A vast network of European organizations and movements active in the field of migration has called on the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal to take action and promote sessions to consider violations of fundamental human rights against migrants. The indictment concerned very serious and systematic violations of the fundamental rights to life, dignity, work, health, and the pursuit of a future by the EU and its member states, in a context of total impunity for those responsible and marked instead by policies of repression of social actors who express, individually and collectively, practices of solidarity. The PPT panel of judges also considered that the right to migration, which has always been recognized as a fundamental part of the history of peoples, is being denied and has become a tragic expression of a neo-colonial policy that denies the very existence and identity of migrant peoples. At the conclusion of its findings and assessments, the PPT affirms that the policies and practices of the EU and its Member States on asylum and immigration constitute, taken together, a total denial of the fundamental rights of individuals and migrants and amount to genuine crimes against humanity which, even when they cannot be personally attributed to specific perpetrators according to shared criminal procedural rules, must be defined as “systemic crimes”.
Requesting organisation:
- Transnational Migrant Platform Europe (TMP-E)
- Centro Filipino
- The Associació Catalana per la integració d’homosexuals, bisexuals i transexuals inmigrants (ACATHII)
- Transnational Institute
Structure of the session and documentation:
- Opening Session – Barcelona, 7-8 July 2017
- Hearing of Palermo, 18-20 December 2017
- Hearing of Paris, 4-5 January 2018
- Hearing of Barcelona, 29 June – 1 July 2018
- The Declaration of the Tribunal (Spanish)
- Hearing of London, 3-4 November 2018
- Hearing at the European Parliament, Brussels, 9 April 2019
- Hearing of Berlin, 23-25 October 2020