HOLD THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ACCOUNTABLE FOR SERIOUS HUMAN RIGHTS CRIMES!
PLEASE JOIN US –
AT THE U.S-MEXICO BORDER SEPTEMBER 17-20 & IN MEXICO CITY, OCTOBER 14-16
AT SPECIAL EMERGENCY HEARINGS OF THE INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNAL OF CONSCIENCE OF PEOPLES IN MOVEMENT
MEXICO CITY HEARINGS WILL INCLUDE A CONTINENTAL FORUM:
LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN PEOPLE’S MOVEMENTS RESPOND TO THE U.S’ NEW IMPERIAL OFFENSIVE- RESISTANCE, SOLIDARITY, AND LIBERATION
Convened by the National Lawyers Guild, International Association of Democratic Lawyers, American Association of Jurists, and the People’s Movement for Peace and Justice, among others (please see details below)
REGISTRATION LINK FOR EL PASO/CIUDAD JUÁREZ, SEPT. 17-20: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc15Xq33aCdONNHeOnrMljfdqDtejuGiOdCfUNLyboG_to6Yw/viewform
DETAILS WILL BE POSTED SOON FOR MEXICO CITY, Oct.14-16
“The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the state of emergency in which we live is not the exception, but the rule”
-Walter Benjamin (Theses on the Philosophy of History, 1940)
Urgent Call for Special Hearings of the International Tribunal of Conscience of Peoples in Movement (ITCPM), 2026:
Trump régime on trial
Introduction
We call on all communities, peoples, organizations, families, movements, and individuals committed to the defense of democracy, the rule of law, the full realization of human rights and the rights of all peoples– without borders – to join us in convening a continental and global historic people’s trial of the most serious crimes of the U.S. regime of Donald Trump and his predecessors and accomplices, nationally and internationally.
The terror that the U.S has unleashed on the streets of Caracas, Teheran, and Beirut and threatened against the people of Cuba, Colombia, and Mexico is in essence and intent the same terror that has awakened unprecedented resistance on the streets of Minneapolis, LA and Chicago.
This community-based people’s tribunal process will begin during its first phase in the course of 2026, and will be built from below, through popular assemblies and preliminary hearings organized by sectors whose rights have been violated in each country, community, organization, and/or movement that decides to participate.
These assemblies and preliminary hearings will be organized thematically with the support of an organizing committee coordinated by the International Tribunal of Conscience (ITCPM), the People’s Movement for Peace and Justice (MPPJ), and the Coordinadora Americana por los Derechos de los Pueblos y Víctimas de la Prisión Política (American Coordinator for the Rights of Peoples and Victims of Political Imprisonment), together with other partners and allies, and will converge with their contributions, claims, and documentation in national and regional assemblies and hearings.
These assemblies, hearings, and processes to present claims and documentation will culminate in:
- A binational hearing– focused on issues related to the United States and Mexico- in El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez (Mexico) on September 17-20, 2026 and
- A continental hearing -focused on issues related to Latin America and the Caribbean and on a global scale, such as the case of genocide in Gaza and other current cases- to be held in Mexico City-Tenochtitlan on October 14, 15, and 16, 2026, as the conclusion of the first phase of this process, followed by global dissemination of the Tribunal’s findings on December 10, 2026(International Human Rights Day) and December 18, 2026 (International Migrant’s Day).
The hearing dates in Mexico City are timed to coincide with the UN’s observances of World Food Dayon October 16 and of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on October 17. This highlights the Tribunal’s commitment to the promotion and defense of economic, social, and cultural rights in addition to the civil and political rights which have been seriously eroded within the U.S and beyond as a result of the domestic and foreign policies imposed by the Trump régime and its allies.
Frames of Reference
The International Tribunal of Conscience (ITCPM) was born in October 2010 within the framework of the IV World Social Forum on Migration in Quito, Ecuador and held its first hearings in Mexico City in November of that same year.
The ITCPM is the first independent people’s tribunal of its kind to specialize in issues related to the rights of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees, and displaced persons (“peoples on the move“), and has collaborated closely with the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) since its inception.
This has included the participation of the ITCPM in the TPP process in Mexico between 2011 and 2014, culminating in its landmark opinions. We assume these findings and those of previous ITCPM processes referenced here as starting points for the 2026 process, in addition to all the relevant case law for each topic, sector, and country, as well as the best of the critical, interdisciplinary academic, political, social, and cultural reflection and literature regarding these issues in Latin America and on a global scale.
