The Permanent Peoples Tribunal starts the trial on Violations with Impunity of Human Rights of Migrant and Refugee Peoples in the UB
The University of Barcelona, with the UB Solidarity Foundation, held the start of the sessions of the Permanent Peoples Tribunal on July 7 and 8, launched by the Transnational Migrant Platform Europe to identify and judge the chain of co-responsibilities in the migration journey where the human rights of migrants and refugees are violated.
The University of Barcelona, with the UB Solidarity Foundation, held the start of the sessions of the Permanent Peoples Tribunal on July 7 and 8, launched by the Transnational Migrant Platform Europe to identify and judge the chain of co-responsibilities in the migration journey where the human rights of migrants and refugees are violated.
The session on Saturday requested the opening of a two-year process to seek help in justice and to mark responsibles in three areas: policies that lead to death, places without rights and disappearing people.
The three organizers and coordinators of this session have been twenty-five entities from Catalonia, Spain, Europe, and the rest of the world. The call has been supported by almost a hundred organizations worldwide.
The Permanent Peoples Tribunal
The Permanent Peoples Tribunal is an opinion tribunal, independent from the states, born in 1979 in Bologna, as a continuation of Russell Tribunal and became a permanent institution to promote the universal and effective respect for peoplesʼ fundamental rights, listed in the Algiers Charter (1976). The aim of the PPT is to “bring back the authority of peoples when the State and international organisms fail to protect their rights”. This tribunal denounces State crimes, crimes against peace and humanity, genocide crimes…, and reports in public the names of the authors of the violations of human rights.
A week of activities on migration and refuge
The opening sessions for the PPT on the violations with impunity of human rights of migrant and refugee peoples have filled a week with activities organized at the University of Barcelona covering the topic of the situation of the refugees and migrants and the role of the universities in this context.
On July 5 and 6 the UB hosted the second meeting of the European institutions -members of the project Higher Education Supporting Refugees in Europe (inHere), which aims to help the refugees have access and integration to European universities.
On July 6, the University of Barcelona held a meeting for the Grup de Treball de Cooperació Universitària al Desenvolupament (Group on cooperation to development) of Vives University Network, coordinated by the UB Solidarity Foundation, aiming to share experiences and treat the current state of the initiatives and actions of universities in the Network within the framework of support to the refugees or people from conflict areas.
On July 7, within the mentioned framework of the inHERE project, the University of Barcelona held the conference The role of universities in the refugee crisis, which presented experiences of the reception of refugees in Spanish universities (including the UB) and offered a debate on opportunities, challenges and obstacles in the access and integration of these people into higher education.