manchester. This post is a contribution in our recent symposium on Ensuring Respect for International Humanitarian Law.] The understanding and implications of common Article 1 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions have undergone a transformation since its inception.  The volume edited by Eve Massingham and Annabel McConnachie, ‘Ensuring Respect for...

|
28 Jun

In my previous posts on the crime of ecocide -- Post 1, Post 2 -- I argued the theoretical/normative case against the IEP's decision to subject lawful acts to anthropocentric cost-benefit analysis via the "wantonness" requirement. In this post, I want to bracket the issue of whether the definition of ecocide should distinguish between lawful and unlawful acts and question...

|
23 Jun

I have been eagerly awaiting the results of the Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide (IEP), which includes a number of excellent lawyers and some close friends. The exercise has always been largely symbolic: even if 2/3 of states parties are willing to support an ecocide amendment, which is unlikely, an amendment to Art. 5 of the...

|
22 Jun

[Sava Jankovic, MA (University of Warsaw), MSc (Warsaw University of Technology), PhD (University of Dundee) is Researcher at the Institute of Legal Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences. His interests include the law of statehood, international responsibility, human rights law and peaceful resolution of conflicts.] The aftermath of the incident: Proceedings before national and international bodies and politically charged sanctions The...

|
21 Jun

[Sava Jankovic, MA (University of Warsaw), MSc (Warsaw University of Technology), PhD (University of Dundee) is Researcher at the Institute of Legal Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences. His interests include the law of statehood, international responsibility, human rights law and peaceful resolution of conflicts.] Basic facts  The Ryanair plane flying from Athens to Vilnius on 23 of May was forced...

|
16 Jun

While results have not yet been officially announced, it is now a fact that Pedro Castillo, a rural farmer and schoolteacher from the town of Chota, in the northern Peruvian Andes, won Peru’s Presidential Election. Let me say this from the get-go: this is a historical moment. Peru is an immensely centralised, deeply racist country. Castillo’s meteoric rise to the...

|
04 Jun

[Massimo Frigo is a Senior Legal Adviser of the International Commission of Jurist’s Europe and Central Asia Programme.] On 25 May 2021, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights issued a landmark ruling on the compatibility of systems of mass surveillance with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the essential elements of which were first brought to public light...

|