REFLECTING UPON THE SCOPE OF ACTION RELEVANT TO THE CRIME OF ECOCIDE, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE CASE OF CAMBODIAN FARMERS BEFORE THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT
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https://doi.org/10.55662/Abstract
The term ecocide was used as early as 1970, when it was first recorded at the Conference on War and National Responsibility in Washington, where Professor Arthur W. Galston ‘proposed a new international agreement to ban ecocide’. The term itself became well-recognized and in 1972 at the United Nations (UN) Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, Mr. Olof Palme, then Prime Minister of Sweden, spoke explicitly in his opening speech of the Vietnam War as an ‘ecocide’.
He used the term as a pejorative for all forms of ‘ecological warfare’, citing examples such as those of indiscriminate bombing, and large-scale use of herbicide and bulldozers. This definition primarily viewed ecocide as a means, not an end, wherein environmental destruction was used as the means to achieving political or military goals and achievements. This is a view partially accepted and adopted by the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, when proceedings were brought against the Cambodian political and economic establishment, over land grabbing charges.
On 7 October 2014, Cambodian farmers, through the Global Diligence organization filed for Prosecution against the “ruling elite”, alleging that they had committed mass land grand grabbing, and that it constituted a Crime Against Humanity.
This led to the Office of the Chief Prosecutor of the ICC, in their 2016 Policy Paper, recognized “the destruction of the environment or of protected objects” to be a legitimate metric for the computation of the gravity of a crime; specifically, under the category of a War Crime, using Articles 8(2)(b)(ix) and 8(2)(e)(iv) of the Rome Statute.
However, in this scenario, the scope of the crime is conditional, with presence of active hostilities being necessary, and either of the following,
- The applicability of customs of international armed conflict, or
- Be directed towards people having no direct part in the hostilities.
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