Breakfast Briefing with Raphael Oidtmann
The Crime of Ecocide at the International Criminal Court – Mapping the Discourse, Anticipating Next Steps
Abstract:
On 22 June 2021, an Independent Expert Panel, hosted by the Stop Ecocide Foundation, unveiled the long-anticipated definition of a contingent new international crime: the crime of ecocide – denoting ‘unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts‘– is envisaged to lastingly re-align the contemporary grid system of international justice, not least by seemingly shifting the regime’s focus away from an exclusively anthropocentric gearing towards a more differentiated understanding, characterized by considerations of ecocentrism.
While the definition has thus received broad acclaim and fierce critique from both academic and practitioners’ circles, the future prospects of an evolving crime of ecocide are hanging in the balance: although several States have already indicated their tentative support for introducing ecocide as a new international crime and including it into the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, it remains to be seen whether the required amendment procedure will be tabled at the upcoming Assembly of State Parties (ASP) and, moreover, if such a proposal might garner sufficient support. Besides the question of an ‘ecocide amendment’ in principle, however, debates on the definition of the crime are likely to resurface: hence, will States reject the definition on account of, for example, problems relating to the principle of strict construction? Will they accept the definition, either as such or with alterations? And in which ways and to what extent will State parties debate and (possibly) accommodate the inherent shift away from an international legal instrument applying a purely anthropocentric sympathy towards a more ecocentric-leaning construction of this novel international crime?
About the speaker:
Raphael currently serves as a parliamentary and legal advisor to the State Parliament of Hesse and holds further appointments as adjunct lecturer at Mannheim Law School, as associate researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, as associate postgraduate (‘doctorant associé’) at Centre Marc Bloch, and as global fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. Previously, he was the scientific advisor to the executive director at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) and held positions as a research fellow and lecturer at the universities of Mannheim and Mainz. Holding master’s degrees in political science, international and comparative law, and international relations, he currently is an external PhD candidate at the Institute
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