People’s Tribunal

Key Words: Peoples’ Tribunals

April 2, 2026 Yasmin Gunaratnam, Red Pepper. Organize! Accountability, Grassroots, History, People's Tribunal

Peoples’ tribunals are grassroots initiatives. They use the conventions and format of the courtroom to publicly stage evidence hearings on rights abuses that formal institutions have failed to recognise or fully address, or where impunity persists. The tradition stretches back to at least 1966, when philosopher and anti-war activist Bertrand Russell established an International War Crimes Tribunal. Together, lawyers, activists and thinkers investigated US war crimes and foreign policy in Vietnam. For Russell, its goal was to compile a comprehensive record of US conduct in the region that would ‘arouse passionate resistance’.

Pakistan: People’s Tribunal Holds Government, World Bank Responsible

February 4, 2026 Abdul Rahman, People's Dispatch. Resist! Displacement, Environmental Destruction, Pakistan, People's Tribunal, World Bank

Hundreds of people belonging to Indigenous communities in Dera Ghazi Khan, in Pakistan’s Punjab province, gathered on the banks of Taunsa Barrage on the Indus River to condemn the demolition of their homes by the local authorities and assert their rights of inhabitation. The gathering was called a Lok Sath (People’s Tribunal), organized by the Sindhu Bachao Tarla (Save Indus Demand) and other organizations. Scores of affected people from Basti Sheikhan gave testimonies of their suffering at the hands of the Punjab Encroachment Regulatory Authority (PERA), the police, and the local government, and sought proper accountability from those responsible for their plight.

Inside The People’s Tribunal On Police Killings

January 26, 2026 James Whitfield, Red Pepper. Strategize! People's Tribunal, Police abuse, Reform, United Kingdom (UK)

The friends and families of those who ‘died in custody’ in the UK, frustrated with the inability of reform to deliver justice, have established the People’s Tribunal on Police Killings. Bringing together over twenty families for a class action lawsuit against the police, it will be the first time families have initiated a group prosecution. The tribunal renames these deaths ‘killings’, due to the systematic nature of the cases. They told me: ‘we need no more legislation, no more excuses, no more police training. The criminal law needs to be applied to police officers… we are abolitionist in our approach but in the meantime cops that kill should go to jail’.

International Tribunal Finds Israel Guilty

November 27, 2025 Marianne Dhenin, Mondoweiss. Educate! Ecocide, Genocide, Israel, Palestine, People's Tribunal

The International People’s Tribunal on Palestine convened on November 22 and 23 in Barcelona. The event brought together organizers, human rights advocates, and legal experts and offered a platform for survivors of the ongoing assault on Gaza to present evidence of Israel’s international crimes. After two days of testimony, jurors returned their verdict: Israel, the United States, and other Western powers are guilty of the crimes of genocide, ecocide, and the forced starvation of the Palestinian people. “The mass killings, deliberate starvation, systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure, environmental devastation, and the targeting of hospitals, shelters, schools, and places of refuge were carried out as a matter of state policy, and with full knowledge of their fatal consequences,” said head juror Ceren Uysal, reading from the verdict as the tribunal closed.

The Right To Resist Is The Right Of The People!

October 29, 2025 International League Of Peoples' Struggle, Black Agenda Report. Resist! Gaza, Genocide, grassroots organizing, Israel, Palestine, Palestine Solidarity, People's Tribunal

Just days after the Zionist entity of “Israel” signed the ceasefire agreement with the Palestinian resistance in Gaza, numerous violations were already reported, including the firing on civilians, the blocking of the full amount of daily aid convoys promised, and failure to withdraw soldiers from all areas stipulated in the ceasefire. After two years of outright genocide and over 75 years of an openly racist settler colonial regime enacting apartheid law, there is little to be surprised about regarding “Israel’s” behavior. The question is not why "Israel" has repeatedly violated its own agreements and international law, as that is to be expected from a rogue entity committing genocide.

Gaza Tribunal: A Historic Verdict In The Shadow Of Testimony

October 26, 2025 Gaza Tribunal. Resist! Gaza, Genocide, International Law, People's Tribunal, Starvation

Inside the quiet stone walls of Istanbul University, a heavy silence settled. The members of the Gaza Tribunal gathered behind closed doors for one final deliberation. Led by Professor Richard Falk, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, the session wasn’t just a meeting — it was history unfolding in real time. After months of hearings across cities like London and Sarajevo, the Tribunal has now delivered its final judgment — a declaration that cuts through diplomatic noise and lands squarely in the conscience of the world. “Starvation as a Weapon” According to the Gaza Tribunal’s Final Report, Israel’s systematic deprivation of food, medicine, and humanitarian access constitutes the weaponization of starvation — a tool of mass punishment used against an entire civilian population.

Why The Gaza Tribunal Is Still Needed After Trump’s Ceasefire

October 22, 2025 Richard Falk, Middle East Eye. Organize! Ceasefire, Gaza, Genocide, Israel, Palestine, People's Tribunal

The Gaza Tribunal, a people's tribunal, was formed a year ago in response to the failure of the established world order of sovereign states and international institutions to stop what experts and ordinary people increasingly recognised as genocide in Gaza. The Gaza Tribunal will hold its final session from 23-26 October 2025 at Istanbul University. Our initiative was inspired by an earlier civil society effort during the Vietnam War, when leading public intellectuals Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre established the Russell Tribunal, which held hearings in 1966 and 1967.

