Left Alliance of Finland supports criminalization of Ecocide
The Left Alliance is one of the five parties in Finland’s coalition government. The presidents of all these five parties are women.
As the first political party of Finland, the Left Alliance adopted the following statement in its annual conference on 12th June, 2022:
“The Left Alliance supports the criminalization of ecocide in the Statute of the International Criminal Court. In this Statute, ecocide would mean unlawful or wanton acts with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment caused by those acts.” (See two documents below)
This decision incorporates in exact wording of the consensus definition of ecocide as proposed by the Independent Expert Panel in June, 2021. The Expert Panel for the legal definition of ecocide was convened by the Stop Ecocide Foundation and Co-chaired by Professor Philippe Sands QC,University College London / Matrix Chambers and Dior Fall Sow, UN jurist and former prosecutor.
In his official intervention at the official side event, hosted by the Republic of Vanuatu and Stop Ecocide Foundation, at the Conference of the Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court on 11th December, 2020, Mr. Pekka Haavisto, Foreign Minister of Finland, expressed his country’s interest in the Expert Panel’s work: “It is important to ensure such new international law would have a strong preventive effect… we follow this work with interest and look forward to the report of the international group of experts…” Mr. Haavisto belongs to The Finnish Greens Party.
The proposal to support criminalization of ecocide at the Left Alliance conference was sponsored by Maija Kuivalainen, Youth Climate Delegate of Finland at the Climate COP26 in Glasgow, 2021, and at the Stockholm+50 international environmental meeting in June, 2022. Members of Parliament of the Left Alliance filed a Parliamentary Action Initiative on the criminalization of ecocide on 10th June, 2022, with signatories additionally from The Greens and the Social Democratic Party. Maija is a student of environmental sciences at the University of Eastern Finland, and also a Member of the Municipal Council of Joensuu.
Please see page 10.
Please see pages 15 and 17.