From East West Street to the Anthropocene: Philippe Sands in conversation with Hendrik Simon

On the occasion of Philippe Sands receiving the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade on 11 October 2026, Hendrik Simon spoke with him about international law as a modicum of hope, his new book on ecocide, and the relationship between law, politics and literature.

I. Politics and Law

Hendrik Simon (HS): Dear Philippe, thank you for joining me for this talk. Let me first warmly congratulate you on receiving this year’s Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. The prize honours you as an important voice for justice, peace, and the steadfast defence of international law. Yet the world we live in is currently anything but peaceful, marked by armed conflicts worldwide, wars of aggression, and mass violence. Donald Trump told the New York Times after the US attack on Venezuela at the beginning of this year: “I Don’t Need International Law.” Why should we still trust in law in this world of violence?

Philippe Sands (PS): Thank you, Hendrik. International law has been around for centuries, and it’s not about to disappear. Some years ago, I was involved in hearings at the International Court of Justice, and my opponent, the Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, with whom I did not agree with much the day she spoke, nevertheless said, at certain point to the judges: “International law may well be our only global value system”. And I think she was right. And what we see now, even as some say “International law is checking out”: Agreements are negotiated, adopted, and signed. I’m thinking of the agreement most recently between Denmark and the United States on the issue of Greenland. That reflects the currency and the vibrancy of international law. That is not to say, of course, that international law is perfect, and I’m not starry-eyed about the subject. Plainly, those who are on the receiving end of the horrors to which you refer can reasonably ask themselves the question: “What has international law done for me?” It has not prevented the horrors, but it provides a modicum of hope.

HS: This perception of law as a “modicum of hope” perhaps reflects how international law has repeatedly evolved in response to violence and war – as illustrated by the UN Charter and the Nuremberg trials following the Second World War and the Holocaust. In your latest book, Londres 38, you tell the story of the London courtroom drama surrounding the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998. Even though Pinochet ultimately returned to Chile, Erika Hennings, the widow of the disappeared philosophy student Alfonso Chanfreau and now director of the Londres 38 memorial site, recalls: “What gives me my voice is to fight for justice and for truth.”  Is this perhaps one of the central tasks of international law: to give people a language for justice – and can law thereby be resilient against violence?

PS: International law is a long game. Many years ago, when I was a young researcher starting my career, I had occasion to spend time with the professor of English legal history at Cambridge University, John Baker. He would occasionally ask me what I was working on over lunch, and I’d tell him. He’d pause, he’d reflect, and then he’d say, “Ah, yes, we had a similar problem in English law four centuries ago, it took 200 years to sort out.” That’s the reality too for international law. It’s providing a framework. It works well in some areas, many areas, in fact. But of course, in certain areas, use of force, protection of civilians, invasion of territory, it’s under real stress right now. I’m not so optimistic for the short term, but over the long term, I feel a much higher degree of optimism.

HS: One scene in Londres 38 that I particularly like is the one in which you were initially asked to take on Pinochet’s case. Contrary to the “cab-rank principle”, according to which even unpleasant clients should not be turned down, you decided against it and subsequently participated in the proceedings as an advocate for Human Rights Watch. In the book, you write that you decided not to accept the mandate because your wife threatened to divorce you if you did. Was that really the decisive reason for your decision, or was there also a personal conviction behind it – making your decision, in a sense, a political act?

PS: Yes, my wife said what she said, and that was the reason that I decided not to accept the instructions. At that point, I assumed that would be the end of my involvement. But things changed a few days later. I am a believer in the cab rank principle. It applies at the domestic level, but not at the international level. And Pinochet was proceedings before the English courts. There are always exceptions, and as I described in 38 Londres Street, I was able to avail myself of one of those exceptions. But if my wife had not intervened, things would have taken a different course, and I suspect the course of my life would have been rather different.

HS: In the liberal tradition, international law is attributed a progressive dimension – in Germany, we associate this with Immanuel Kant, whose work on international and global legalization also influenced the recently deceased Frankfurt philosopher Jürgen Habermas. But international law is also entangled in power and domination, as critical and decolonial theories emphasise. What weighs more heavily for you: the emancipatory potential of law or its dark side?

PS: I tend towards the emancipatory potential of law but recognize its dark side. The law crystallizes and reinforces existing power systems, and that’s why one always has to have an open mind about how the law can be used in order to achieve and reform and bring positive change.

