Monthly archive December, 2016

The ILC’s Work Stream on Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflict

1. Introduction In its 2015 post-conflict environmental assessment on Côte d’Ivoire, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) found that following a decade of armed conflict, significant flora and fauna had been lost from the Comoé UNESCO World Heritage Site and Marahoué National Park (including their populations of lions and elephants), the chimpanzee population of the...

Protection of the environment during armed conflicts: An appraisal of the ILC’s work

1. Introduction Being responsive to the devastating effects that armed conflicts cause on the environment, the International Law Commission (ILC) has recently taken on board the issue of the protection of the environment in relation to armed conflicts. Special Rapporteur Marie Jacobsson has already submitted three reports addressing the protection of the environment by reference...

The work of the ILC on the environment and armed conflicts: Enhancing protection for the ‘silent victim of warfare’?

Introduced by Giulio Bartolini and Marco Pertile   In both the academic and the popular debate on the causes and the consequences of armed conflicts the environment is often described as ‘the silent victim of warfare’.[1] This phrase metaphorically alludes not only to the – rather obvious – detrimental effects of armed conflicts on the...