The Charter, its genesis, essential principles and relevance today: Watch Part 1A, videos now available of full program in English, French and Spanish.

• • • 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. REGISTER HERE.

• • • Course 1B on Wednesday, December 6, 2023. 
    • Faculty members: 

      • Richard Falk former UN special rapporteur on occupied Palestinian territories

      • Inder Comar sued George W. Bush in US federal court for illegality of Iraq war

      • Sujith Xavier Third World Approaches to International Law

      • Roberto Zamora filed successful lawsuit in Costa Rica for illegality of Iraq war

    • Register here: https://peoplesacademy.net/register

The UN organs and their respective roles and competencies

• • • 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)

Main Subsidiary Organs and Specialized Agencies

• • • Human Rights Council (HRC) and its specialized mandates
    • World Health Organization (WHO)
    • International Labour Organisation (ILO)
    • World Bank
    • International Monetary Fund (IMF)
    • UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
    • World Trade Organization

Human Rights and Peoples’ Rights

• • • Sources of International Law (Article 38 ICJ Statute)
    • 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