The Court of the Citizens of the World – Ecocide Tribunal: Judgment in the People vs. the United States, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and Argentina and Decision on Indictment Confirmation in the Prosecutor vs. Jair Messias Bolsonaro (Part I)

[Stephen Rapp is a former US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice and former international prosecutor at the Rwanda and Sierra Leone tribunals]

Introduction by Stephen Rapp

‘The Court of the Citizens of the World organized by the Cinema for Peace Foundation, sat as an Ecocide Tribunal in Berlin, Germany, during 16-19 February 2026, to hear witnesses and receive documentary evidence. The Prosecution team included Marc Willers KC (UK), Elise Groulx (France/UK), and Marine Izquierdo (France). Because the respondent States, and the accused individual, failed to respond to notice, the Court assigned Gabriel Vincent Tese (US) and Kirsty Sutherland (UK) to represent their interests. The tribunal consisted of five judges:  Stephen Rapp (US) presiding, Kevin Bell (Australia), Goran Lambertz (Sweden), Milena Sterio (US/Serbia), and Bhavani Fonseka (Sri Lanka). 

This proceeding involved two distinct cases, heard by the same panel of five judges, the first is based on a civil complaint filed by the Prosecutor on behalf of the People of the World against five States for breach of their obligations under international law as to climate change. The second is based on a proposed criminal indictment filed by the Prosecutor against an individual for international crimes relating to environmental destruction in the Amazon basin of Brazil.

The five judges came to a decision on the civil claims and on the application to confirm the criminal indictment, unanimously as to the relief sought, except that one judge separately concurred, providing different reasoning as to the civil claims. The opinions of the five judges will be published in three posts, of which this is first (see part II and part III). All of the opinions were delivered orally in Court on 19 February 2026 and have been edited for this publication.

Stephen Rapp, Presiding Judge (USA):  

The Court of the Citizens of the World sitting as the Ecocide Tribunal will now announce its judgment in the civil case, The People versus the United States of America, the Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Argentine Republic. We will also announce our decision on the application to confirm an indictment in the criminal case of The Prosecutor versus Jair Messias Bolsonaro.

Each of the five judges will read part of the decisions that we have reached in the civil and criminal cases. I will describe the process and the reasons we are convened as an Ecocide Tribunal. And then I will then yield to each of my colleagues, and they will speak in turn to announce our rulings on the civil complaint and on the application to confirm a criminal indictment. 

First, we wish to thank the witnesses who appeared in-person and those who were able to connect with us virtually from the Amazon region of Brazil. We recognize that the proceedings could have been smoother, and so I would like to say them in Portuguese:  

Nós, juízes, agradecemos às testemunhas que vieram do Brasil e cujos depoimentos nos permitiram alcançar justiça em nosso caso.

In English: We judges wish to thank the witnesses who have come from Brazil whose testimony has enabled us to achieve justice in our case.

We would like to thank the attorneys for both the prosecution and defence for their very effective advocacy, including the skilful examination and cross examination of witnesses, the presentation of thousands of pages of documents, and the eloquent closing submissions.  

We would also like to thank Jaka Bizilj, who is here today, the Founder and Director of the Cinema for Peace Foundation and the World Forum that is being held in Berlin during our proceedings. Most importantly, he established the Court of the Citizens of the World to hear evidence and issue decisions in situations where no official court is presently able to do justice. 

Let me emphasize that this Court does not create law, it simply provides a forum where no forum now exists. We do it by recognizing and applying law which has developed internationally either by treaties or customs, and that has defined the rights owed to all of the world’s citizens as well as duties on States to protect these rights, and which has further defined certain violations committed by persons as international crimes. However, we sit only in cases where there are no official courts with jurisdiction, or where there are courts but there is not the political will or capacity to deliver justice. 

This is the fourth convening of the Court of the Citizens of the World. The first case dealt with the criminal responsibility of the Russian leader for aggression in Ukraine. We did so because while the International Criminal Court (ICC), due to Ukraine’s declaration, had jurisdiction over war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Ukraine, it did not have jurisdiction over the crime of aggression. 

So we sat in The Hague as a tribunal for aggression and we are now pleased to see that the Council of Europe and Ukraine are in the process of establishing an official tribunal for the crime of aggression in Ukraine. However, we were able to hear the evidence and render a decision in February 2023, at the first anniversary of the full-scale invasion. 

A year later in The Hague, the Court considered the criminal responsibility of the leader of China for international crimes in Xinjiang, Tibet, Taiwan and the South China Sea. The ICC has no jurisdiction over China, though international law still applies. Unfortunately, there is no official court in the world to hear the evidence and determine whether the leader’s conduct was wrongful and indeed criminal, and no possibility of referral to the International Criminal Court because China has veto power in the UN Security Council.

