Gaza Tribunal holds 1st session in Sarajevo to investigate Israel's ongoing war crimes

The Gaza Tribunal, a people's tribunal serving as an independent initiative with humanitarian and moral objectives to investigate Israel's ongoing war crimes in Gaza, has held its first public session in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Under the leadership of Richard Falk, the former UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, the Gaza Tribunal opened in Sarajevo on Monday, and is scheduled to hold its sessions through May 29.

It will address key issues and various topics, such as settler-colonial genocide, frameworks of genocide, apartheid, forced population transfer, civilian protection, deficiencies within the UN system, and the criminalization of protests.

As a component of the program, panels will take place on Political Realism and Contemporary Geopolitics, as well as the Political Economy of Genocide, in addition to a special session named From Srebrenica to Gaza.

On the concluding day, the Sarajevo Declaration, which has been developed with input from all attendees and participants, will be unveiled to the public.

The tribunal is being organized with the assistance of the Islamic Cooperation Youth Forum, which brings together 66 member entities, comprising 50 national youth organizations and 16 minority Muslim youth groups.

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“It has become obvious that the UN lacks the capacity to override the genocidal support provided by the United States. The Gaza Tribunal draws on the legacy of the Russell Tribunal and the Iraq War Tribunal,” Falk said at the opening ceremony.

Falk called the tribunal “a response to the failure of organized international society to enforce international law and hold perpetrators accountable.”

"The UN has been blocked by the complicity of North American and European democracies,” he added.

Michael Lynk, a Canadian legal scholar and former UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories from 2016 to 2022, also said, “Nowhere else in the world had a state deployed a medieval siege such as Israel’s blockade of Gaza. How has the genocide been permitted to go on for 19 months? We could ask the same question about how the economic straitjacket was allowed to go on for 18 years previous.”

He added, “Gaza was an open-air prison; today it is an open-air cemetery. As Bertrand Russell said before his death, every Israeli expansion is an experiment to discover how much more aggression the world will tolerate.”

Dr. Mimi Syed, an American emergency physician who served in both Nasser and Al-Aqsa hospitals in Gaza, shared soul-searing accounts of murdered children, patients dying from preventable illnesses, and hospitals operating without water or electricity.

She described entire wards filled with pediatric patients, mass graves near hospital courtyards, and families going days without food.

Dr. Syed denounced the systematic targeting of Gaza’s medical infrastructure, including direct Israeli attacks on ambulances and hospitals. She also called out the silence of US institutions and demanded an end to arms transfers.

“Starvation should never be used as a weapon,” she said, urging Americans to stop normalizing the destruction of Palestinian life.

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Professor Maryam Jamshidi, a legal scholar at the University of Colorado, explained how Israel is carrying out a “systematic and deliberate” assault on the core rules of international humanitarian law.

She said Israel has violated all four principles meant to protect civilians in war —distinction, military necessity, proportionality, and humanity — and that this disregard is central to its genocidal strategy.

The Gaza Tribunal was officially inaugurated in London in November 2024 by a coalition comprising academics, intellectuals, human rights advocates, and representatives from civil society organizations, in reaction to what they characterize as “the complete failure of the organized international community to enforce international law” in Gaza.

Subsequent to the assembly in Sarajevo, the tribunal intends to convene its final hearing session in Turkey's most significant metropolis of Istanbul next October.

During that event, a Jury of Conscience, which includes experts in the fields of law, culture, politics, and civil society, will present a draft of the tribunal’s findings and decisions, and will draw on testimonies from witnesses and statements from Palestinians affected by the Gaza crisis.

At least 53,977 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, and another 122,966 individuals injured in the brutal Israeli military onslaught on Gaza since October 7, 2023.

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants last November for Netanyahu and former minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant, citing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the besieged coastal territory.

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