Permanent Peoples' Tribunal

The Permanent Peoples' Tribunal is an international opinion tribunal founded in Bologna (Italy) on June 24, 1979 at the initiative of Senator Lelio Basso.

The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (TPP) was formally born in Bologna in 1979 as a direct continuation of the experience of the Russell Tribunal II with Latin American dictatorships (1974-1976), promoted by Lelio Basso to denounce the crimes committed by the military regimes of the region. The will of the people and the victims of Latin America, the changed the occasional nature of Russell Court and it became a permanent forum of complaint for communities experiencing the absence and impotence of international law. Therefore, the TPP is a grass-root initiative and the result of the need to create an independent tool for researching and analysing for the cognitive, cultural and doctrinal development needed to start the process of liberation and justice of the people. The TPP's work is characterised by its subsidiary nature. Just as the Russell Tribunal, the existence of the Permanent People’s Tribunal is due, even today, to the absence of a competent international court to rule on the allegations and claims of individuals conceived in their collective dimension. In its decisions, the PPT goes beyond the recognition of criminal responsibility in order to produce truth, memory and moral reparation.

The work of the TPP is based on the principles expressed in the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples proclaimed in Algiers in 1976 and the main international instruments protecting human rights. The historical and geographical context of the Declaration, known as the Charter of Algiers, clearly links the general principles of the Declaration for the liberation struggles—which Resolution 1514 (XV) of the United Nations of 14 December 1960 had already put under the protection of international law—with the understanding that the right to self-determination could not be proclaimed as fulfilled and that it did not involve only the political phase of decolonization.

The scope of the concept of self-determination expressed in the Charter of Algiers must relate to the context and the principle of “freedom” which is not limited to a particular time and place and has, in this case, not an individual but a collective subject which is precisely, the people. In the Charter of Algiers and, therefore, in the Permanent People’s Tribunal, the principle of self-determination serves as legal support and target indicator of the struggles of peoples whose sovereignty is at risk due to external and internal forces the Tribunal has documented from 1979 to date. As is the case with the principle of self-determination, the concept of people in the Charter of Algiers is not unique, but rather presents a contextual or political significance not limited to a strict definition by the Declaration, but left to the free interpretation of those who, now and then, have used its principles over the years. According to the Charter, peoples are important collective subjects but marginalized by a law designed for States as the only recipients of rights, including the individual and collective dimensions in a single legal system serving both individuals and peoples.

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