The ITCPM has also held special hearings in collaboration with the National Lawyers Guild and the International Association of Democratic lawyers (IADL) within the framework of cases such as that of Ayotzinapa (in New York City, 2015), and gain in solidarity with the arrival of the migrant caravans in Mexico City and the holding of the World Social Forum on Migration there in November 2018, within the framework of our coordination of the Civil Mission for the Observation and Defense of Human Rights in Peru in April 2023, and in the encampments in solidarity with the Palestinian people at universities and at community centers in the U.S in the spring of 2024, once again in collaboration with the National Lawyers Guild.
The Tribunal process during 2026 will have the Statute of the International Tribunal of Conscience (see below) as a frame of reference, in addition to the Statute of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT), the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples (or Algiers Declaration, 1976), Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, among other sources.
We will also bear in mind throughout this process the enduring inspiration of the Russell Tribunal’s judgments of first the war crimes and crimes against humanity of the United States in Vietnam in 1966-67 and then regarding the crimes of the military regimes imposed by U.S “National Security Doctrine” in Latin America in the 1970’s. These proceedings were grounded in the Nuremburg Principles.
Our frames of reference for this process also include all of the relevant norms of international law, international human rights law and Inter-American law, and of the legal systems of the states of the American continent and of the world, together with the normative systems of Indigenous peoples and communities of African descent, and of the intercultural ethical and moral principles that underpin the universal legal conscience of all of humanity in its most emancipatory sense.
Permanent Secretariat, International Tribunal of Conscience of Peoples in Movement/Tribunal Internacional de Conciencia de los Pueblos en Movimiento
https://tribunalpueblosenmovimiento.com
People’s Movement for Peace and Justice (PMPJ)/Movimiento de los Pueblos por la Paz con Justicia (MPPJ) (New York City)
https://pueblosxlapaz.org/home-en/
https://globalexchange.org/peoples-movement-for-peace-and-justice/
American Coordinator for the Rights of Peoples and Victims of Political Imprisonment/Coordinadora Americana por los Derechos de los Pueblos y Víctimas de la Prisión Política https://derechosdelospueblos.net/
American Association of Jurists/Asociación Americana de Juristas
https://asociacionamericanadejuristas.org/web/
National Lawyers’ Guild (NLG)
International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL)
Water Protector Legal Collective
https://www.waterprotectorlegal.org/
The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP)
https://blackallianceforpeace.com/#home-above-fold
Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide
Witness at the Border
https://witnessattheborder.org/
(incomplete list; full list available by request and soon online)
ALL RIGHTS FOR ALL, WITHOUT BORDERS
TODOS LOS DERECHOS PARA TODAS Y TODOS, SIN FRONTERAS
Statute of the International Tribunal of Conscience (ITCPM)
Objectives of the Tribunal
- To make visible, denounce, document and prosecute States, governments, companies, institutions, organizations and/or individuals involved in violations of the dignity and rights of migrants, refugees and displaced persons, and their families, communities, and peoples, in countries of origin, transit, and destination throughout the world
- within the framework of recurrent patterns of structural, state, and systemic violence
- b) including their rights to migrate, not to migrate, and not to be forcibly displaced, which together are the basis of the universal right to freedom of movement and/or transit, and/or to “human mobility” or ius migrandi (see Arts. 13 and 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948), and their right to remain in their communities and countries of origin, as an expression of their right to live a dignified life;
- To analyze illustrative cases of violations of the dignity and/or rights of migrants, refugees, and displaced persons, and their families, communities, and peoples;
- To determine the responsibility of state and/or corporate actors, in the light of:
- the minimums established by relevant international, regional, and national legal norms, both conventional, jurisprudential and customary, and their interpretation; and/or
- the ethical imperatives that underpin the demands of movements and peoples, and their insurgent legitimacy within the framework of the exercise of the right to rebellion, including mobility as a process of liberation;
- from the perspective of alternative law, including the right to universal citizenship, and/or of residence, and the right of peoples to an autonomous “life project of their own”, as recognized by the Statute of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, based on the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples (Declaration of Algiers, 4 July 1976), A 1-7
- d) the rights recognized and demands included in the Peoples’ Agreement adopted by the World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba on April 22, 2010, and in the Charter of Rights of Undocumented Workers adopted in Mexico on April 30, 1980, among other sources
- Recommend immediate, medium and long-term precautionary measures of justice, reparation, truth, and/or reconciliation applicable to each case, and to the systematic patterns and practices of injustice reflected in these cases
- To contribute not only to the enrichment of existing legal frameworks, but also to their expansion and critical deepening in terms of the recognition of rights, and to their counter-hegemonic transformation, “from below”
- To channel cases suitable for prosecution in the relevant international, regional and national legal and institutional spheres of advocacy and litigation, including articulation with convergent issues with other courts of conscience and related spaces
