AT THE NUREMBERG trials, which began on November 20th 1945, allied forces prosecuted leading Nazis for atrocities committed during the Holocaust and the second world war. Among the charges against them was something which, just four years earlier, Winston Churchill had called “a crime without a name”: genocide, the deliberate destruction of a group of people. The term, and a convention against it, was then formally adopted by the United Nations.
That environmental damage might be curtailed through international criminal law is not a new idea. Some scholars have seized upon the fact that the UN genocide convention prohibits “deliberately inflicting” on the group attacked “conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction”. They argue this could include the devastation of the ecosystems on which the group relies.
The subsequent campaign to have ecocide adopted as an international crime was chiefly the work of Polly Higgins, a barrister and activist who died in 2019. In 2010 Higgins lobbied the UN law commission to make ecocide—which she defined as the “extensive destruction, damage to or loss of ecosystem of a given territory”—a fifth crime against peace.
Any amendments to the Rome Statute must be proposed by one of the countries that signed it, then approved by two-thirds of the others. Vanuatu and the Maldives, both low-lying archipelagic countries greatly threatened by climate change, have expressed interest in putting forward such an amendment. France and Belgium have promised diplomatic support. Mr Sands believes that the world’s growing environmental consciousness, and public pressure on politicians, will see other countries follow suit.
planet_tracker Guantanamo Bay for frequent flyers?
We'll need more prisons... A lot more
ABSOLUTELY
The framework for propelling the progress of human rights could be applied here? It’s a start though far from perfect
We're all going to have to get the death penalty, aren't we?
The rapid advance of technology has put the power of causing severe destruction to environment into the hands of average ordinary men/women, many of whom would never give it a thought before abusing that power. So, yes, drastic measures need to be taken to address this issue.
Your article compares genocide to fish environment dying...
This would be good.
It is time for eco terrorism too, long live the army of the 12 monkeys 🐒
Maybe first we should tackle actual genocide occurring right now in China.
They shouldn’t be able to play professional sports until the ocean is clean.
Something I've wondered about. Will in the future, a country go to war with another because of one's pollution affecting the other? Like everyone says 'You have to stop with the carbon.' but the carbon continues. So the other countries go to war to force them to stop. Possible?
Wouldn’t be good for China.
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