In Sarajevo, the ‘Gaza Tribunal’ seeks accountability amidst international failure to stop Gaza genocide
A public session of the Gaza TribunaL in Sarajevo, May 2025
David Kattenburg reports in Mondoweiss on 30 May 2025:
The Sarajevo Declaration of the Gaza Tribunal was released Thursday morning [29 May 2025], following three days of public hearings at the International University of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“We believe that the world is approaching a dangerous precipice, the front edge of which is in Palestine,” a People’s Tribunal on the Gaza genocide declared today in Sarajevo, and “dangerous forces” are “pushing us toward the abyss.”
Inspired by past People’s Tribunals — most notably the 1966 Russell Tribunal on the US war on Vietnam, and the 2003-2005 World Tribunal on the US’s war on Iraq – the Gaza Tribunal was launched in London in November 2024.
Faced with a “total failure of the organised international community to implement international law in the most severe, visible case of genocide in real time,” the Gaza Tribunal’s website states, it aims to legitimize “an alternative paradigm of international law, one that derives its authority from people and their sense of justice rather than relying solely on governments and their institutions.”
The Gaza Tribunal is governed by an eight-member Steering Committee headed by Richard Falk, Emeritus Professor of International Law and former US Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine, assisted by a 29-member Advisory Policy Council of civil society leaders and public intellectuals from Palestine, Europe and North America. Among these: Diana Buttu, Susan Abulhawa, Mouin Rabbani, Raja Shehadeh, Ghassan Abu Sittah, Mazin Qumsiyeh, Cornel West, Judith Butler, Yanis Varoufakis, Tariq Ali, Mary Kaldor, Naomi Klein, and Jeremy Corbyn.
The Tribunal’s final judgement will be rendered by a ‘Jury of Conscience’ composed of a half dozen judges, following closing hearings in Istanbul in late October.