Ecocide: International Crime Against Peace

Polly Higgins was a Scottish barrister, who left her career as a corporate lawyer to focus on environmental advocacy, and unsuccessfully lobbied the United Nations Law Commission to recognise ecocide as an international crime.

Ecocide had been proposed as one of the international crimes against peace in 1996, but failed to be included in the final Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Higgins started to campaign for its inclusion around 2009, when the Rome statue was being reviewed.
I had the great pleasure of interviewing her in 2014.

We shared a pot of tea, sat on my patio on a warm summer’s day, and discussed why ecocide wasn't adopted as an international crime.