A year ago, the CCW held its third proceeding, sitting in Berlin during the World Forum, to determine the responsibility of social media companies for the harms they are causing, in particular to children. This was another process to provide relief where a judicial avenue does not presently exist at the international level. 

Today we conclude four days of proceedings, to decide what the law provides as to the State responsibility of certain governments and as to the criminal responsibility of an individual for climate change and harms caused to the natural environment. 

On this matter, we have the benefit of the law as recognized by the highest court in the world, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in an advisory opinion issued last June. It is the most authoritative statement of international law, and we would expect it to be applied by the ICJ in a contentious case between States. 

However, none of the most responsible states have accepted the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice to be sued and to be ordered to provide relief for their wrongs. And so, as a result, our court meets to do what the International Court of Justice cannot yet do. But again, we are not creating new substantive law because the ICJ has recognized the right of the citizens in the world to a safe, healthy, and sustainable environment. 

We are asked by the Prosecutor to issue a decision in both civil and criminal cases. The first does not seek to put anybody in jail. It is not against persons, but against States because of their failure to fulfill their legal obligations. We will decide that case on the merits and enter final judgment. 

We also have heard evidence in a criminal case in a preliminary proceeding as could be done at the International Criminal Court. The Prosecutor has applied to confirm an indictment for crimes against humanity allegedly committed by former President Bolsonaro of Brazil. We are not asked to convict him, but only to determine whether there is sufficient evidence for him to be arrested and ordered to stand trial.

Of course, the ICC does have jurisdiction in some country situations over four international crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and aggression. But there is not yet a crime of ecocide in the ICC Statute. The Prosecutor would like us to declare that there is already such a crime, based not on treaty, but on customary international law, in the same way that the Nuremberg Tribunal after World War II recognized crimes against humanity. 

However, we do not find sufficient state practice or sufficient declarations by multilateral bodies to say that ecocide is now an international crime. We are bound by the principle of legality. We cannot charge someone with a crime for conduct that was not recognized as criminal at the time the person acted. 

The prosecution has alleged that ecocide was committed as defined in a draft statute proposed by a group of international experts in 2021. This proposed law was discussed at a panel during this World Forum. It would make it criminal for a person to commit “unlawful and wanton acts with knowledge that there was substantial likelihood that those acts would cause severe, widespread or long-term damage to the environment.”

We proposed statute goes further than present international criminal law, because that law has been focused, at least when it comes to crimes committed outside wartime, on direct harms to human beings. Certainly crimes against the environment can harm human beings, but that harm may come only decades or generations after environmental harm. This new law would essentially recognize the environment itself as a potential victim.

Having heard the evidence, we can see strong merit for States approving the proposed law as an amendment to the ICC Statute, or for individual countries to adopt similar national laws, as have Belgium and Ukraine. But today, we must decide whether to confirm a proposed indictment under present law, by determining whether there are substantial grounds to believe that Jair Bolsonaro committed acts that would constitute crimes against humanity. Judges Sterio and Fonseka will be setting out the law and our findings of fact in the crimes case. 

However, it is important to note that as to Bolsonaro and alleged crimes against humanity, there is not an actual jurisdictional gap because the International Criminal Court does have jurisdiction over such crimes if committed in Brazil during the years 2019 to 2022. We understand that victims have made submissions to the ICC Prosecutor under article 15 of the Rome Statute with similar allegations, but that there may be a resource gap that has prevented the ICC considering additional situation countries. We hope that our findings may encourage the opening of a preliminary examination. 

We also need to say a word about the connection between the civil and criminal cases, as we heard one of the defense attorneys argue that there was no relationship between the conduct alleged in the two cases. Yes, it is true that the criminal allegations do not allege harms caused directly by climate change. Instead, the Prosecutor has asserted the Accused is responsible for actions that have destroyed the rain forest in order to enable the mining of gold in a manner that has created toxic byproducts such as mercury that have poisoned waterways, and that has also opened the way for slash and burn agriculture. It is further alleged that this has rendered the land no longer available for the indigenous population nor supportive of their ways of living in harmony with nature. 

While these harms are not caused by climate change, they have made it more difficult to mitigate the effects of climate change by reducing the size of rain forests that naturally absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. All of the National Determined Contribution (NDC) pledges filed by States under the Paris Agreement are counting on this natural absorption to reach their climate goals. For instance, each of the five respondent States have filed NDC plans promising to reach “net zero” greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050 or 2060. Their commitments are graphed in the charts published by the Climate Action Tracker (CAT) and the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) offered by the Prosecution. 

For instance, the case of the United States, the NDC filed by the Biden Administration promised to reduce carbon dioxide emission from about 6 billion metric tons in 2021 to 1 billion metric tons by 2050 and asserted that amounted to “net zero” because of it was counting on the 1 billion metric tons being absorbed from the atmosphere. 

