Information Sheet and Call for Participation

1. What do we aim for with a Human Rights Tribunal on violations with impunity of the human rights to health of migrants and refugees?

“As Co-Convenors of the 45th session of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, we are aware of the challenges raised by the strategies of resistance and the alternatives that migrant and refugee peoples are building, despite their exclusion in “non-rights zones”. We will continue working on the demands formulated during the PPT hearing process and strengthening our alliances to converge towards a new era of transnational action and solidarity.” (Transnational Migrant Platform)

With the Berlin Hearing of the 45th session of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, we want to raise awareness for Human Rights violations with impunity, particularly in the field of health. In order to do so, we are organising a civil society tribunal from the 23rd to the 25th of October 2020, where testimonies of survivors will be presented as well as an indictment, which will provide a political framework for future jurisdictions. Currently, we are looking for organisations and individuals willing to support the Tribunal and to make the “non-rights-zones” within the German and European border regime visible by assisting us in the collection of testimonies.

The collected testimonies will partly be presented in front of the Tribunal’s jury, to link the individual’s experience with the structural discriminatory and unjust policies in Europe and Germany, and/or will be published on the Tribunal’s blog “Equal Health 4 All”.

Specific objectives of the PPT process include:

• Receive and document rigorously the testimonies of migrant and refugee communities, and include their proposals to advance a rights-based approach and an alternative framework to counter injustice.
• Make human rights violations against migrants and refugees visible and shed light on the experienced injustices.
• Analyse jointly the root causes (including trade and investment agreements, global extractivism as well as the global production and labour chain) of forced displacement of migrants and refugees.
• Determine the responsibilities of governments, including the European Union and other official European bodies.
• Focus on the role of transnational corporations in the global labour chain, as well as in the border regimes, and in the context of detention and deportation.

 

2. How to participate in the Tribunal?

In order to participate please regard the following requirements and information:

• The witness or witnesses chosen to testify must have experienced Human Rights violations and should be willing to state his*her or their experience in front of the Tribunal’s Jury or/and willing to share their/his*her experience. This can also been done anonymously.
• The witness or witnesses can be addressed through a (professional) person of trust and/or an organisation. The testimony or testimonies will be collected in an interview situation. However, to help increase the attention devoted to the Tribunal, it is further possible to send in an audio or video file (MP4 format), a pdf-document with a text in interview form or a letter produced by the witness*es and supporters. This material may be published on the Tribunal’s blog.

Please read carefully the “Guideline For The Collection of Human Stories” before starting to collect the testimonies. Further, use the “Testimonies Collection Form” to write down the received information during the interview and send them to the following email address ppt_berlin[at]riseup.net.

Please do not hesitate to contact us under the same e-mail if you need any further information or assistance!