Ecocide as an International Crime: Key Considerations

Official side event of the 19th Session of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), December 2020

At the 2019 ASP in The Hague, small island States Parties to the ICC Vanuatu and Maldives addressed the need for ecocide to be seriously considered by the ICC. Support has been expressed at state level by France and Belgium, with parliamentarians in a growing number of countries now discussing this legal route to sanctioning the worst excesses of environmental damage. The event will cover key legal, historical and political considerations as well as examining the broader implications of this approach to protecting Earth's crucial life-support systems.

Kindly hosted by the Republic of Vanuatu in association with the Stop Ecocide Foundation and Institute for Environmental Security.

Co-host:
Dreli Solomon, First Secretary of the Vanuatan Embassy, Brussels

Special Guest:
Pekka Haavisto, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Finland

Speakers:
Professor Philippe Sands QC, Matrix Chambers / University College London
Kate Mackintosh, Executive Director, Promise Institute for Human Rights, UCLA School of Law
Marie Toussaint, Member of the European Parliament (Greens/EFA)
Judge Tuiloma Neroni Slade, former ICC judge

Moderator:
Andrew Harding, BBC Africa correspondent

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Bonus material: at the end of the webinar you can also view the official statement of the Stop Ecocide Foundation to the ICC’s Assembly of States Parties, read by the Foundation’s Chair, Jojo Mehta