One of the most important places that absorption occurs is in the world’s rain forests, where the chlorophyl in trillions of leaves takes the energy from the sun’s rays, and carbon dioxide from the air, and creates vegetation which provides cover and nourishment for animal and human life. Anyone who destroys that great life-preserving habitat makes it much harder for the world to achieve net zero emissions and prevent the harms caused by climate change.

I will now turn to the civil claims, which are founded on the ICJ’s recognition of a human right to a safe, healthy, and sustainable environment, and the commitment of the world’s governments in Paris agreement to protect this right by acting to limit the increase of global temperature to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

But now despite the pledges, we are at 1.44 degrees over the pre-industrial level. We’re almost there. And the kind of immediate actions necessary to keep us under 1.5 are almost impossible. The clock has ticked down. The time has almost run out. This is also have taking into account the significant progress that has been achieved due to diligent efforts on the part of some States, and economic factors that have favored the development of renewable resources such photovoltaic cells and wind power for production of electricity, and the reduction in use of fossil fuels in transportation through large increases in the numbers of electric vehicles. 

Sadly, as can be seen from the CAT and CCPI, based on the overwhelming scientific consensus that has gone into their calculations, we are on a glide path by the end of this century to reach 2.6 degrees over the pre-industrial level. We have heard from the experts of the horrors that will befall our Earth if we go to 2.0, including the submergence of small island states and of major coastal cities, and the extreme weather events such devastating droughts and more destructive storms. But we are in fact heading to 2.6, which will result in even worse harms. 

That 2.6 degrees represents the collective effect of the actions of States, some worsening the problem and some working to mitigate the problem. From the evidence that we have heard the five States sued by the Prosecutor are doing the most to worsen the problem. That is first and foremost because the plans that are filed do not include provisions that will result in the achievement of their promised goals. And of course, one of these countries, the United States, under its current administration, has abandoned the plans, insufficient as they were, and denied the reality of anthropogenic climate change, rejecting the right of citizens to a safe, healthy, and sustainable environment, and instead reversing national level efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emission–essentially pouring gasoline on the fire. 

If other States follow the US lead, or the lead of the other four States, the glide path will rise even higher and effects will be far more grave. As shown in the Climate Action Tracker, if everyone follows US and Russia global temperatures will be more than four degrees above pre-industrial levels by 2100. If they follow the other three states, Argentina and China and Saudi Arabia, they will be between three degrees and four degrees above those levels. 

From the evidence presented by the Prosecution, these five states are at or near the bottom of list as to the sufficiency of their response with the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Argentina rated by the Climate Action Tracker as “critically insufficient” and China as “highly insufficient.”   There are other States whose response is also insufficient, but these five states are now producing 49% of greenhouse gases, and they have the greatest potential, and thus responsibility, to solve the problem. 

Under the Paris Agreement each state was to exercise due diligence, not necessarily all doing the same thing, because their situations and capacities are not the same, but having common obligations to act but in differentiated ways. Due diligence requires every state’s highest possible ambition and that ambition was different in 2020 that it will be in 2030 or 2040. As new technology comes online, they should make the best use of it. Their highest possible ambition requires an ever more energetic response. 

We also wish to make it clear that it does not make a material difference whether a state is under the Paris agreement or has renounced it. Last year, US President Trump tore up the Paris Agreement for the second time. However, the ICJ in its Advisory Opinion has determined that the obligations of all states arise from customary international law that originates from human rights treaties and customs, from unanimous declarations like those of the United Nations General Assembly, and from the policies and practices of more than 100 states to control greenhouse gas emissions and implement that commitment through government action.

So we have both civil and criminal cases before us, the first as to the failure of five States to fulfill obligations under international law and the second as to the alleged commission by an individual, Jair Messias Bolsonaro, of crimes against humanity, charged in seven counts. On the first we believe that we have heard sufficient evidence to render judgment, based on preponderance of the evidence or balance of probabilities. On the second, we will proceed only to determine if there are substantial grounds to believe that the Accused committed these crimes, which is the standard to be applied under Article 61 of the Rome Statute and Article 19 of the Statute of the Court of the Citizens of the World. On that basis we can confirm an indictment, order arrest, and direct that he be brought to trial where he would have effective counsel and where a court would determine whether there was evidence of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. 

But now for a discussion of law and the facts as to both the civil and criminal cases, let me turn to my colleagues. The first is Judge Kevin Bell, formerly a judge of the Supreme Court of the state of Victoria, Australia, for his opinion regarding the responsibility of the States in the civil case. 

Photo attribution: Photo by Pao Dayag on Unsplash