What is it about?

Ecocide is proposed to be criminalized under international criminal law. Ecocide means destroying the natural environment. The mechanisms of international criminal law differ from the national criminal law systems. The article examines whether a new crime of ecocide would fit into the system of international criminal law. It assesses whether such a crime would be more suitable in other criminal law regimes and claims to establish general standards to answer this question.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

The discussion about making ecocide a crime in international criminal law has been going on for some time. However, the discussion, in the author’s view, has so far suffered from the fact that it is not sufficiently based on a general principle as to which offenses should be criminalized under the Rome Statute and which should not. The author hopes to contribute to establish such a general standard with her approach which she applies to the discussion about ecocide.

Perspectives

I wrote this article in New York City in the sacred halls of Columbia University during my LL.M. program in International Criminal Law. I hope that between the lines of this article you can recognize both my academic background at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main (Germany) as well as the new insights into International Law and International Criminal Law that I gained at Amsterdam Law School and Columbia Law School.

Dr. Sarah Zink, LL.M. (Amsterdam, Certificate Columbia Law School)

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Ecocide as a New Core Crime in the Rome Statute? An Ultima Ratio Lens on Legal Policy in International Criminal Law, International Criminal Law Review, December 2023, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/15718123-bja10170.
You can read the full text:

Read

Contributors

The following have contributed to this page