Sabrina Sadia Ria

On 23 July 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) unanimously delivered a landmark advisory opinion concerning the states’ obligations relating to climate change.

The crime of ‘Ecocide’ has been proposed to be considered as the fifth international crime, along with genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court by an expert panel in 2021. The proposed definition is “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.”