UN Military Force Needed To Halt Israel’s Assault On Gaza, Tribunal Says

August 18, 2025 Yusuf Selman Inanc, Middle East Eye. Resist! Genocide, Israel, Palestine, People's Tribunal, Protection Force, Trump Administration, United Nations

A group of leading academics, legal experts and human rights advocates have called for the creation of a UN-mandated international military force to stop Israel's 22-month-long war on the besieged Gaza Strip. In a statement on Monday, Richard Falk, the president of the Gaza Tribunal Project and a former UN special rapporteur, called on the international community to implement the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle. "Law has failed, because it has not been enforced," Falk said at a press conference in Istanbul as he urged the international community to use R2P as a framework for intervention. He noted that the lack of enforcement had left Palestinians unprotected despite clear evidence of mass atrocities.

The Sarajevo Declaration Of The Gaza Tribunal

May 30, 2025 Gaza Tribunal. Educate! Gaza, International Court of Justice (ICJ), International Criminal Court (ICC), Israel, Palestine, Palestine Solidarity, People's Tribunal

We, the members of the Gaza Tribunal, having gathered in Sarajevo from 26 to 29 May 2025, declare our collective moral outrage at the continuing genocide in Palestine, our solidarity with the people of Palestine, and our commitment to working with partners across global civil society to end the genocide and to ensure accountability for perpetrators and enablers, redress for victims and survivors, the building of a more just international order, and a free Palestine. We condemn the Israeli regime, its perpetration of genocide, and its decades-long policies and practices of settler colonialism, ethno-supremacism, apartheid, racial segregation, persecution, unlawful settlements...

Dr. Martin Luther King’s Prophetic Warning

January 14, 2025 Kathy Kelly, Z Network. Resist! Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, Genocide, Palestine, People's Tribunal, War crimes

Over the past three years, a collective of volunteer researchers, lawyers, and commentators created The Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal, dedicated to holding accountable four weapon manufacturing corporations based in the U.S. Their tribunal amassed copious evidence to prove that Boeing, Lockheed Martin, RTX (formerly Raytheon) and General Atomics (a company which manufactures weaponized drones) are guilty of committing war crimes. On January 15, 2025, as the world marks the birth of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, a press conference will announce the Tribunal’s verdicts and release the report of ten international jurors who have weighed the evidence submitted to them.

Judgement Day For The Merchants Of Death

January 11, 2025 Nick Mottren, Counter Punch. Resist! Accountability, People's Tribunal, War crimes, Wars and Militarism

On January 15, 2025, five days before the inauguration of a U.S. president who threatens to rain down hell on the Palestinian people, and more war to the world, the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal will release its final report on how Lockheed Martin, Boeing, RTX/Raytheon and drone-maker General Atomics have delivered hell to millions across the globe since 9/11. The Tribunal’s 35 evidentiary episodes explain how these four defendant corporations have been essential enablers of the U.S. colonial campaign of murder, extortion, and thievery since 9/11, epitomized in the horrific crescendo of violence that is already being rained down on the Palestinian people.

Israel Convicted Of Genocide At People’s Tribunal In Rio De Janeiro

November 17, 2024 Brasil De Fato, People's Dispatch. Create! arms embargo, Brazil, Gaza, Genocide, International Court of Justice (ICJ), Israel, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Palestine, People's Tribunal

Israel was convicted of genocide against the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip on Friday, November 15. The ruling was made by the People’s Tribunal, which brought together jurists, lawyers, and activists at the Fundição Progresso in Rio de Janeiro (RJ) to judge the crimes of capitalism. “In the case of the genocide of peoples, the evidence in the case file reveals that the people of Palestine, particularly in Gaza, have been subjected to colonialism for 76 years and have been suffering genocide for 409 days, openly practiced by the State of Israel with the complicity of the United States, Germany and other European and Western countries,” says the sentence read out by judge Simone Dalila Nacif, from the Brazilian Association of Jurists for Democracy (ABJD), who presided over the session.

UCSF Health Professionals Charge Leadership With Complicity In Genocide

November 11, 2024 UC People’s Tribunal For Palestine, Mondoweiss. Resist! Accountability, California, Genocide, Health Professionals, Israel, Palestine, People's Tribunal, Student Activism, University of California

Almost a year ago, on October 31, 2023, faculty held a press conference in front of the Helen Diller Medical Center at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), in order to amplify the warnings of Palestinian colleagues at al-Ahli Hospital who predicted that Israel’s bombing of the hospital would be the first in a campaign that would decimate Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure. At the time, British-Palestinian surgeon Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, addressing the world while standing among the dead, stated that Israel’s targeting of al-Ahli Hospital signaled a decisive shift, marking the moment when its assault on Gaza “stopped being a war, and became a genocide.”

University Of California Community Members Launch People’s Tribunal

November 8, 2024 The UC People's Tribunal for Palestine. Popular Resistance. Organize! Campus Movement, Palestine, People's Tribunal, Student Activism, University of California

Faculty, staff, and students of the University of California and concerned community members launched the UC People’s Tribunal for Palestine to hold their leadership–UC President Michael Drake, the UC Regents, and Governor Gavin Newsom–accountable for complicity in the devastation and destruction of the Palestinian people. Beginning on November 11, 2024, members of the UC community will assemble to charge UC leaders with direct and indirect complicity in genocide and Nakba, the ongoing process of dislocation, fragmentation, and mass killing that seeks to complete the work of erasing the existence of the Palestinian people that began in 1948.