FROM GENOCIDE TO ECOCIDE

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Café Book Shop Singer
Rabensteig 3, 1010 Vienna

Tessa Szyszkowitz in conversation with Philippe Sands
FROM GENOCIDE TO ECOCIDE
How a legal definition of climate crimes could change the fight against climate change

At the 75th anniversary of the first use of the terms “genocide” and “crimes against humanity” in Nuremberg's courtroom 600 British author and international lawyer Philippe Sands co-chaired an international panel of experts who drafted a definition of “Ecocide” which could sit alongside Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, War Crimes and the Crime of Aggression in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The panel comprised a mixture of renowned international criminal lawyers, environmental lawyers and legal scholars with a wide range of backgrounds and perspectives. The group reported in June 2021 with a core definition text in English and accompanying commentary. The campaign “Stop Ecocide” wants to see a legal definition incorporated into the Statute of the International Criminal Court ICC, a hope recently supported by the UN Secretary General and the Pope.

In conversation with Tessa Szyszkowitz, Sands will discuss the origins of international crimes and the prospects for Ecocide, not least in the fight against climate change
This event will be in English.

Philippe Sands, a British and French author and international lawyer whose grandfather fled Vienna after the Anschluss. He is Professor of Law at University College London and a barrister at Matrix Chambers. His recent books include East West Street (2016) and The Ratline (2020), published in German by S. Fischer Verlag: Return to Lviv. On the origins of genocide and crimes against humanity and The rat line. A Nazi on the run.

Tessa Szyszkowitz, Author and Journalist for Profil, Falter and Cicero. She is also Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.