At the request of three international organisations — the Groupement pour les Droits des Minorités in Paris, Cultural Survival in Cambridge, and Gesellschaft für Bedrohte Völker in Göttingen — the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal has convened a session dedicated to the Armenian Genocide. The session will address three fundamental questions: did the massacres and deportations perpetrated in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War occur; did these events constitute the crime of genocide under the 1948 Convention; what are the legal and political consequences of these events for the international community and the parties involved?
The Tribunal deemed it necessary to examine the 1915 Armenian Genocide, as it has never been the subject of an international trial nor officially recognised by the Republic of Turkey’s government. The Tribunal stated that the victims and their descendants are entitled to recognition of the historical and legal truth of the events. In its Judgement, the Tribunal recognised that Armenians constitute a people whose fundamental rights, both individual and collective, must be fully protected under international law. The extermination perpetrated through deportations and massacres constitutes the crime of genocide, for which there is no statute of limitations under the 1948 Convention.
As an international crime, it establishes the responsibility of the Turkish State, which cannot evade its obligations by invoking state discontinuity. The most important of these obligations is to officially recognise the reality of the genocide and the harm inflicted upon the Armenian people.
Requesting organisations:
Groupement pour les Droits des Minorités
Cultural Survival in Cambridge
Gesellschaft für Bedrohte Völker
Documentation: