François Rigaux, I diritti dei popoli e la Carta di Algeri [Peoples’ rights and the Algiers Charter], Gruppo Abele Editore, Torino, 2012 (II ed).

 

Language: Italian

 

“Conscious of interpreting the aspirations of our age, we met in Algiers to proclaim that all peoples of the world have an equal right to freedom.”

 

From the Declaration of Algiers – a universal reference on the rights of peoples in a text of thirty articles, which identify in the rights to national and cultural identity, self-determination, economic rights, the right to culture, the environment and common resources, and the rights of minorities, the unfinished chapters in international human rights law and in the areas of impunity for their violations – originated a new awareness of the rights of all, highly relevant nowadays in times of globalisation. This volume by François Rigaux reconstructs the legal foundations of peoples’ law and retraces the milestones of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal in its sessions between 1979 and 2011.

Fondazione Lelio e Lisli Basso (eds.), Algier’s Declaration, Nottetempo, Roma, 2016.

 

Languages: Italian, French, English, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese

 

“There is another thing that makes one confident in utopia, the good utopia, an example of the activities of Lelio Basso […]. Between the last two sessions of the Russell II Tribunal on Latin America, he launched a project to translate our common ideals into a universal declaration of people’s rights: at the time it seemed like utopia. Yet now it has become a reality” (François Rigaux). Forty years after its proclamation, the Algier’s Declaration – published in this volume in six languages – continues to propose the use of law as a weapon in favour of peoples claiming freedom, to develop a new international law, and to provide answers to the ever-changing scenarios of repression and constraint.

Julio Cortázar, Fantomas contro i vampiri multinazionali [Fantomas against the multinational vampires], Derive Approdi, Rome, 2006.

 

Language: Italian

 

In this brilliant blend of novel and superhero comic strip, Julio Cortázar exposes a connection between fantasy, sensitivity and imagination, and the world of economics and politics. Fantomas contra los vampiros multinacionales is a provocative book that helps to understand the evolution of capitalism from the 1970s to the current process of globalisation. Published  as acomic book in 1975, at the time of the Russell II Tribunal, the work was recently re-published with Gianni Tognoni’s introduction.

Andrew Byrnes and Gabrielle Simm (eds.), Peoples’ Tribunals and International Law, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2017. With contributions by: Andrew Byrnes, Sarah Dehm, Ustinia Dolgopol, Nicola Edwards, Saskia E. Wieringa, Simona Fraudatario, Rosalba Icaza, Belén Olmos Giupponi, Gabrielle Simm and Gianni Tognoni

 

Language: English

 

Peoples’ Tribunals and International Law is the first book to analyse how civil society-created tribunals interact with international law. Featuring contributions dealing with bodies established in Europe, Latin America and Asia, this collection provides unique interdisciplinary perspectives and insights into the phenomenon of opinion tribunals. Written by academics in law, anthropology, and international relations, the publication also includes reflections by civil society activists and advocates of such tribunals and includes chapters ranging from the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal to recent tribunals such as Soeharto’s Indonesia and violations against migrants in Europe. The reflection on tribunals of opinion and international law resulted from a seminar held on 27-28 September 2013 in Rome at the Fondazione Lelio e Lisli Basso, under the auspices of the Australian Human Rights Centre of the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

Simona Fraudatario, Antoni Pigrau Solé (eds.), Colombia entre violencia y derecho, Implicaciones de una Sentencia del Tribunal Permanente de los Pueblos [Colombia between violence and law, Implications of a Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal Ruling], Ediciones Desde abajo, Bogotà, 2012. With articles by: Marcelo Ferreira, Simona Fraudatario, Javier Giraldo Moreno, William Guzmán, Franco Ippolito, Carlos Olaya, Antoni Pigrau Solé, Francisco Ramírez Cuellar, Bruno Rütsche, Libardo Sarmiento Anzola, Philippe Texier, Gianni Tognoni.