II. From the East-West Street to the Fifth Crime

HS: The pursuit of justice is a central theme in your books, in your writings on human rights and colonialism, and especially, of course, in East West Street, where you trace the origins of the legal concepts of genocide and crimes against humanity back to Lviv/Lemberg. Genocide has once again become a central term in public and legal debates, often described as the “crime of crimes”. In Germany, the debate over what counts as genocide has become particularly polarised in the context of Israel’s war in Gaza following the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023. What is genocide, how does it differ from crimes against humanity, and what can Lemkin and Lauterpacht teach us about the political significance of legal concepts?

PS: I’ve described the differences between genocide and crimes against humanity in my book East West Street. Genocide focuses on the protection of groups. Crimes against humanity on the protection of individuals. To prove the crime of genocide, however, is more complex because under the 1948 Convention, as interpreted and applied by various international courts, you have to prove a special intent to destroy a group in whole or in part. There is no equivalent in relation to crimes against humanity, and that makes it easier to prove. On the other hand, as I’ve often said, I do not see a hierarchy between the different international crimes. Kill 10,000 people. It matters not a great deal to me whether you put the label of war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide, on those acts of killing. They are all equally terrible, and for each there should be accountability. I think if we were reinventing the world and dealing with the matters that Lauterpacht and Lemkin first thought about in the 1940s, we might proceed differently. We’re stuck with these two international crimes, and their coexistence probably causes more difficulty than brings benefit. But we are where we are, and it is now a question of finding a way to proceed on the basis that these two crimes live comfortably together. In that regard, I’m very pleased that finally there is a move towards a parallel convention to the 1948 convention, as negotiations are now underway on a convention on the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity. My hope would be that as and when that convention is adopted and enforced and applicable, there might be a little less passion about the crime of genocide.

HS: Wars have always caused environmental destruction. A well-known example is the use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, but Russia’s war against Ukraine is also a disaster for the environment. In your new book, which will be published next year, you deal with “ecocide”. This is a topic you have been working on for a long time. How did you come to this topic, and why should the destruction of our natural environment and the foundations of human life be recognised as an international crime?

PS: The next book is entitled The Fifth Crime. On Ecocide, Justice, and Hope, in the English version, the German edition will have a slightly different subtitle. It should be out in the spring of 2027, and it focuses on a double story. My own engagement with the world of international law, insofar as it relates to the protection of the environment, over a 40-year period, starting with the Chornobyl accident, and then the question of the move towards a fifth international crime, namely ecocide, to live alongside war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and aggression. The crime of ecocide is needed, I believe, because the four existing crimes essentially focus on the well-being of the human, which is of course a most important matter, but when they were developed in 1945 for the Nuremberg trial, there was a gap, and that was the protection of the natural world. I think that is a significant gap. I came to it over time. I was sceptical to begin with, but I describe in the book that by 2020, when I was asked to co-chair an international working group, my position had changed. And what was particularly influential on me (You’d note that my family here plays a very significant role in what I do and don’t do!), the role of my children was particularly significant. They were all in their 20s back then, and they were all incredibly encouraging of my work in this area. Indeed, they got in touch and said something to the effect, “Finally, Dad, you’re doing something useful.”

HS: It is nice to see this personal continuity in your work – from your wife’s intervention in the Pinochet case to your children encouraging you to take up the topic of ecocide. Let’s stay with the term “ecocide” for a moment. What exactly is ecocide?

PS: Well, as the working group, agreed, we defined ecocide as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts”.

HS: Ecocide naturally recalls genocide. Following the Genocide Convention, genocide requires not only genocidal acts but also a specific genocidal intent. How does this compare to the definition of ecocide presented by the Independent Expert Panel that you co-chaired? How does the mental element (mens rea) in your definition of ecocide differ from that of genocide, and what does this difference mean for the question of individual and collective responsibility?

PS: In the international working group’s effort to draft a workable definition of a new crime of ecocide we discussed at length the mens rea aspect. I was concerned that the allusion to genocide, the connection with that concept, would lead some people to assume there would be in the definition of ecocide some form of special intent. But in our definition, we have avoided that, and I think that is right. The reality is, people don’t ever really intend to destroy nature or the environment as such. Rather, the act of destruction is an incidental to some other objective, and so the definition we’ve come up with has sought to capture that reality. No doubt over time, as formal negotiations begin – and I’m sure that they will at some point, although I don’t know when – there’ll be a revisitation of the mens rea, and this will be a subject of particular negotiation.

HS: Some critics consider the idea of enshrining ecocide as a fifth crime in the Rome Statute morally convincing but politically unrealistic, not least in view of the current weakness of international institutions and the International Criminal Court. Does the project of recognising “ecocide” as an international crime come at the most difficult possible time?

