OPINION - How and why was the People’s Tribunal on Gaza established?

By Hilal Elver

- The author has been a research professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara since 2002 and is the co-director of the Global Climate Change, Human Security, and Democracy Project, as well as a distinguished global fellow at the UCLA Law School, Resnick Food Law and Policy program. Between 2014 and 2020, she was the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. She has been a member of the Steering Committee of the High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE- FSN) since 2021.

ISTANBUL (AA) — The idea of establishing a people’s tribunal to expose ongoing genocide and atrocities in Gaza came from a small group of concerned Turkish citizens who were trying to respond and raise public awareness in May 2024. Coincidentally, in August, Bogazici University organized the conference "International Law after Gaza" in Istanbul and invited scholars working on the Israel-Palestine conflict from an international law point of view. Under the leadership of Richard Falk, chair of Global Law at Queen Mary University of London and UN former special rapporteur on human rights violations in the occupied Palestine territories since 1967, we, as a group of concerned scholars who have been working on Palestine, further discussed the idea of a people’s tribunal to judicate, expose, and condemn the government of Israel and its close allies supporting the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The failure of the UN Security Council to attain a cease-fire deal because of the veto power of the permanent members, especially the US, as well as the silence and complicity of several Western governments and growing global public outrage of opinion, were the main motivations for this initiative.

- The aim is to influence global public opinion

The idea of establishing a people’s tribunal to adjudicate severe human rights violations and/or war crimes is not new. The inspiration for people’s tribunals originated with the Russell Tribunal established in 1966 by British philosopher Bertrand Russell and French writer/philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. The original Russell Tribunal critically examined the US military intervention in Vietnam and set a precedent for subsequent people's tribunals. Although unofficial and lacking enforcement power, the Russell Tribunal sought to hold those in power accountable by mobilizing public opinion. At that time, the tribunal made a huge impact among American people who were against the war, as well as global public opinion that was helpful to delegitimize the American government’s war against Vietnamese people.

After the Russell Tribunal, the model expanded globally, addressing various human rights violations. In 1975, Basso Foundations established a Permanent Peoples' Tribunal (PPT) in Italy, not only dealing with war crimes but also focusing on various violations of human rights, such as apartheid in South Africa, human rights violations in Latin America and the Philippines, and later environmental wrongdoings. For instance, in 2000 in Japan, a women's tribunal focused on gender-based violence and discrimination, specifically focusing on the "comfort women" during World War II. In 2016, the International Monsanto Tribunal in Brussels addressed corporate crimes involving the environment and human health. In recent years, several initiatives have been directed at ecocide (for deliberate large-scale environmental harm) and environmental crimes of transnational corporations.

These non-binding, non-governmental initiatives serve as a platform for addressing grievances and violations of rights as well as exposing injustices, particularly in cases where official legal mechanisms are perceived as inadequate, inaccessible, or complicit. These tribunals aim to provide moral authority and bring attention to issues that might otherwise remain overlooked, marginalized, or suppressed.

- The Gaza Tribunal is the key to a much more comprehensive investigation

The Gaza Tribunal is set rather differently than earlier models, and it is not structured strictly to mimic judicial institutions. There is an ongoing genocide, and at least two important international courts have Gaza on their agendas. The first one began in 2023 with South Africa’s application to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) under the rules of the 1948 Genocide Convention. Starting from January 2024, the ICJ has so far issued three sets of provisional measures pronouncing positively as to the "plausibility of genocide." The ICJ ordered Israel to immediately stop committing severe human rights violations and war crimes, such as starvation. The full investigation and final ICJ decision about genocide is likely to take several years.

The second international legal initiative was taken by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), who recommended the issuance of an arrest warrant against the leadership of Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. After a delay of six months, the Pre-trial Chamber of the ICC announced the issuance of arrest warrants on Nov. 20. This is an important development and will undoubtedly impact not only the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but should strengthen the ICC's institutional legitimacy.

Considering these ongoing court proceedings, the Gaza Tribunal is structured to be flexible, faster, and designed to serve a far more comprehensive investigation than is typical of strictly legalistic inquiries by international courts. The Gaza Tribunal has been planned to consider the wider impacts and complications of Israeli behavior in addition to genocide. This includes the historical foundation of Israel as a Western settler-colonial project, which has led directly to the long suffering of the Palestinian people living under a cruel occupation that has included ethnic cleansing, dispossession, repression, humiliation, apartheid, and destruction, preparing the way for the current genocide. The Gaza Tribunal will extend its mandate to famine crime, ecocide (crime against nature), scholasticate (crime against education), democide (crime against housing), sanatiscide (destruction or exploitation of health care), and sociocide (crimes exploiting or destroying cultural tradition and historical identity) in Gaza and occupied territories. The Gaza Tribunal also deals with the wider implications of Israel’s attack on neighboring countries, threatening peace and security in the region and wider world.

- The endeavor to achieve a just and lasting peace

People's tribunals are typically organized by activists, academics, and non-governmental organizations, with strong engagement from affected societies. The Gaza Tribunal is a global independent project free from any direct or indirect influence of governments, active politicians, and diplomats. The structure of the tribunal consists of a small Steering Committee, chaired by the president, that is responsible for administering the entire machinery of the Gaza Tribunal, including a larger Advisory Policy Council (APC) gathered from among globally respected intellectuals and members at large invited to take part based on their expert knowledge of Palestinian issues. Selection criteria took account of race, gender, and geographical diversity. A jury of independent experts, comprising of lawyers, academics, cultural and moral authority figures, as well as activists, will collectively assess the evidence and testimonies that will be assembled to underpin the work of the Gaza Tribunal. Palestinian civil society organizations, as well as the global solidarity movement, will play a vital role at every stage of the Gaza Tribunal.

The Gaza Tribunal seeks to cooperate with reliable and influential international media, especially those operating in the Global South. So far, the mainstream Western media has either played no role in delimiting the crimes of Israel or deliberately manipulated public opinion in ways detrimental to the Palestinians and advantageous to vulture profiteering from Israeli criminality.

The tentative schedule is set to hold a first hearing in April 2025 in a country whose government is receptive to the Gaza Tribunal approach without compromising our independence. The final hearing is currently planned to take place in Istanbul in October 2025. We are also considering alternative possibilities, including Malaysia and Indonesia. Because this is an ongoing genocide, we believe that it is desirable to be flexible with respect to timetable, location, and overall logistics.

The Gaza Tribunal is aiming to meticulously collect evidence, especially visual materials that document the most serious of Israel’s violations. An objective of the Gaza Tribunal is to contribute to the formation of an accurate and comprehensive historical record of the genocide and to provide guidance for future legal proceedings.

Finally, while the judgments of the people's tribunal are not legally binding or directly enforceable, they carry symbolic and moral weight, often influencing public opinion and policy and triggering further legal and civil society action that could contribute to reaching a just and durable peace.

We hope the Gaza Tribunal amplifies the voices of Palestinians marginalized and victimized by mainstream media and the dominant political system. By shedding light on systemic injustices and pushing for accountability, the Gaza Tribunal challenges the status quo, catalyzing legal, social, and political change for the future, not only with respect to the Palestinian ordeal but for the benefit of all vulnerable, repressed groups.

*Opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Anadolu's editorial policy.