United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) in cooperation with United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the Ministry of the Environment (Italy). The conference recognized that environmental crime is an important new form of transnational organized crime in need a greater response. One of the outcomes was that UNEP and UNICRI head up a study into the definition of environmental crime and give due consideration to making ecocide an international crime. In May 2017 the grassroots citizen's movement End Ecocide on Earth published a proposal covering jurisdiction, substantive criminal law, procedural due process, declaratory judgements, reparations, and individual or corporate penalty provisions within the existing Rome Statute framework. In November 2019 Pope Francis, addressing the International Association of Penal Law (AIDP), called on the international community to recognize ecocide as a “fifth category of crime against peace.” In July 2019, a group of 24 scientists called for ecocide committed in conflict areas be punished as a war crime. 2020s In late November 2020, a panel of international lawyers chaired by British law professor Philippe Sands and Zambian judge Florence Mumba started drafting a proposed law criminalizing ecocide. In May 2021, the European parliament adopted 2 reports advancing the recognition of Ecocide as a crime. In order to enforce implementation and increase citizens’ trust in EU rules, and to prevent and remedy environmental damage more effectively, Parliament demands that the Environmental Liability Directive (ELD) and the Environmental Crime Directive (ECD) be improved. Also in May 2021 the 179 members of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) passed an almost-unanimous resolution inviting member parliaments recognise the crime of ecocide. Domestic law Ten countries have codified ecocide as a crime within their borders during peacetime. Those countries followed the wording of Article 26 of the International law Commission (ILC) Draft which referred to intentionally causing "widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment" within the context of war - bearing in mind that Article 26 was removed from the final draft submitted to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 1996. None of the countries established procedures to measure 'intention'. The countries with domestic ecocide laws are France (2021), Georgia (1999), Armenia (2003), Ukraine (2001), Belarus (1999), Ecuador (2008; 2014), Khazakhstan (1997), Kyrgyzstan (1997), Moldova (2002), Russia (1996), Tajikistan (1998), Uzbekistan (1994), Vietnam (1990). France In 2021, The French National Assembly approved the creation of an "ecocide" offence as part