1st Edition

Genocide and the Ocean Law, History and Genocidal Realities Beyond Borders and Beneath Waves

Edited By Vicky Kapogianni, Eric Loefflad Copyright 2026
252 Pages
by Routledge

252 Pages
by Routledge

This collection explores the intricate legal, conceptual, and material relationship between genocide and the ocean. Traversing a wide range of topics, it brings into conversation numerous legal regimes that are too rarely considered in relation to one another–including, but not limited to, the international legal regime on genocide, international human rights and refugee law, the law of the sea,... Read more

Introduction – Why Genocide and the Ocean?

Chapter 1 - Rediscovering the Canary Islands: Maritime Notes Towards a New Historical Geography of Genocide (Eric Loefflad)

Chapter 2 - Archipelagic Selves and the Erosion of Oceanic Legal Orders: Raphael Lemkin in Colonial Indonesia (Mortiz Koenig)

Chapter 3 - Reframing Cultural Heritage Law for African and Native Nations: Decolonial Justice in the Wake of Colonial Maritime Violence (Thaissa Meira)

Chapter 4 - Underwater Cultural Heritage and Climate Change: Emerging Debates on Ecocide (Tatiana Cardoso Squeff  and Augusto Guimarães Carrijo)

Chapter 5 - Prosecuting Marine Ecocide as Genocide: Reasons, Opportunities, and Challenges (Holly Leung)

Chapter 6 - From Safe Havens to Death Traps: The EU’s Migration Externalisation and the Processual and Plastic Stages of Genocide (Vicky Kapogianni and Rosa Walling-Wefelmeyer)

Chapter 7 - Existence and Survival: Sea-Level Rise, Self-Determination, and the Law of Genocide (Dave-Inder Comar)

Biography

Vicky Kapogianni is a Lecturer in EU and International Law and Senior Research Associate at the South African Institute for Advanced Constitutional, Public, Human Rights and International Law, a Centre of the Faculty of Law, University of Johannesburg.

Eric Loefflad is a Lecturer in Law at the University of Kent, UK.