Ghana: MPs urge Parliament to criminalise ecocide

Summary

Calls have been made in Ghana’s Parliament for legislation to criminalise ecocide, amid growing concern over the environmental devastation caused by illegal mining, known locally as galamsey.

In a statement to Parliament, Frank Annoh-Dompreh, Member of Parliament for Nsawam-Adoagyiri and Minority Chief Whip, urged lawmakers to introduce legislation recognising ecocide as a national-level crime in Ghana, to champion ecocide law in continental fora like the African Union, and to support efforts to recognise ecocide as an international crime. His statement was supported by fellow MPs Charles Akwasi Agbeve, Dr Mahama Tiah Abdul-Kabiru, Jerry Ahmed Shaib, and Dominic Napare, who also rose to call for ecocide law.

“I rise today with a profound sense of urgency and responsibility to speak on the need for legislative action against ecocide – the mass destruction of ecosystems”, Annoh-Dompreh told parliament. 

He also cited the definition of ecocide developed in 2021 by the Independent Expert Panel convened by the Stop Ecocide Foundation and warned that Ghana’s ecosystems are under severe pressure from deforestation, pollution and illegal mining. Recent reports suggest that as much as 60 percent of Ghana’s water bodies have been affected by illegal mining activity, threatening agriculture, public health and long-term economic stability.

Patricia Willocq, Diplomatic Director for Africa and Francophone Countries at Stop Ecocide International, said:

“This call from Ghana’s Parliament reflects a growing recognition that the most severe destruction of nature must no longer fall through the cracks of the law. Recognising ecocide in national legislation would make it possible to investigate and prosecute large-scale environmental harm under Ghanaian criminal law, while aligning the country with the growing international movement to recognise ecocide as an international crime.”

Momentum for ecocide law has been growing across Africa. The Democratic Republic of the Congo has endorsed the formal proposal to establish ecocide as an international crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and has also seen a national ecocide bill lodged in Parliament.

At the continental level, African environment ministers, led by the Republic of Burundi, the Republic of the Congo, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, agreed at the 2025 session of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) to include ecocide among Africa’s environmental priorities and to establish an ad hoc committee to examine the classification of mass ecosystem destruction as a crime.

The intervention in Ghana follows recommendations from the country’s Constitutional Review Committee, which has proposed establishing a national crime of ecocide as part of broader constitutional reform.

You can watch the full parliamentary interventions here.