Interview
Gianni Tognoni: Europe forgot its human rights obligations toward migrants
‘We must overcome a vision of international law that is stuck on the issue of borders when the phenomenon itself is transversal. Beyond its various particular manifestations, the Migrant People must become a collective subject of law.’
The severity and persistence of human rights violations against migrants is now systematic, proof of a transnational regime of institutionalized violence. This regime manifests through the increasing militarization of borders and the systematic use of force; the proliferation of detention sites, often outside any legal framework; the criminalization of solidarity through legal proceedings or administrative pressure; and the institutional spread of racist and xenophobic discourse that further fuels stigmatization and repression.
The indictment presented at the opening of the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal (PPT) session in Palermo held from October 23-25, entitled “Human rights violations against migrants by the Maghreb states, the European Union, and its member states,” makes an unassailable case. We spoke about it with the Tribunal's Secretary-General, Gianni Tognoni.
Why has the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal chosen once again to hold a new session on migrants, following the 2017 session in Palermo and the others that led to a conclusive presentation to the EU?
Migrants remain at the center of a national and international focus that is exclusively concentrated on repression, without any concrete, positive proposals that would guarantee their fundamental right to life and to a future. Together with the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, migrants are an intolerable indicator of the failure of our societies and of international law to respect minimum standards of civilization. We are witnessing a radical crisis in the role of international law to prevent crimes of inhumanity. With this 56th session, which addresses one of the most critical areas of this global phenomenon – the Maghreb – we intend to revisit the issue of the “migrant people,” who are exposed to an additional risk of invisibility amid wars and genocides. We aim not only to fully outline the severity of their situation – in a way that is not fragmented by country or focused on the most dramatic episodes, as if it were all a 'normal' part of a repetitive news cycle – but to put it forward once more as a political, cultural, and legal priority on the European and African agendas.
But what jurisdiction can be given to these subjects whose rights are being denied?
One of the fundamental challenges is to envision a true “Migrant People,” not just a sum of individuals randomly converging in “flows” of varying intensity. This is a crossroads of international geopolitical challenges. It is essential to integrate the current legal strategy – which is focused (and thankfully, often effective as such) on specific cases of violations that are truly ongoing “crimes against humanity” – with the same level of attention, broad and contextualized, on the EU's repression, which sees these people as populations to be “discarded,” and on the policies of the Maghreb states, in order to systematically uncover the interconnected responsibilities. We must overcome a vision of international law that is stuck on the issue of borders when the phenomenon itself is transversal. Beyond its various particular manifestations, the Migrant People must become a collective subject of law. This is not only to punish those responsible for violations, but to open up a horizon of hope and restore the law's function as a guarantor of the future. The scenario presented in the PPT's “forum for speaking out” (which by definition is not a criminal trial) must be seen as a challenge aimed at the many scenarios which, at a global level, require the law, and more profoundly cultures, to think of the right arising from the identity of being human as the only true legal title, which is inviolable and cannot be downgraded into a variable dependent on the often-violent defense of borders that are increasingly an expression of neo-colonialisms, whether economic, financial or military.
The Maghreb countries are accused of very serious human rights violations, but so is the European Union, since it is at the origin of the north-south chain of command of the violations of the rights of migrants in the states in which they are being pushed back and through which they transit.
Europe is going through a dramatic period of amnesia regarding its own constitutional and civilizational commitments, with unthinkable rearmament policies that are invading all institutional and communication spheres. This is done in the name of a “security” logic that needs to see – or rather create – enemies to justify endless investments. Like wars, migrants have also become part of a market where private actors – the producers of a technological world of generalized and permanent surveillance – are the allies of nation-states, setting the development models and strategies of entire countries. As fully documented in the reports of the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, the apartheid and genocide of the Palestinian people have revealed the close continuity and complementarity, in terms of repressive “effectiveness,” of private and public actors. Palestine has concentrated, in one place, the same violence and violations being perpetrated against migrants, and has offered proof, day after day, of the impotence of our societies and the International Criminal Court to defend populations that the dominant powers on this “market,” up to the level of the UN, decide to declare enemies, terrorists, others, invaders…
What can we do?
Law is a product of history; its rules evolve according to cultural models. Today, sultans, sovereigns and slavery have returned under different names or with different means, and the hollowing out of universal law is accelerating. We must defend at all costs the fundamental assertion of that universal right introduced 80 years ago: that all humans, without distinction, are inviolable subjects – not optionally – of the same rights: to a life of dignity. Rebuilding what has been de facto destroyed and whose destruction remains unpunished is not easy. Not even to think about. It is like the reconstruction of Gaza. The Tribunal is, by definition, a small actor: it can give a name to the responsibilities for commission and omission; it can highlight and “shout out,” on behalf of the many silenced, tortured and disappeared victims, that their lives were not a “collateral effect” to be forgotten, but a seed, a memory for the future. The judgments of a Tribunal “of the peoples” are tools. Starting points. Indicators of priorities. They are a radical condemnation of the one crime against humanity that underpins all others: the programmed, pursued, imposed and unpunished inequality of those who are labeled as “different” and must be defended against by any means necessary.
What are the next steps after this unique session?
As mentioned, a PPT is a tool entrusted first and foremost to those who requested it. The declaration delivered here will, in a few months, become a formal, structured and documented judgment. Will it become a permanent platform for the Maghreb countries to continue their journey in a coordinated way? A tool for dialogue and political pressure on the European Union? It will be up to the peoples who requested and enabled this event to make it a project of inquiry. The Maghreb, as a regional entity for the “export” and transit of migrants, is a permanent issue made “invisible” that ought to have a common voice. This is not a simple project. But in the name of the witnesses who represented the many who have been killed in the war recounted in this session, we are reminded of its necessity.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/per-il-popolo-migrante-non-punizioni-ma-un-orizzonte-di-speranza on 2025-11-04