PS: Actually, I think this is exactly the right moment to focus on the development of a new crime of ecocide in the Statute of the International Criminal Court. In this regard, I’m very inspired by the work of Lauterpacht and Lemkin, which we’ve already mentioned, on crimes against humanity and genocide. They developed their ideas in the 1940s when the world was in an even worse situation than it is as compared with today. In those difficult moments, they were thinking ahead to a better moment, and they developed their concepts, they lobbied, and their ideas were then taken up. I think we’re in the same situation now. The world is indeed in a parlous state, and that is exactly the moment to start thinking about what comes next as the existing infrastructure is amended or wholly replaced. And thinking about the future is important also for younger generations, they are the ones who are going to have to pick up the pieces from the mess my generation has left behind, and focusing on new international crimes is one way of doing that. Again, it’s a way of using international law and international legal process to develop a modicum of hope. International law is about living together, and that is hope.

III. Writing about Law

HS: A particular strength of your books is the combination of legal questions with personal stories and encounters. Do you find such stories and encounters in your new book on ecocide as well?

PS: Indeed, in the new book The Fifth Crime I have followed the tried and trusted model that began with East West Street, of integrating a personal approach with bigger political and legal developments. In this book I describe my involvement in various initiatives to address the protection of nature under international law. It’s something I’ve been involved with since 1986, and I’ve had the great privilege of being involved in many negotiations and many cases before the International Court of Justice and other courts and tribunals on issues of the environment. So, a bit like in the Pinochet case, I’ve had a ringside seat. That doesn’t mean I’ve been intimately involved in all of the developments, but in the round I have been able to observe what has happened, and that sense of direct observation infuses large parts of The Fifth Crime.

HS: International law is always political. But writing about law and the reactions to it can also be political. In The Last Colony, you examined the unlawful expulsion of the inhabitants of the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean. In what ways did the reactions to it differ from those to your other books?

PS: The Last Colony was a very important book for me. I decided to write it after the International Court of Justice had given an advisory opinion, which was met with a rather negative response by the then British government. Part of the reason it was able to get away with that response domestically in the United Kingdom was that no one really knew about Chagos, and I had worked out with my earlier books, East West Street and The Rat Line, that if you want to bring attention to a particular issue and develop a greater public consciousness, one of the ways to do it is to write a book for a bigger audience. Incidentally, that bigger audience is smart, and can deal with issues of legal complexity, including in relation to international law. So, The Last Colony was an example, if you like, of literary advocacy: writing a book for a general audience to inform a debate about the future direction of international law, and in particular respect for the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice.

The book was published in September 2022, and two months later, the United Kingdom government changed its position and announced that it would negotiate with the government of Mauritius to give effect to the ICJ advisory opinion. I’d love to be able to say that my book catalyzed that change, but that’s not what happened. The British government changed its position because of Ukraine and the disconnect between its argument in favour of dislodging Russia from its illegal occupation of Ukraine, on the one hand, and its own illegal occupation of a part of Africa, Chagos and Mauritius, on the other. The outcome of those negotiations has been successful, and in May 2025, the two governments announced that they had completed negotiations on a treaty to, in effect, respect the advisory opinion by recognizing the sovereignty of Mauritius over the whole of the Chagos Archipelago and allowing the Chagossians to return, whilst also protecting the environment, that treaty has been signed, but its entry into force awaits approval from the United States.

HS: Do you already have an idea of which project you will take on after your book on ecocide?

PS: I do indeed have a pretty clear sense of where I am going with my writings. I’m right now writing a short novel, which is a first. It’s centred on the life of Miss Tilney, one of the characters of East West Street, at an internment camp in the spa town of Vittel. And in parallel with that, I’m writing what will be the fourth and final volume of the Lviv Quartet, or the East-West Quartet, if people want to call it that, which is a book which explores the interplay between the creation of the Special Tribunal on the Crime of Aggression in relation to Ukraine and the killing of the Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina. These two stories are connected in many ways, but both, in a sense, have a relationship to the writing and publication of East West Street. So, it’s a logical way to bring this series to a quartet.

HS: That sounds really exciting – both your first novel and a new part in the East West Quartet! So, your readers can look forward to much more here in the future. Let’s end, so to speak, where we began our conversation: with a brief look ahead to the future of international law. Where do you see international law in ten or twenty years? Will international criminal law prove resilient – or are we witnessing its gradual demise in the face of growing nationalisms?

PS: In the meantime, we will have to wait and see how resilient international law and international criminal law is. There are growing nationalisms and populisms and xenophobias, but I’ve come to see, as I’ve mentioned, that international law is a long game. Over time, I have no doubt that the arcs of justice and of international law, including the idea of individual criminal responsibility, will be sustainable, and will develop and will grow. It’s not about to disappear.

Thank you for the conversation, dear Philippe!