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Gaza Tribunal in Sarajevo Demands End to Palestinian Genocide, Zionism and Impunity
The Gaza Tribunal in Sarajevo, Bosnia, took place over three days from May 26 to 29, 2025. This was the second of three sessions of the Gaza Tribunal, the first of which was held in London in November 2024. The tribunal is led by Richard Falk, international law expert and former UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967. The aim of the Gaza Tribunal is to provide a platform for the comprehensive examination of legal, ethical, and geopolitical dimensions of the ongoing crises in the Gaza Strip through the lens of international law and human rights. Although it lacks official standing within the UN or other international fora and the capacity to enforce international law, the Tribunal follows in the tradition of other "people's tribunals" from Vietnam to Iraq held to hold those responsible for crimes to account according to the demands of international law.
In his opening remarks Professor Falk noted: "The Gaza tribunal is devoted to bearing witness to Israel's crimes against the peoples of Gaza. Beyond this, the purpose of the tribunal is to add whatever it can to the torment and outrage of people around the world to bring the Gaza ordeal of death and destruction to a rapid end by urging action to be taken in the name of our common humanity."
The Gaza Tribunal was held at Sarajevo International University. It included sessions on the political economy of genocide and Gaza's destruction, the crime of starvation, the role of the international system in the age of genocide, people's tribunals, the destruction of Gaza's civilian infrastructure and the criminalization of student protests. It heard from legal scholars, human rights experts, journalists, and survivors to bring attention to grave breaches of international law and human conscience.
One of the opening speakers, Dr. Nimer Sultany, a law professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, condemned what he described as a global reluctance to name Palestine's colonial reality.
He told the tribunal: "Palestine is a clear case in which the naming of the colonial condition has been delayed, or avoided, for so long. For too long."
Sultany accused Western governments of complicity in Gaza's destruction by failing to act, and warned against revisionist narratives that portray recent Israeli statements as anomalies.
"Israeli officials have not suddenly become extreme," he said. "They have long shaped and supported the war policy."
Other testimony came from Dr. Thaer Ahmad, a Palestinian-American physician who worked at Nasser Hospital in Gaza earlier this year. He described "mass casualty events happening multiple times a day," with most victims being women and children. Dr. Ahmad said: "There is no hospital in the United States, no hospital in Chicago, that would have been able to function had they seen the same volume that was being seen at Nasser hospital."
He also shared his experience of treating victims of airstrikes, building collapses, and gunfire, noting that much of Khan Younis was being "systematically levelled."
Heidi Matthews, Assistant Professor of Law at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Toronto, pointed out that there is a disproportionate killing of women and children in Gaza and an organized effort to prevent the birth of Palestinian children. Professor Matthews pointed out that on average 21.3 women are killed every day. She also provided evidence of the effects of forced displacement on women, especially pregnant women and post-partum and lactating mothers, with 60,000 pregnant women repeatedly displaced. She also noted Israel's direct targeting of women and children by the destruction of sexual and reproductive health care facilities, hospital maternity wards, as well as the use of starvation as a weapon of war which has resulted in 4,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women suffering from severe malnutrition and the number of children suffering acute malnutrition which has increased by more than 80 per cent in March alone.
Professor Maryam Jamshidi, a legal scholar at the University of Colorado, explained that Israel is carrying out a "systematic and deliberate" assault on the core rules of international humanitarian law (IHL). She said Israel has violated all four principles meant to protect civilians in war -- distinction, military necessity, proportionality, and humanity -- and that this disregard for the law is central to its genocidal strategy.
Jamshidi cited Israel's designation of "the entirety of North Gaza as a military objective" and noted that 80 per cent of the Strip is now treated as a no-go zone. She noted that this strategy "depends on the holistic dismantling of IHL's civilian protection rules in order to destroy the conditions of life necessary to the Palestinian people's survival."
Following its Sarajevo session, the Gaza Tribunal issued its Declaration. It will continue to gather evidence, testimonials and expert statements for the third and final session of the Gaza Tribunal to be held in October 2025 in Istanbul where a "Jury of Conscience" will present its findings.
For the text of the Sarajevo Declaration click here. Please read and distribute widely.
(With files from Palestine Chronicle, New Arab, Gaza Tribunal)
This article was published in
Volume 55 Number 12 - June 11, 2025
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2025/Articles/TS55121.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca