Human Rights Implications of Environmental Crime | HRC62 Side Event

About this Event

Crimes that affect the environment are increasingly recognised as human rights concerns, with direct consequences for the enjoyment of the rights to life, health, food, water, culture and a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Their impacts are often felt most acutely by Indigenous Peoples, local communities, environmental human rights defenders and others directly affected by environmental harm.

This side event will discuss how crimes that affect the environment can be addressed within the policy discourse of the Human Rights Council, anchored in the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. It will also highlight the importance of ensuring that ocean-related crimes and their adverse human rights impacts are not overlooked.

Speakers

Clément VOULE

Human Rights Expert at the African Commission and the United Nations

Sonia PEÑA MORENO

Director, Centre for Policy and Law, IUCN

Rob PARRY-JONES

Head, Wildlife Crime Programme, WWF International

Pierre MARTINEZ

Counsellor (Human Rights), Permanent Mission of France to the United Nations Office at Geneva and other international organizations in Switzerland

Friederike TSCHAMPA

First Counsellor (Human Rights), Permanent Delegation of the European Union to the United Nations Office and other international organizations in Geneva

Tumelo Terence TSHISEVHE

First Secretary (Human Rights), Permanent Mission of South Africa to the United Nations Office at Geneva and other international organizations in Switzerland

Isaac GIVOLO

Permanent Mission of Papua New Guinea to the United Nations and other international organizations in Geneva

Felix KIRCHMEIER

Director, Geneva Human Rights Hub

Highlights

Summary

Felix KIRCHMEIER | Director, Geneva Human Rights Hub

• Crimes that affect the environment are increasingly recognized as human rights concerns, with direct consequences for the enjoyment of the rights to life, health, food, water, culture, and a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Their impacts are often felt most acutely by Indigenous Peoples, local communities, environmental human rights defenders, and others directly affected by environmental harm.
• It is also important to ensure that ocean-related crimes and their adverse human rights impacts are not overlooked.
• There are five major crime areas:

1. Wildlife crime, including the illegal possession, transport and trade of wildlife, as well as the trafficking of protected species.
2. Forest crime, which includes illegal logging, often linked to deforestation issues.
3. Crimes in the fisheries sector;
4. Mineral crimes, including illegal mining and trafficking; and
5. Waste crimes, which include the illegal transport, generation, disposal and dumping of waste, and very often involve cross-border issues.

• There is no universally agreed-upon definition of what constitutes crimes that affect the environment.
• The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) analyzes the criminalization of offences by countries across environmental domains. This includes further elements such as air or noise pollution.
• There is a difference between environmental crime and crimes that affect the environment. The latter is a broader concept that can include enabling or facilitating crimes, such as corruption or money laundering, when they support or enable environmental harm, even if those acts are not environmental offences in themselves.

Clément VOULE | Human Rights Expert at the African Commission and the United Nations

• When we talk about crimes against the environment, or about crimes that affect some of these areas, it is primarily associated with states losing revenue and illegal money. But they are not only about states’ loss of revenue, but also about impacts on fundamental freedoms and rights themselves.
• By looking at how these criminal acts are committed, you can see how they affect fundamental rights. For instance, with the first category of wildlife crime mentioned, the illegal taking, possession, transportation, trade or sale of fauna and flora.
• One right recognized by the African Charter, in Article 24, is the right to a satisfactory environment. These crimes have an impact on communities’ right to enjoy an environment without deforestation or the illegal transportation, possession or trade of fauna and flora.
• Rights guaranteed under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights are also undermined by these types of crimes, which are usually committed illegally. We are talking about illegal acts.
• Taking all these crimes together, their impacts are interconnected. Some of the rights affected by crimes against the environment are the right to life, the right to health, the right to water and sanitation, the right to adequate food, and rights related to land and livelihoods. It also includes the right of Indigenous Peoples to live on their land and to live there safely and on the right to justice and effective remedies.
• We are talking, for example, about illegal mining in which the population is not consulted, affecting the right to participation. It also prevents communities from accessing justice and ensuring that they can claim any type of remedy.
• Another important point is about those who fight every day to protect communities’ right to the environment, environmental human rights defenders.
• Concerning the right to life, Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is clear on the need to protect this fundamental right. But illegal mining exposes communities to serious harm, particularly children and young people.
• Where there is illegal mining, children and young people working at mining sites face threats to their lives because of poor or non-existent protective equipment. They also face injuries. Rockfalls are one of the dangers witnessed in many countries, where some of these sites become “death traps” for miners themselves, for children and for young people.
• In many cases, young people and children are used at these sites. They are not necessarily professionals, but they are used by those involved in illegal mining.
• It is also important to look at the impact on access to education and the right to education. Illegal mining can take children out of school and draw them into mining activities, thereby affecting their right to education.
• There is also the right to health. The pollution of the environment has a direct impact on the right to health. Populations may not have access to proper medication. Because of pollution, you may see the spread of diseases, sometimes diseases that we do not know, and this also has an impact on communities.
• Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is clear that States Parties recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.
• There is also the right to access water. Pollution of rivers affects communities’ fishing activities. It also affects communities’ capacity to grow crops and affects their livelihoods.
• There are also economic losses for communities, affecting their ability to send their children to school and to meet other needs.
• We also have the right to remedies and the rights of Indigenous Peoples. It is clear under international standards that Indigenous Peoples have the right to live on their ancestral lands. Illegal mining takes Indigenous Peoples away from their land, and that has consequences for migration.
• In many cases, people leave their land because they are no longer able to grow crops or do anything with it. Their land becomes unusable, and they have to leave their communities.
• The question here is: how can we use the human rights framework today to address crimes against the environment?
• We need to look at these crimes as directly affecting the enjoyment of rights protected under international human rights standards.

Sonia PEÑA MORENO | Director, Centre for Policy and Law, IUCN

• There is growing recognition that crimes that affect the environment are not only environmental in nature but also have significant human rights implications.
• These crimes are increasingly recognized as serious transnational criminal activities. They are often organized, cross-border and financially significant, and they can undermine governance frameworks, human rights, peace and security.
• They also generate illicit financial flows that reinforce broader criminal economies, including the trafficking of drugs, arms and people. They contribute to the weakening of institutions and the loss of public revenues, and reduce the capacity of states to fulfil their human rights obligations.
• Nevertheless, we have mostly addressed these crimes through environmental policies and domestic criminal law enforcement. However, the multilayered impacts of environmental crime make it a direct and urgent human rights concern.
• We ned to better understand environmental crime and address it comprehensively.
• The impacts of environmental crime extend far beyond biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation. They directly affect access to clean water, food security, health, livelihoods and cultural heritage.
• These harms disproportionately affect Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Environmental defenders, rangers and community leaders face increasing risks, including intimidation, violence and reprisals.
• Ensuring their protection is therefore a fundamental justice and human rights issue.
• These dynamics are reflected in international human rights law and policy. The Human Rights Council, in its Resolution 48/13 of 2021, and the General Assembly, in Resolution 76/300 of 2022, recognized the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
• UN Special Rapporteurs have further documented how biodiversity loss, pollution and environmental degradation undermine substantive rights, as well as procedural rights.
• Environmental degradation both contributes to and is exacerbated by armed conflict. Natural resources are often exploited in contexts of weak governance or instability, while environmental harm can further fuel tensions and competition for scarce resources.
• United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) research shows that, over the last 60 years, at least 40% of all internal conflicts have been directly linked to the exploitation of natural resources. This creates devastating security crimes that affect the environmental nexus.
• Breaking this vicious cycle is fundamental to achieving both regional peacebuilding and environmental stability.
• The nexus between conflict, security and governance.
• There are international responses already happening that reflect the need for integrated responses. One example is the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which highlights this convergence in some of its targets. These address the legal, sustainable and safe use of, and trade in, wild species, as well as transparency, participation and gender-responsive governance.
• Nature protection depends on enforcement, good governance and rights-based approaches.
• IUCN has a clear and evolving mandate on crimes that affect the environment and human rights. At the 2025 IUCN World Conservation Congress, last October, our members adopted a resolution explicitly recognizing crimes affecting the environment as a major threat to biodiversity, climate stability and human rights.
• This resolution calls for an IUCN strategy, with an emphasis on conservation science, behavioural approaches, and the protection of whistleblowers and environmental defenders. It calls for engagement with the Human Rights Council on these interlinkages.
• Preventing and reducing environmental crimes is one of the outputs of our work programme for the next four years.
• At the recent United Nations General Assembly debate on this matter, the IUCN Director General emphasized that these crimes are also human rights violations. She called for stronger protection of environmental defenders and for the integration of human rights into responses to environmental crime.
• IUCN supports the momentum within the UNODC processes, including dialogues towards a fourth protocol to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. We will be taking this rights-based perspective directly into the 15th UN Crime Congress, which will happen later this year.
• IUCN’s vision is a just world that values and conserves nature. We will not fulfil that vision if we do not tackle crimes that affect the environment as inseparable from rights-based approaches.
• We must dismantle institutional silos, act on the mandates we already have, and treat environmental crime as a core threat to human rights.
• Then, the international community can successfully disrupt the networks exploiting our planet, defend communities and uphold the rule of law.
• The ultimate goal should be the universal recognition that a healthy environment is an absolute prerequisite for the enjoyment of all human rights

Rob PARRY-JONES | Head, Wildlife Crime Programme, WWF International

• First, a proposition: environmental crime is not a niche environmental issue. Its consequences are pervasive. They undermine governance, sustainable development, financial integrity, security and human rights.
• The victims of environmental crime are people as much as the environment. While the focus is often on crime and what criminal economies gain, we need to be thinking about what societies lose: a healthy, clean and sustainable environment; access to lands and territories; revenues that should fund education, healthcare and public services; and, in some cases, life.
• Environmental crime does not operate in isolation. It sits at the centre of a wider system of interlocking harms. Environmental crime, corruption, illicit financial flows and human rights abuses form a self-reinforcing cycle. This cycle fuels conflict and locks countries into patterns of low growth and resilience.
• Environmental crime also undermines climate resilience. For example, land clearance, illegal logging and ecosystem degradation weaken the natural systems that regulate water, store carbon and buffer societies from climate shocks.
• Public health is a critical issue. Illegal mining and the associated contamination of water and food systems expose communities to serious, long-term health risks. Degraded natural ecosystems are not just environmental losses, they are threat multipliers. They reshape the operating environment for crime, insecurity and vulnerability.
• These impacts are not collateral. They are embedded in criminal business models operating in plain sight. The impacts are also gendered. Women and girls are disproportionately affected.
• WWF’s response to environmental crime extends well beyond dedicated projects and covers a broader conservation architecture.
• Three externally facing Statements of Principles commit WWF to respect and promote human rights, strive for gender equality, and respect and uphold the rights of Indigenous Peoples. They are operationalized in various ways.
• For example, the Environmental and Social Safeguards Framework operationalizes the Statements of Principles through its nine safeguards at the landscape level. A support tool for civic space and environmental human rights defenders enables offices to support environmental human rights defenders, particularly in challenging political landscapes.
• An internal working group is developing learning regarding what a human rights-based approach means in practice, including guidance on how to use the UN human rights mechanisms for conservation impact.
• A broader shift is underway within WWF and the wider conservation community towards more inclusive conservation centred on Indigenous Peoples and local communities.
• Within this framework, WWF is also advancing a human rights-based approach to preventing and responding to environmental crime. The starting point is the recognition of rights, territories and governance by clarifying what is being protected and for whom.
• Transformation must not only be conflict-sensitive, it must also be peace-positive. Strengthening human rights, land tenure security, food security and health contributes directly to peace by reducing the conditions that enable and sustain environmental crime and conflict.
• Both WWF and IUCN are founding members of the Universal Ranger Support Alliance, URSA, launched in 2020. By rangers, we refer to state and non-state actors, including community and Indigenous rangers.
• The Alliance focuses on global standards relating to employment conditions, welfare, gender equality and community relations. It promotes core competencies and codes of conduct that strengthen professionalism and public trust.
• The Alliance aims to realize the human right to work in decent conditions, ensuring that rangers are equipped, supported, recognized and accountable.
• Another important point is finance and illicit flows. Financial institutions are at the heart of the risk and, therefore, also at the heart of the solutions.
• Yet environmental crime is largely invisible within the financial sector. Despite environmental crime generating up to US$281 billion per year, less than 1% of suspicious transaction reports relate to environmental crime. This is a major systemic blind spot.
• WWF’s Environmental Crime Financial Toolkit, developed with international banks, aims to raise awareness within financial institutions and to integrate environmental crime into financial risk and compliance frameworks.
• We are finalizing a methodology to quantify what states lose through environmental crime, enabling comparison with public spending on priorities such as health and education. The idea is to develop a simple but robust and repeatable methodology that others can apply.
• Crimes against the environment, crimes that affect the environment, or environmental crime, are cross-sectoral issues. But at their core, they are human rights issues.
• The question before the human rights community is not whether to engage but how to engage.
• A Human Rights Council resolution articulating the human rights imperatives for preventing and responding to crimes against the environment could be a useful next step.

Pierre MARTINEZ | Counsellor (Human Rights), Permanent Mission of France to the United Nations Office at Geneva and other international organizations in Switzerland

• France believes that environmental crimes, such as wildlife trafficking, illegal deforestation and cross-border pollution, are not only harmful to biodiversity and the climate. They are also threats to peace, security and sustainable development, and they fuel corruption, money laundering and organized crime.
• They are also very closely linked to human rights.
• At the national level, we have made the fight against those threats a priority. In 2023, the French Ministry of the Interior established the Command for the Environment and Health, which is a unique structure in Europe dedicated to combating these illicit activities.
• It operates across the entire criminal chain, from illegal exploitation to commercialization. In that sense, we use a wide range of technical resources to identify and dismantle criminal networks, such as satellite technology, drones and financial analysis tools.
• We also believe in the effectiveness of investigations conducted with our partners, such as INTERPOL and Europol, in this area.
• France is also promoting the systematic involvement of local communities in the design of policies, the protection of environmental defenders, as well as partnerships with civil society to identify emerging threats and improve the traceability of supply chains.
• However, obstacles remain, including the lack of harmonization between national legislations, insufficient resources and the politicization of multilateral forums, which undermines these efforts. The international legal framework remains inadequate and is not sufficiently enforced. No universal convention addresses environmental crime in its entirety. Existing instruments, such as the Washington Convention and the Basel Convention, lack criminal provisions and struggle to address organized criminal networks.
• This is why a range of countries, such as France, within the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and all other relevant forums, support the negotiation of a fourth additional protocol to the Palermo Convention dedicated to addressing environmental crime.

Tumelo Terence TSHISEVHE | First Secretary (Human Rights), Permanent Mission of South Africa to the United Nations Office at Geneva and other international organizations in Switzerland

• We are also paying a lot of attention here in Geneva to the discussion on the legally binding instrument to regulate the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises, in order to respond to some of the violations highlighted by the experts, especially in the context of the Global South.
• For South Africa, environmental crime is often viewed through the lens of conservation or law enforcement. Yet its consequences extend far beyond the loss of biodiversity or natural resources. These crimes undermine the enjoyment of fundamental human rights, including the rights to life, health, food, water and culture, and the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, as some of the experts have alluded to.
• For many communities in our region, particularly in developing countries, crimes affecting the environment are not abstract environmental concerns. They destroy livelihoods, contaminate water resources, degrade ecosystems upon which communities depend, fuel corruption, weaken governance, and increasingly expose environmental human rights defenders to intimidation and violence.
• For South Africa, human rights and criminal justice should not be viewed as competing approaches to crimes affecting the environment. They are mutually reinforcing.
• Protecting human rights requires effective action against organized criminal networks that profit from environmental crime, while effective law enforcement must also be grounded in respect for human rights, the rule of law and the dignity of affected communities.
• South Africa has sought to apply this approach in its own response to organized environmental crime in the form of abalone poaching and trafficking, through our National Abalone Strategy and Action Plan.
• Sustainable enforcement cannot focus solely on disrupting criminal networks. It must also address the social and economic conditions that make vulnerable communities susceptible to exploitation by organized crime.
• The strategy combines strengthened law enforcement with community development, alternative livelihood opportunities, and measures that promote social inclusion and resilience.
• Protecting human rights and combating organized environmental crime are complementary objectives that must be pursued together.
• It also means addressing the enabling conditions that allow these crimes to flourish, including corruption, as has been alluded to earlier, illicit financial flows, weak governance, and the growing use of trade-based money laundering by transnational organized criminal groups.
• South Africa welcomes the growing momentum across the United Nations to strengthen the global response to crimes that affect the environment.
• Discussions currently underway in Vienna, including consideration of a possible additional protocol under the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, present an opportunity to strengthen international cooperation against organized criminal networks, while ensuring that emerging governance frameworks are informed by human rights principles from the outset.
• The work taking place in Geneva and Vienna should be seen as complementary. Human rights help define what we are protecting. Criminal justice provides the means to protect it. Together, they form the foundation of an effective and just international response to crimes affecting the environment.
• South Africa remains committed to working with all Member States and partners to develop a coherent international response that protects biodiversity, strengthens the rule of law, advances human rights, and ensures that organized criminal networks can no longer profit at the expense of people and the planet.

Isaac GIVOLO | Permanent Mission of Papua New Guinea to the United Nations and other international organizations in Geneva

• Discussion on the human rights implications of environmental crimes.
• Papua New Guinea is honoured to participate in this very important event. As custodian of one of the world’s largest tropical rainforests and a vast maritime domain, our prosperity and identity are inseparable from the health of our environment.
• Environmental crimes are not merely environmental offences. They undermine fundamental human rights, including the rights to life, health, food, water, development and culture.
• Indigenous Peoples and rural communities are disproportionately affected, as their livelihoods depend entirely and directly on the health of the ecosystems in their surroundings.
• Illegal logging, unauthorized mining, and illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing threaten biodiversity, weaken our governance, deprive the state of legitimate revenue collection, and erode the livelihoods of our people.
• Based on those issues and challenges, we support coordinated national action, strengthened through international cooperation, and a human rights-based approach recognizing environmental protection as integral to sustainable development.
• In relation to environmental crimes as a human rights issue, we support positioning crimes affecting the environment firmly within the work of the Human Rights Council.
• Environmental crimes impair human rights by threatening life and public health through pollution and unsafe extractive practices.
• They undermine food and water security through deforestation, degradation and the depletion of marine resources, threaten cultural rights and the customary tenure of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and expose environmental human rights defenders to heightened risks.
• Regarding our national experience in relation to the subject matter, our country has made efforts to strengthen environmental governance under the Medium-Term Development Plan for 2023 to 2027, prioritizing sustainable resource management as one of the key policy priorities of our country.
• We recognize the role of our national institutions, including the Forestry Authority, the Conservation and Environment Protection Authority, the Maritime Resources Authority and the Fisheries Authority, in making progress in addressing some of the issues related to environmental crime.
• We also recognize the challenges of weak governance, corruption, illicit financial flows, and the limited enforcement capacity of the relevant agencies to deal with these issues.
• We therefore seek sustained institutional reform, greater transparency, and stronger international partnerships to help address these drivers of environmental crime.
• On ocean-related environmental crimes, we recognize that, for Pacific Island countries, crime extends across the seas, rivers, forests and plains.
• Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing threatens our food security, economic development, sustainable livelihoods and resource management.
• We acknowledge the impact on the rights and livelihoods of our coastal populations, which depend almost entirely on those resources.
• We encourage the Human Rights Council to give equal consideration to ocean-related crimes.
• Our country reaffirms its commitment to the Pacific Islands Forum Boe Declaration on Regional Security, which recognizes environmental security as a core priority of our region.
• Environmental protection, climate resilience, sustainable development and human rights are interconnected.
• We support enhanced regional cooperation through stronger cross-border law enforcement support, improved intelligence-sharing, technical assistance and capacity-building, action against illicit financial flows linked to environmental crimes, and strengthened international cooperation across the Pacific region.
• Papua New Guinea reaffirms that environmental crimes are not victimless. They deprive communities of their livelihoods, damage public health, undermine development, erode cultural heritage, and weaken confidence in institutions.
• We commit to constructive engagement with Member States, UN agencies and stakeholders to strengthen governance, promote accountability, and protect human rights for present and future generations.

