Caitlin Lambert, Environmental Destruction in Ecuador: Crimes Against Humanity Under the Rome Statute?, 30 LEIDEN J. INT’L L. 707 (2017).
In this article, Lambert discusses the ICC Prosecutor’s rejection of Lago Agrio victims’ request to investigate environmental destruction by Chevron in the Ecuadorian Amazon. In so doing, her article asks whether the ICC can prosecute peacetime environmental destruction committed by a non-state actor, like the alleged situation in Ecuador, as a crime against humanity under Article 7 of the Rome Statute. Lambert concludes that while such an environmental destruction that results in a humanitarian atrocity can qualify as a crime against humanity, the factual circumstances alleged in the Ecuadorian victims’ request did not amount to a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute.