Courses of the People's Academy

People's Academy of International Law Courses and Seminars

The Charter, its genesis, essential principles and relevance today

      • Course 1A Recording: Course 1A of the People’s Academy: The UN Charter, its genesis, essential principles and relevance today
      • History of the Charter, the role and respective positions of the allied powers, and the antifascist resistance, controversial issues of its drafting including the absence of a right of peoples to self-determination
      • Aims and principles – Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms; UN definition of “rule of law”
      • Sovereign equality and non-intervention in domestic affairs
      • Prohibition of the Use of Force and exceptions, the possibility of restriction by Right to Peace
      • Multilateralism
      • Modes of conflict settlement between States

Course 1B: The UN charter: Global conflict resolution, Legal challenges to war, Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) Critiques.

Course 2A: The United Nations, the World Court, and Compliance with International Law 

      • Course 2A Recording: The United Nations, the World Court, and Compliance with International Law
      •  Organs
        • General Assembly (GA) and committees
        • Security Council (SC)
        • Secretary General
        • International Court of Justice (World Court, or ICJ)
        • Economic and Social Council
        • Trusteeship Council
      • Legal Status of SC and GA resolutions, nature of the veto (including the position
        of the ICJ regarding abstention)

Course 2B: UN Organs, Their Respective Roles and Competencies & Supporting People’s Struggles

Course 3A: Key UN Agencies: UNHRC, UNRWA and UNESCO

Course 3B: Monitoring and Implementation of Treaties to Defend People’s Rights

Course 4A: The Criminalization of Rights and Human Rights Defenders as a Means of Repression

Course 4B: The Criminalization of Rights and Human Rights Defenders as a Means of Repression

Course 5A: Individual and Collective Human Rights and Challenges to their Realizations – September 19 2024, register now

      • UN instruments
      • Regional instruments
      • Collective rights as source of individual rights
      • Right to development – why has it never become a legal right?
      • Right to water and food, right to be protected from famine
      • Right to a clean and healthy environment
      • Labour rights and the role of the ILO since 1919, as a result of the Russian Revolution
      • Protection of human rights by national and international jurisdictions (court decisions on right to peace – Japan, South Korea, Costa Rica)

Regional Systems (Inter-American, European, African)

International Law of Armed Conflict (“International Humanitarian Law”) and Refugee Law

      • The Geneva Conventions, its Protocols and other instruments, Ad Hoc Tribunals, International Criminal Court
      • Law of Refugees
      • Relationship between International Law of Armed Conflict (ILAC), International Human Rights Law (IHRL) and Domestic Law: The Example of Terrorism
      • Liberation and resistance movements and ILAC

International Crimes, Repression, and the fight against Impunity

      • Constituent elements of international crimes
      • The Nuremberg Charter and its critics
      • International Jurisdiction, Special Criminal Tribunals, International Criminal Court (how advocates can use complaint procedure)
      • Universal Jurisdiction

Liberation and emancipation struggles and international law

      • The Right to Rebellion, Resistance, etc in the context of the Right of Peoples to Self-Determination

The crisis of International Law and the crisis of the world capitalist system