Brazil ICC Communication

Climate Counsel in conjunction with Greenpeace Brasil and Observatório do Clima, have filed a Communication to the Prosecutor’s office at the International Criminal Court.

There have been over 12,000 land or water-related conflicts in the Brazilian Amazon over the past 10 years. These abuses may amount to crimes against humanity. The Filing Parties request the ICC Prosecutor to open an examination to fully investigate the alleged crimes against humanity.

The Communication is accompanied by an online platform developed by INTERPRT, a research agency affiliated with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and with Climate Counsel, that hosts testimonies of survivors, photographic evidence, 3D reconstructions of crime scenes, visualizations of data, analysis of satellite images, and deforestation data.

You can explore the online platform and find out more about the ICC Communication through the links below:

“The crimes committed in the Amazon against vulnerable communities are massive, widespread, systematic, and well-orchestrated by a network of powerful actors. Their policy of dispossession, exploitation, and destruction promotes violence on a scale that may amount to crimes against humanity.”

Richard J Rogers - Executive director of Climate Counsel

“The attack on the Amazon Rainforest and its traditional communities has reached new extremes under the Bolsonaro administration. If the Amazon is to help save the world from lethal global heating, the mass crimes against those who protect the rainforest - rural land users and their defenders - must stop.”

Paulo Busse - Lawyer for Greenpeace Brasil and Observatório do Clima

Ecocide: A new legal tool to defend the Amazon

Climate Counsel lawyers contributed an article to UCLA The Promise Institute for Human Rights’ 2023 Symposium, ‘An International Crime of Ecocide: New Perspectives’. Informed by the findings of the Brazil ICC Communication, Paulo Busse and Richard Rogers argue for the introduction of ecocide law in Brazil to effectively protect the Amazon rainforest.

For more information on our work on ecocide law, see our Ecocide Advice Centre.