Léo Matarasso

in Peuples/Popoli/Peoples/Pueblos n.ro 8 (octobre 1986)

It was nearly ten years ago, on July fourth, 1976, that a number of leading figures, jurists, economists, politicians and leaders of National Liberation Movements gathered in Algiers, on the initiative of the Foundation for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples, and of the International league for the rights and liberation of Peoples, both animated, at that time, by the driving spirit of Lelio Basso, and there they proclaimed the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples.
This initiative was by no means lacking in authority, stemming as it did from persons to whom no one had granted a mandate to act. The experience gained over these ten years, however, has demonstrated that this document was appropriate.
It is true of course, that the very notion that peoples enjoy rights, at least that of determining their own destiny, was one of ancient date and had often been proclaimed in several national and international declarations. Yet it was only after the second world war, and above all in conjunction with the process of decolonisation, that the substance and the outlines of these rights began to be defined.
As Prof. Antonio Cassese has remarked, the Algiers Declaration must be credited with having “sought to gather together in an organic corpus a subject hitherto fragmented and disjointed by elaborating what one could call the Magna Charta of People’s”.
Since 1976 the Declaration has been translated into several languages and has spread throughout the world, it has been invoked both in Universities and in the claims put forward through the United Nations, primarily by our League. It has inspired the pronouncements of the Permanent Peoples Tribunal and even some official international texts.
The Athens meeting in no way seeks to revise or update the Declaration, its purpose is to bring it face to face with the current international scenario. The state of the world is no longer that of the I976 preamble, The experience gained by the peoples of the world over these last ten years needs close examination. The prospects for the future, too, require definition, to the extent to which this is humanly possible.
Certain problems stand out in starker relief than in 1976: hunger, foreign debt, war and peace. All these are matters that will lie dealt with, though particular attention will be given to an examination of the transition of Liberation Movements from fighting forces to institutions.
It is our earnest desire that this specimen of our bulletin should serve, through the participation of some of our friends in different countries, as a kind of preliminary contribution to the Athens Conference.

Matarasso, Léo

in: Peuples/Popoli/Peoples/Pueblos n.ro 8 (octobre 1986)