In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Environmental Law

08 Aug

[Ananya Bhargava (she/her) is a law student at Jindal Global Law School] Introduction Historically in situations of war, international law has maintained fidelity to a strictly parochial understanding of what constitutes “use of force.”  This understanding adheres to the normative belief that “use of force” solely includes armed force. Any deviation from this belief would invariably lead to the unsettling of definite...

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08 Aug

[Donna Cline is a US-licensed criminal practitioner and lead for the Environment Mobile Justice Team at Global Rights Compliance, where she works closely with Ukrainian prosecutors to ensure accountability for war crimes. Julia Tétrault-Provencher is a Canadian lawyer (Quebec Bar) and international lawyer with the Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Mobile Justice Team at Global Rights Compliance in Ukraine.] Legal practitioners and scholars...

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04 Aug

[Marisa McVey is a lecturer in law at Queen's University Belfast. Annalisa Savaresi is professor of international environmental law at the Centre for Climate Change, Energy and Environmental Law, University of Eastern Finland. She also holds a part-time Chair in environmental law at the University of Stirling, Scotland.] State obligations in relation to climate change have come under increasing scrutiny by international courts...

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30 Jul

[Juan Auz is an Ecuadorian lawyer and a postdoctoral researcher at Tilburg University's Law School] On March 14, 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) made public a landmark ruling holding Ecuador internationally responsible for the violation of various rights of the Tagaeri and Taromenane, the last remaining indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation (PIAV) in the western Ecuadorian Amazon...

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29 Jul

Peru's Justice and Human Rights Commission of the Congress has just published a unified bill that would add the crime of ecocide to the Peruvian penal code. The next step is for Congress to approve the bill and the President to promulgate it. Here is Art. 1 of the unified bill, as translated by ClaudeAI: Article 305-A. Ecocide 305-A.1. Anyone who, knowingly, provokes,...

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29 Jul

[Fia Hamid-Walker is a PhD candidate in disaster jurisprudence and postcolonial theory at Melbourne Law School and human rights lawyer] Disaster means a calamitous event or series of events resulting in widespread loss of life, great human suffering and distress, mass displacement, or large-scale material or environmental damage, thereby seriously disrupting the functioning of societyArticle 3(b) of the Draft Articles on...

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28 Jul

[Sude Kınık is a senior law student at Galatasaray University] Introduction The ECtHR’s landmark judgment in Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland, (“Klimaseniorinnen”) marks a significant moment in the judicialization of environmental protection through human rights frameworks. A key feature of this judgment is how the Court addressed the “drop in the ocean” argument—a common state defense in climate litigation aiming...

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23 Jul

[Theodore Hanna is an LL.M. candidate in International and European Law at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens] In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky cautions that, “[t]he man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him.” This warning resonates powerfully in the context of contemporary...

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22 Jul

[Erard de Schaetzen is pursuing a masters in public international law at Utrecht University] In March 2023, Vanuatu’s initiative led the UN General Assembly to adopt a Resolution requesting an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on defining States’ obligations regarding climate change, and the legal consequences arising from their breach. Since then, proceedings before the “World Court”...

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19 May

[Tadesse Kebebew is a Researcher and Project Manager at the Geneva Water Hub, a Centre of Competence on Water for Peace and holds a PhD in International Law from the Geneva Graduate Institute] Introduction  Water has increasingly become both a target and a weapon in armed conflicts across regions, causing severe humanitarian suffering and environmental degradation. When warring parties damage water systems...

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16 May

[Ignacio Portela Giráldez is a Ph.D. candidate at University of New South Wales (UNSW), tutor of ‘Introduction to Military Ethics’ at UNSW and tutor of ‘International Public Law’ at UTS. His research explores new legal pathways to defend communities living in Special territories of the European Union (Outermost regions and Overseas Countries and Territories) and British Overseas Territories.] In Cannavacciuolo and...

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17 Apr

[Laura van der Hoeven holds academic degrees in Public International Law and Business Administration. Her work focuses on the intersection of foreign relations and international law, with particular interest in security alliances, soft power diplomacy, and the application of international law to territorial disputes.] The ongoing conflict in the Gaza region has resulted in severe humanitarian and environmental losses. While international...

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