 

Language: Spanish

 

The TPP’s session on Colombia (2006-2008) has taken central stage in the country’s recent history. International experts and witnesses’ analysis launched challenges that Colombian society has long been confronted with on a global level: the violation of human rights and impunity, factors that characterise free trade economic policies. The book proposes different readings of the ‘Colombia laboratory’ and analyses the legal, social, political, and economic implications of the ruling pronounced by the PPT in 2008, including an experimental interpretation of the genocide legal category. The realisation of the Session is the result of the political, juridical, and social work of movements, trade unions, peasants, Afro-Colombians, and indigenous people who made the law a tool to fight violence and achieve peace and democracy.

Simona Fraudatario, Gianni Tognoni (eds.), Diritti dei popoli e disuguaglianze globali. I 40 anni del Tribunale Permanente dei Popoli [Peoples’ rights and global inequalities. The 40th anniversary of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal], Altraeconomia, Milan, 2020. With historical texts by Lelio Basso, Julio Cortázar, Eduardo Galeano. Essays by Franco Ippolito and Roberto Schiattarella.

 

Language: Italian

 

This volume offers a comprehensive reinterpretation of the PPT’s work and draws a ‘map’ of peoples’ history over the last four decades. Tracing the most significant works and analyses that have accompanied epochal transformations, the volume enters the roots and understanding of two opposing realities of the title, the rights of peoples and global inequalities, which summarise the most irreconcilable and urgent contradiction of the times we are living. Framed by two original essays by authoritative representatives of law and economics, Franco Ippolito and Roberto Schiattarella. The proposed path of reflection allows the reader to relive ‘in the present’ the evolution of the relationship between economics and law’s models, mechanisms, actors, and languages. Accompanied by the logic and ‘inverted’ perspectives recommended in the texts by Lelio Basso, Julio Cortázar and Eduardo Galeano, pivotal to the PPT history.

Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (eds.), Repression & resistance the Filipino people vs Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, George W. Bush, et al.: Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, second session on the Philippines, the Hague, the Netherlands, March 21-25, 2007, in collaboration with: International Coordinating Secretariat (Utrecht) and IBON Foundation Inc., 2007.

 

Language: English

 

The Second PPT Session on The Philippines (The Hague, 21-25 March 2007) marks a milestone in the country’s national and international campaign against repression, as it clearly identifies and defines the motivations, policies, and forces behind it. This book documents the work of the organisations requesting the session, the experts involved, and the PPT jury. As in the first session on the Philippines in Antwerp in 1980, where the rights violated by the Marcos regime were recognised, in the second session, the PPT showed once again its focus on the cause of peoples’ rights and justice.

Gianni Tognoni (eds.), Tribunale Permanente dei Popoli, Le Sentenze: 1979-1998 [Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, The Judgments: 1979-1998], Casa Editrice Stefanoni, Lecco, 1998. With contributions by: Gianni Tognoni, François Rigaux and Elmar Altvater

 

Language: Italian

 

This compilation of Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) judgments is proposed on the 20th anniversary of the death of its founder and creator, Lelio Basso. Most of the guidelines gradually expressed along the sessions and sentences that crowded the first decades of PPT’s activity can be traced back to his intuitions and experiences of thought and action. An essential and original element of Basso was exploring thinking-acting politics as a research exercise. The PPT is nothing other than the attempt to make this shared research visible, communicable, and useful in practice; permanent as an institutional tool, extremely flexible, and innovative in being able to respond to the diversity of history. This book’s proposal is consequently not merely a documentation of facts: but rather, an account of the research project and the history of people’s law designed by the PPT.

Upendra Baxi, The Future of Human Rights, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008.

 

Language: English

 

This book critically analyses contemporary discourses on the nature of human rights, their history, and the myths embedded in them. Additionally, this work contributes to an alternative reading by focusing on the concerns and interests of ‘people in struggle and communities of resistance’. Although the last century has rightly been described as the century of human rights, the ‘disenfranchised and suffering peoples’ remain. For this reason, Baxi analyses the chasm between the present and the possibilities for the future. In addition, the author explores the significance of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights while also studying contemporary issues such as women’s struggle to shape the understanding and practice of human rights, and the impact of globalisation on the human rights movement. The book includes a discussion of the UN’s proposed standards on transnational corporations’ and other business entities’ human rights responsibilities.

Asia Floor Wage Alliance (eds.), National People’s Tribunal on Living Wage for Garments Workers in Asia, Synthesis Report, 2014.

 

Language: English

 

The struggle for a livable wage has seen new developments in the last decade, giving voice to the demand for a regional minimum wage in the Asian garment sector. The demand began to form in 2006 through a collective consensus among Asian trade unions that led to the formulation of a methodology for calculating and defining a transnational minimum wage in the garment sector within the region, known as the Asia Floor Wage (AFW). The battle entered a second phase after the public launch of the campaign led by the Asia Floor Wage Alliance (AFWA) on 7 October 2009, International Day for Decent Work. As part of this process, AFWA, in collaboration with the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, organised a series of national hearings between 2011 and 2015 for the support of decent wages for women garment workers in the Asian industry. This report aims to provide an overview of the main outcomes of the sessions, background analysis provided to the PPT, testimonies presented during the sessions, judgments and relevant documentation, with particular reference to the garment industry and the international governance of global industries.

Andrés Barreda Marín (eds.), La Audiencia Final (12 al 15 noviembre de 2014) Sentencia, Fiscalías y Relatorías, Capítulo México del Tribunal Permanente de los Pueblos (2011-2014) [The Final Hearing (12-15 November 2014) Judgment, Prosecutor’s Offices and Rapporteurships, Mexico Chapter of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (2011-2014)], Editorial Itaca, Ciudad de México, 2016.

 

Language: Spanish

 

From 21 October 2011 to 15 November 2014, the Mexican Chapter of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal formally convened under the title ‘Free Trade, Violence, Impunity and Peoples’ Rights’. A total of 39 preliminary hearings were held corresponding to several thematic areas: dirty war, migration, femicide and gender violence, workers, food sovereignty, environmental devastation, violence against journalists, right to education, repression against social movements and youth. The book collects the documentation presented to the Tribunal at the final hearing. The Mexico Chapter has opened up the possibility of constructing a general and timely image of the complex structural violence that characterises the country’s recent history, starting with the unrestrained implementation of free trade policies since the 1990s.

Andrés Barreda Marín (eds.), Memoria del las Resistencias del Pueblo de México. La Represión a los movimientos sociales y a los defensores de los derechos humanos (22 al 24 de noviembre de 2013), Capítulo México del Tribunal Permanente de los Pueblos (2011-2014), Libre comercio, violencia, impunidad y derechos de los pueblos [Memoir of People’s Resistance in Mexico. Repression of social movements and human rights defenders (22-24 November 2013), Mexico Chapter of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (2011-2014), Free trade, violence, impunity and peoples’ rights.], Editorial Itaca, Cuidad de México, 2017.

 

Language: Spanish

 

The thematic hearing dedicated to ‘Repression of social movements and human rights defenders’ (Mexico City, 22-24 November 2013) brought together emblematic sectors of the country’s recent history. Social groups and historical indigenous leaders, peasants, workers, trade unions, students, teachers, military victims of violence, civil and non-governmental organisations, and intellectuals from the north, centre and south of the country testified. The hearing demonstrated how the Mexican State’s actions – particularly since the signing of the Free Trade Agreement with North America – have been aimed at containing protests against the country’s economic choices as well as at minimising and silencing the democratic aspirations of large sectors of Mexican society, increasingly involved in massacres, forced disappearances, and generalised violence. Testimonies before the Tribunal traced the repression to a long-standing structural disorder, which requires serious discussion to prevent its perpetuation.