On November 27th, the Justice and Human Rights Commission of the Peruvian Congress approved a motion to criminalise ecocide, incorporating key elements of the 2021 IEP consensus legal definition. This significant step toward adding ecocide to the Penal Code now awaits plenary approval by Congress and presidential promulgation to become law.

• A bill to criminalise ecocide has been lodged in the Scottish Parliament

• Introduced by Monica Lennon MSP and requiring the endorsement of at least 18 MSPs to proceed, the bill aims to prevent and criminalise the most severe forms of environmental harm. 

If passed, Scotland would become the first country in the UK to establish a domestic crime of ecocide and emerge as a global leader in the rapidly growing field of ecocide law.

DRC becomes first African nation to formally endorse the creation of an international crime of ecocide, following September 2024 proposal from Pacific nations to add ecocide to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Azerbaijan's parliament, the Milli Majlis, has passed the first reading of a bill that would introduce the crime of ecocide into the country's Criminal Code. Proposed by President Ilham Aliyev, the bill seeks to impose custodial sentences of 10 to 15 years for those convicted of committing severe environmental damage.

NEW YORK, 09 SEPTEMBER 2024: The crime of ecocide was formally introduced for consideration by member states of the International Criminal Court (ICC) —an event that represents a major step forward in the global effort to enshrine mass environmental destruction as a crime under international law.

The Global Commons Survey 2024, conducted by Ipsos UK and commissioned by Earth4All and the Global Commons Alliance (GCA), found that 72% of people across G20 countries agree that the most severe forms of environmental harm—increasingly known as Ecocide —- should be a crime. 

On Thursday, September 5, the Congress of the Republic of Peru convened a Technical Committee to review a proposal aimed at criminalising ecocide within the country’s national penal code. The new legal text consolidates three bills recently submitted to Congress, and incorporates the main elements of the consensus legal definition of ecocide, which was formulated by the Independent Expert Panel convened by the Stop Ecocide Foundation in 2021.

A new report by France’s international development financing agency, Agence Française de Développement (AFD), highlights the role that ecocide law would play in “ensuring the planet’s habitability”.

The People’s Pact for the Future, a set of recommendations created through extensive consultations with global civil society to guide the United Nations in tackling the world’s most pressing challenges, has proposed that ecocide be criminalised as a standalone offence under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

On 1 July 2024, Italy’s Green and Left Alliance proposed a bill to criminalise "ecocide," based on the Independent Expert Panel’s 2021 definition. The bill must undergo parliamentary discussion, committee review, voting in both houses, and receive presidential approval to become law.

Two new ecocide bills have been introduced in Peru's parliament by members of the Perú Libre and Cambio Democrático parties, adding to a previous submission and signalling a concerted move towards amending the penal code to include ecocide, based on the Independent Expert Panel’s consensus definition formulated in 2021.

On 17 June, the governing board of the largest political party in Finland’s ruling coalition government, the National Coalition Party, officially expressed support for ecocide as an amendment to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

The World Council of Churches (WCC), representing a global fellowship of 352 churches and 580 million Christians, has issued a powerful statement which calls on the world’s churches and governments to support ecocide legislation and emphasises the role of biodiversity in preserving human well-being and ensuring the planet's resilience to climate impacts.

At a press conference on 30th May, MPs from three of Canada’s federal political parties affirmed their support for making ecocide a crime at the International Criminal Court.

In a speech given at the "Promise of International Law in the Face of Ecological Crises" conference in Amsterdam, organised by the UCLA Law Promise Institute Europe, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk reaffirmed his support for bringing the crime of ecocide within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

In the wide ranging speech, the High Commissioner called for environmental crimes to be considered on a par with the human impacts of other atrocities and for states to employ criminal law ’more expansively’ as a tool to align their environmental laws and policies with their human rights obligations.

On 15 May 2024, the Swedish Parliament (Riksdag) voted on a total of six motions, from four political parties, that contain proposals to make ecocide prohibited under international law within the framework of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The vote in parliament was close - 153 MPs voting in line with the Foreign Affairs Committee’s recommendations (i.e. against the motions) and 150 voting in favour.

In a speech given on 27 May at the "Promise of International Law in the Face of Ecological Crises" conference in Amsterdam, organised by the UCLA Law Promise Institute Europe, the International Criminal Court (ICC)’s Deputy Prosecutor, Nazhat Shameem Khan, made a wide-ranging case for updating and adapting the existing international criminal law framework, including Rome Statute, to better protect the environment. 

Expanding on her theme of the Rome Statute being "a reflection of the legal imagination" of the time in which it was created, Khan remarked, "I wonder, if the Rome Statute was being drafted today, what would it look like? Would it include ecocide as a separate international crime?"

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has released a report providing an overview of the global state of ‘Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict’ in 2023.

Referencing that only a handful of states have criminalised ecocide to date, the Secretary-General highlights the “need to establish a crime of ecocide at the international level” (para 45). 

Congressman Américo Gonza, a member of the Perú Libre party and Chair of the Peruvian parliamentary Justice Committee, has tabled a bill proposing the amendment of Peru’s penal code to include the crime of ecocide.

The bill, which notes that the Independent Expert Panel’s consensus definition of ecocide is ‘widely accepted at the international level’, proposes a custodial sentence for the crime of between seven and twenty years.

On April 18, 2024, the parliamentary arm of the Council of Europe dopted Resolution 2546 which contains recommendations aimed at addressing critical issues related to ocean health in the context of the climate crisis, including a call on member and non-member States of the Council of Europe to promote the codification of the term "ecocide" at national, regional and international levels.