Should killing nature be an international crime?

“From the Pope to Greta Thunberg, there are growing calls for the crime of ‘ecocide’ to be recognised in international criminal law — but could such a law ever work?” the BBC asked in a recent article.

Some courts have granted legal standing to sacred rivers, trees and landscapes and legal rights to non-human primates.

Numerous jurisdictions have ruled in favour of nature with respect to:

Pollution and other forms of destruction of nature

Trade in endangered species

Destruction of national parks, nature reserves and other protected areas and natural monuments

Before Dr. Manisha Deka became pregnant at age 38, she knew little about the benefits of lifting weights. 

“I have always been active, but I focused on exercises like running on the treadmill, yoga and Zumba classes,” said Deka, a specialist in internal medicine in India. “Those were the exercises that women tended to do at the time.”

Then she had a complicated pregnancy, which required her to stay in bed. “Once I gave birth and tried to stand up, I noticed that the muscles in my legs had lost all their strength,” Deka said. “I had to re-learn how to move, walk and climb stairs.” 

Some TikTok videos about health and fitness are hard to resist. People describe how they lost weight by eating only raw fruits and vegetables for a month or by substituting protein powder in place of flour or sugar. How many people take these recommendations to heart? What happens if they do?

Jason Wood was one of them. “I would sprinkle [protein powder] on top of a peanut butter sandwich or a yogurt just to make what I was eating seem healthier,” he said.

But Wood’s practice of adding protein powder to make his foods healthier wasn’t healthy. Eventually, Wood was diagnosed with orthorexia, an obsession with nutrition. Orthorexia is an eating disorder that differs significantly from better-known eating disorders like bulimia — bingeing and vomiting the food afterwards — and anorexia — not eating at all.

It is heart-breaking, and at the same time, it feels good, like everything together makes it feel like being in a nightmare; a kind of daze — This is how Sufia Easel describes the feelings behind her art. It is a layered emotion drawn from personal struggles with anxiety and depression, a theme that runs quietly but powerfully through her work.

Sufia Easel graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from the University of Development Alternative (UODA) in 2018. After working two jobs, she decided to fully focus on her passion: painting, and building a small business selling merchandise based on her artworks.

“Only my closest friends and a few family members knew about my IVF journey. I kept it private to avoid judgment, the whispers calling me ‘defective’ for not conceiving naturally. In India, I saw women in their 50s enduring the same gruelling treatments, all longing to hold a child. People do not understand our pain; they only expect us to have children, as if that’s our sole purpose.”

The food scene in the city is as diverse as its people and just as expressive. And by expressive, I mean deeply personal. Food here is not just something we eat — it’s something we are! In Dhaka, you don’t need to scale hills or cross rivers to taste the country’s rich regional delicacies. You just need to be hungry. Why? Because, no matter where you are from, there’s probably a corner that smells of your childhood.

This is the metropolis’s secret superpower. For a city that’s relentlessly fast, loud, and crowded enough to make anyone consider monastic life, it has a surprisingly tender culinary soul. It doesn’t just feed you — it reminds you who you are.