Blogs & Opinions


An Unexpected Opportunity for Corporate Peacebuilding

Jun 15, 2020 | Jonathan Kolieb and Phoebe Wynn-Pope

A range of Australian companies, from sectors as diverse as apparel, extractives, telecommunications and financial services, have business operations or supply chains in conflict-affected areas.…


How Environmental Geopolitics Expands Our Understanding of Risk and Security

Jun 15, 2020 | Shannon O'Lear

The coronavirus has everyone weighing risk and security within a sliding scale of geographic connections and boundaries. Dots and circles of infection pack our virus…


Explained: Israel's Top Court Annulled West Bank Land-Grab Law, but Will Annexation Replace It?

Jun 13, 2020 | Hagar Shezaf

Three years after it was passed, Israel’s High Court of Justice ruled on Tuesday that a law that would legalize the status of West Bank settlements built…


Women's Empowerment - The Missing Piece of Environmental Policies

Jun 12, 2020 | Vaishnavi Singh

Ecofeminism, a concept that was coined in 1974 by feminist Francoise d’Eaubonne ideologically links the environmental crisis with gender and highlights the importance of women…


The Gendered Impact of COVID-19 in the Middle East

Jun 11, 2020 | Hafsa Halawa

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the normative structures and behaviors of almost every country around the world. The fallout has put pressure on even the…


Covid-19 in Colombia: Migration, Armed Conflict and Gendered Violence

Jun 10, 2020 | Priscyll Anctil Avoine

In Colombia, 2019 ended with massive demonstrations throughout the country, gathering together several groups, such as students, unions, retirees, feminist organizations, indigenous peoples, Afro-Colombians and environmental defenders.…


How Women Can Lead The Resistance Against Climate Change

Jun 10, 2020 | Nancy Wang

In the past decade, women have made great strides attaining key leadership roles in technology, education, and politics. Another area that has shot to international…


How Women Can Lead The Resistance Against Climate Change

Jun 10, 2020 | Nancy Wang

In the past decade, women have made great strides attaining key leadership roles in technology, education, and politics. Another area that has shot to international…


How Sierra Leone Preventative Measures are Affecting Artisanal Mining in Eastern Sierra Leone

Jun 9, 2020 | Emma Black

Since its first recorded COVID-19 cases on 31 March 2020, the government of Sierra Leone has instituted measures to prevent the transmission of the virus.…


The Effect of Covid-19 on Women in Artisanal Mining

Jun 8, 2020 | Tina Blazquez-Lopez

Artisanal Mining is a significant source of minerals and metals.  According to the International Institute for Sustainable Development 2018  the sector is estimated to produce approximately…


The Effect of Covid-19 on Women in Artisanal Mining

Jun 8, 2020 | Tina Blazquez-Lopez

Artisanal Mining is a significant source of minerals and metals.  According to the International Institute for Sustainable Development 2018  the sector is estimated to produce approximately…


Is Ecocide Inevitable in the World’s Most Contested Sea?

Jun 8, 2020 | Michael Abraham, Jonathan Aguilar, Jonathan Ballew, Bianca Cseke, Brita Hunegs, Lacey Latch, Hannah Mitchell, Marissa Nelson, Sahi Padmanabhan, and Natalie Wade

How overfishing, artificial island-building and giant clam poaching threatens the health of the marine ecosystem in the South China Sea, and how coordinated regional action…


UN Report Details Environmental Degradation in West Bank and Gaza

Jun 8, 2020 | Doug Weir

This is not the first time that UNEP has undertaken an assessment of environmental conditions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). Studies in 2003, 2005 and 2009 had already documented…


Pre­dict­ing Nat­ural Re­source Vi­o­lence

Jun 4, 2020 | Jessica Anderson

Be­tween 1949 and 2009, at least 40 per­cent of in­trastate con­flicts were linked to nat­ural re­sources, ac­cord­ing to es­ti­mates in a UN re­port. A grow­ing body…


ICL and Environmental Protection Symposium: International Criminal Courts as Potential Jurisdiction for Corporate Responsibility for Environmental Crimes (Part II)

