We are delighted to have been invited to host this important seminar, alongside the Iran Tribunal Foundation.
Notwithstanding the increased interest in, and focus on, international human rights law over the last 50 years, national state and international institutions have been slow at adapting to the new international environment. Human tragedies arising in conflicts and under repressive domestic regimes have continued across the world, from Chile to Guatemala, from Rwanda to Iran and Argentina. They continue to happen without any judicial or quasi judicial review of crimes committed in the conflicts/repressions.
Since 1968, with the establishment of the Russell Tribunal on Vietnam, ‘civil society’ has come to appreciate the moral power and authority of informal quasi judicial processes. People’s Tribunals have proved responsive to the ineptitude, insufficiency and (it seems) mendacity of formal domestic and international apparatuses that find reasons often enough not to deal with atrocities committed around the world, despite having formal power and jurisdiction to do so.
This Seminar focuses on how ‘civil society’ in its various forms can be empowered by establishing informal but public and ‘judicial’ processes to deal with atrocities committed by States, drawing on experiences from the People’s Tribunals so far established for Vietnam, Iran, Palestine and Japan (‘Comfort Women’).
The Seminar aims to enhance the moral authority of People’s Tribunals and calls on the international community to give wider recognition to that authority.
If you would like to attend, please register for free tickets.