Friederike TSCHAMPA | First Counsellor (Human Rights), Permanent Delegation of the European Union to the United Nations Office and other international organizations in Geneva

• The EU’s new Environmental Crime Directive, which entered into force in May 2024 and was to be implemented by the Member States by May 2026, establishes not only criminal offences but also recognizes and acknowledges, in Recital 2, that environmental crime can adversely affect fundamental rights, and that combating it at the Union level is therefore essential for ensuring their protection.
• This Directive stipulates that the Directive itself respects fundamental rights, and it cites quite a few rights, including personal data protection, freedom of expression, freedom to conduct a business, and the right to an effective remedy and a fair trial.
• These connections already exist in regulations that have been adopted at the regional level.
• In the operative part of this Directive, Member States are required to ensure appropriate procedural rights for persons affected by environmental crime, as well as for NGOs meeting national requirements, where such rights exist under national criminal procedure.
• There is also a requirement in the operative part that Member States ensure that persons reporting environmental crime, providing evidence, or otherwise cooperating with competent authorities have access to appropriate support and assistance measures during criminal proceedings.
• These kinds of procedural aspects stemming from human rights, but connected to environmental issues, including in environmental crime proceedings, are also recognized in the Aarhus Convention, which all the Member States have ratified.
• It is about procedural rights relating to the environment and stemming from human rights, such as access to information and public consultation, and then, of course, the establishment of this very important Special Rapporteur on environmental defenders, who, not coincidentally, is a former Human Rights Council mandate holder, the Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders.
• The linkages exist and could be further developed.
• A second point is connected to the current discussions in Vienna, regarding a possible additional protocol to UNTOC on crimes that affect the environment.
• They provide us with a valuable opportunity to address the fragmented legal frameworks that have been mentioned.
• They also provide an opportunity to assess and improve international cooperation in combating and preventing environmental crime.
• We should aim for an encompassing approach to preventing, investigating and prosecuting crimes that affect the environment, while looking at specific vulnerabilities.
• Positions are still being developed, and, as a bloc of 27 countries, we will have to deliberate on our positions going forward in the Vienna-based process. But we can already say that engagement with all stakeholders will be key in the run-up to, and also during, the proceedings there.
• We are highly concerned about, and mobilized against, the increasing threats, intimidation, harassment, reprisals and violence against human rights defenders.
• This is being addressed through diplomatic and political engagement, dedicated human rights dialogues, and very concrete measures, including local statements and démarches.
• the EU’s ProtectDefenders.eu programme is the largest human rights defenders support programme in the world, and it regularly acts to support environmental defenders.
• I was shocked by a figure in the latest annual report of this programme. It reports that 50% of the more than 10,000 human rights defenders who received support during the 2024–2025 period were defenders of Indigenous, land or environmental rights.
• They are also more at risk of targeted killings, accounting for around 30% of the cases.

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Links

• A new Protocol for the UNTOC? A guidance note for the 1st meeting of the new Intergovernmental Expert Group on crimes that affect the environment | Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime
  In October 2024, Brazil, France and Peru tabled a resolution at the 12th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC) for a new intergovernmental process to take stock of how the convention addresses crimes that affect the environment. In addition, the resolution called for possible gaps to be identified in the current international legal framework to prevent and combat these crimes, and to discuss whether any additional protocol should be developed. The work of the new intergovernmental expert group (IEG) will therefore become a key focus of multilateral discussions on environmental crimes in the future.
• Environment @ 62nd Session of the UN Human Rights Council
• Human Rights, Climate Change, and the Role of Geneva