Jun 4, 2020 | Jelena Aparac

One of the fundamental questions lies in who exactly has the right to take legal action and before which court in the case of corporate…


ICL and Environmental Protection Symposium: International Criminal Law as a Tool for Corporate Responsibility for Environmental Crimes (Part I)

Jun 4, 2020 | Jelena Aparac

While environmental agreements are signed between States, it is often non-state actors, including corporations, that are asked to implement them in their managerial decisions. And…


Saving the Environment, Saving People and Building Peace

Jun 4, 2020 | PAX

PAX is highlighting the importance of environment and conflict as it marks World Environment Day. Around the world, citizens, grass-roots activists, United Nations organisations, faith…


How Does War Damage the Environment?

Jun 4, 2020 | Doug Weir

We’re often asked how armed conflicts harm the environment. In this blog we try to provide as many different examples of harms as we can.…


ICL and Environmental Protection Symposium: Can Ecocide Save the Planet? An International Crime of Climate Change

Jun 3, 2020 | Kate Mackintosh

The appeal of using international criminal law to protect the environment is intuitive: the destruction of our environment poses the greatest contemporary threat to the…


CEOBS’ STEM Schools Programme for 2020-2021

Jun 3, 2020 | Conflict and Environment Observatory

One of the main aims of the STEM programme is to allow students to gain first hand exposure to scientists and practitioners working within their…


ICL and Environmental Protection Symposium: Environmental Crimes against Humanity

Jun 2, 2020 | Darryl Robinson

In this post, the author argues that mass harms to humans, directly produced through harms to their environment, can in principle satisfy the existing definition…


ICL and Environmental Protection Symposium: Establishing Facts for Strategic Climate Litigation through Private-Public Partnerships

Jun 2, 2020 | Reinhold Gallmetzer

Climate change is the defining issue of this generation, and the present moment is that issue’s defining moment. The potential and actual consequences of climate…


COVID-19 and climate change will change the definition of national security

Jun 1, 2020 | Stewart M. Patrick

The twin global emergencies of COVID-19 and climate change are forcing the U.S. foreign policy establishment to reassess its traditional conceptions of national security. According…


ICL and Environmental Protection Symposium: The Environmental Crisis–Cases for ‘Particular Consideration’ at the ICC

Jun 1, 2020 | Richard J. Rogers

In a world consumed by the pandemic, it is easy to forget an even greater threat facing mankind – the environmental and climate emergency. The UN…


Symposium on the Use of International Criminal Law to Protect the Environment

Jun 1, 2020 | Kate Mackintosh

Despite the brief drop in emissions at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic last month, the climate crisis continues to present one of the greatest…


Ethiopia’s Renaissance Dam: A Last Chance for Diplomacy

Jun 1, 2020 | Yaseen Mohmad Abdalla

The dispute between Egypt and Sudan on the one side, and Ethiopia on the other, about filling and operating the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD)…


Time to Move Beyond Yemen’s SAFER Oil Tanker Blame Game

Jun 1, 2020 | Doug Weir

The SAFER Floating Storage and Offloading (FSO) terminal is a forty-year-old single hulled supertanker moored 7km off the coast of Yemen. Since the Houthis took…


Colombia’s Environment in the Post-Conflict Transition – New Setbacks by the Global Pandemic

May 31, 2020 | Torsten Krause, Ana Maria Vargas Falla, Britta Sjöstedt, Sandra Valencia, and Fariborz Zelli

In 2016, Colombia officially emerged from one of the world’s longest internal armed conflicts when the government, under former President Juan Manual Santos, signed a…


The Implications of Israel Annexation Plan of Jordan Valley

May 30, 2020 | Ayman Matar

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has revived an old Zionist ambition to annex Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the Jordan Valley region, planned by the…


Industries Post-COVID-19: A Gender-Responsive Approach to Global Economic Recovery

May 28, 2020 | Cecila Ugaz Estrada, Müge Dolun, Carmen Schuber, and Nicolas Schmidt

What most crises have in common is that they hit the most vulnerable and marginalized populations—among which women are disproportionally represented—the hardest. The impact of…