Addressing Ecocide: Quaker Contributions

Participants will gain crucial information about what is involved in amending the Rome Statute to make ecocide the fifth crime against peace. We will explore how this could help to prevent multinational companies and reckless governments from causing environmental destruction. We will also discuss how this can complement Quaker initiatives on climate justice and explore how Quakers can make a distinctive contribution to the Stop Ecocide campaign.

We will cover:

We will invite discussion around these topics:

Session 1:

In the first part of this online learning space (each part lasting two hours), we will be joined by:

A presentation on Ecocide will be followed by plenty of space for questions and answers, and a discussion on how restorative justice might be used in this context.

There will be participatory, exploratory activities to ignite our curiosity and illuminate where we may wish to educate ourselves further.

Resources: Resources for reflection and further learning will be provided in-between sessions. This is an optional extra for a deeper dive, the sessions will stand alone without the additional reading.

Session 2:

After a period of reflection between sessions, we will reconvene for a more practical discussion exploring what's possible, what's difficult, and what's worth pushing for. We will also include the voices of speakers from Africa working on these issues:

There will be space for small-group and whole-group discussions focussing on participants' concerns about environmental destruction, how an ecocide law might work in practice and how Quakers might be involved.

We hope that friends will be able to take this into their communities after the course, to share the issues and discern further actions.

Please note that this event is in partnership with Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) and we are holding live sessions at 5:30pm (BST) to accommodate to other time zones.

Live sessions will take place on Thursday 5 September & Tuesday 8 October 17:30-19:30 UK time/BST | 18:30-20:30 Central Africa Time | 19:30-21:30 Eastern Africa Time