Profile of Invited Expert “Odonkor”

Profile

Full Name

Daniel Adjin Odonkor, Esq.

Position

Lawyer & Researcher

Organization

Centre of Criminology at the University of Cape Town

Biography

Daniel Adjin Odonkor is a lawyer and researcher pursuing postgraduate studies at the Centre of Criminology at the University of Cape Town. His research and practice examine how international criminal law and human rights frameworks engage with African legal realities, particularly where questions of environmental accountability, economic justice, and development converge. Daniel has contributed to law reform and policy review projects across Africa in areas including cybersecurity, digital governance, and criminal justice reform.

His current research examines proposed ecocide frameworks through the lens of illegal mining in Ghana, advancing context-sensitive approaches that reconcile environmental protection with the developmental imperatives of Global South states. Through both practice and scholarship, he advocates principled, locally grounded approaches to criminal justice reform and environmental accountability across Africa.

Selected Citations to Published Materials

Enam Korkor Antonio, Daniel Adjin Odonkor & Mordechai Nyamekye, Beyond Environmental Harm: Redefining Ecocide to Address Global South Realities Through Ghana’s Illegal Mining Crisis, Int’l J. of Hum. Rts. 1 (Oct. 2025), paywall, slide deck available online, doi.

History

Member for: 8 weeks 2 days

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park2026: Criminalizing Ecocide: Will Corporations Change? Introduction As climate change accelerates and ecosystems face unprecedented destruction, existing legal frameworks have proven inadequate to prevent or meaningfully deter large-scale environmental harm. Corporations, especially transnational corporations operating across jurisdictions, play a central role in driving deforestation, pollution, biodiversity loss, and greenhouse gas emissions, often... (more)
Wangu Gatonye: I. Introduction “Ecocide” was coined in the 1970s through a proposal by Professor Arthur W. Galston, but has only recently gained popularity in legal circles.1 The proposed definition is: “[U]nlawful 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.”2 The work that the diverse Independent... (more)
Talia Boyadjian: Why the IEPs Draft Definition of Ecocide Cannot Work as a Core Crime The concept of ecocide has circulated long before current efforts to amend the Rome Statute, with domestic and international circles debating it as a proposed legal tool to address human-caused extreme environmental destruction.1 Early formulations data back to the Vietnam War in response to large-scale wartime... (more)