The Punitive Legislative Policy of Kuwait’s New Environment Protection Law No. (42) of 2014: A Comparative Study

Dr. Yousef Hajji Al-Mutairi
Assistant Professor – Criminal law – Department of Law – College of Business Studies – The public Authority for Applied Education And Training – Kuwait

Abstract:

The paper discusses the Kuwaiti legislator’s policy of applying penalties for environmental crimes. The study discussed the historical development of Kuwaiti environmental legislation since 1964. The Law for the Prevention of Contamination of Oil-Safe Water passed through Law No. 21/1995, which did not contain deterrent penalties for combating environmental pollution. It is urgent to issue a comprehensive law for the protection of the environment, which deals with all environmental issues. In 2014, the legislator called for the issuance of the current Environmental Protection Law, which contains 181 legal articles, all of which concern the environment and combating pollution. The (157) of environmental penalties.
The study also discussed the various penalties stipulated by the current law on combating the environment, relying on the analytical descriptive approach to the environmental sanctions contained in the current Kuwaiti environmental law.
The research concluded with a number of important recommendations in the field of combating environmental crimes. The research concluded that the results of the investigation are consistent with the applicable penalty and the applicable penalty to match the punishment applied to the perpetrator of the violation with the degree of gravity of the environmental violation on the one hand and damage to society on the other. The law’s purpose is to apply the penalty to the perpetrator of the violation and to inflict the greatest harm on him. The law of the environment contains some provisions in which the penalties are not commensurate with the provisions for which they were established, as in article 130 and article 25, 138 and article 56). And the need to adopt the Kuwaiti legislator to close the facility that is committing environmental crimes or to cancel the license to the right of the licensee any damage to the environment as a supplementary punishment, as did the Egyptian legislator and not as an administrative measure taken by the Director of the General Authority for Environment in coordination with the donor of this license. In addition, the Kuwaiti Environmental Law stipulates that the perpetrator of the environmental crimes convicted under police supervision should be considered as a subordinate punishment following the conviction in order to ensure that the perpetrator does not continue to pollute the environment as it is very effective in combating environmental crimes and protecting the environment.
Keywords: environmental crimes, environmental law, kuwaiti penal code, accused, imprisonment, fine.

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