Summary
UN High Commissioner welcomes consideration of ecocide as international crime
Ecocide legislation offered as potential measure to ensure accountability for environmental damage
Ecocide reference came in a wide-ranging speech given at the opening of 54th session of the Human Rights Council.
In his opening speech of the 54th Session of the Human Rights Council, Volker Türk, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, expressed enthusiasm for inclusion of the international crime of “ecocide” in the Rome Statute of the UN-backed International Criminal Court as a potential measure to ensure accountability for environmental damage, saying:
"An international crime of ecocide has been proposed for inclusion in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court by a number of States and civil society groups. I welcome consideration of this and other measures to expand accountability for environmental damage, both at the national and international level.”
In his wide-ranging address, Türk laid out a litany of concerns from “nonchalance” about the deaths of 2,300 migrants in the Mediterranean this year, to the 1.2 billion people (half of them children) who now live in acute poverty across the world.
Mr. Türk made several references to the compounding role environmental crisis is having on existing areas of acute human rights concern and called for “human rights-based climate action” to help developing countries adapt to the effects of climate change and stressed the need for a “rapid, equitable phase-out of fossil fuels”.
Jojo Mehta, Co-founder and Executive Director of Stop Ecocide International said,
“We commend the High Commissioner for his consistent efforts in advocating for broader recognition that environmental harm, especially large-scale destruction and the wide-spread degradation of nature, can exert profound and often disproportionate impacts on human rights.
“Culturally, we often distance ourselves from the natural world, as if humans exist in isolation from the complexity, harmony and balance that nature requires to thrive. The reality is, of course, that we are part of that complex balance. When natural systems are disrupted, human systems are disrupted. Legal measures to prevent and address the most severe harms to nature - ecocide - inevitably reinforce the existing human rights framework.
“International criminal law is about elevating the worst crimes to an international level. And the more national and regional parliaments and international organisations, such as the UN, engage on the topic of ecocide, the more governments are starting to pay attention at the international level too.”
“I have no doubt in my mind that It is only a matter of time until we see legal protection against severe and widespread or long-term environmental harm recognised by the International Criminal Court.”