Léo Matarasso
in Peuples/Popoli/Peoples/Pueblos, n.ro 9 (avril 1987)
We are here today to celebrate the 10th anniversary of this event. But first I must remind you, as Lelio Basso did, that even before we were born, we already had a history.
Indeed, it was at the end of the third and last session of the Russell Tribunal II on Latin America that he launched in his closing speech his project to constitute at the same time the Foundation for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples and the International League for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples.
We have often been asked about the slight difference in the names of the two organisations: one deals with law, the other with rights. This difference can be explained by the diversity of objectives: the Foundation’s main aim is study and research, ELEC is an activist association.
As soon as it was set up, the Foundation and the League organised the Algiers Conference, which had been prepared by a working meeting of some jurists in Geneva. The initiative was not lacking in audacity.
We can say today that it has been fully successful.
Of course, the idea that peoples had rights, at least the right to self-determination, was not new and had often been proclaimed in national or international texts, but it was only after the Second World War and especially with the process of decolonization that the content and contours of these rights began to be defined.
As one commentator on the Declaration has written, the merit of its drafters lies in the fact that they “sought to unite, in an organic corpus, material that had hitherto been fragmentary and disarticulated, by drawing up what might be called the Magna Carta of the peoples”. Preceded by a preamble that sets out the historical context in which the Declaration was proclaimed, it comprises 30 articles written in a laconic style that avoids the cumbersome language of the United Nations.
The experience of the past ten years, which is the subject of the debates that are opening today, will, I am convinced, demonstrate the timeliness and accuracy of the Algiers Declaration.
I would now like to recall a few dates which mark the history of our League or which are common to our three organisations.
1- From 8 to 11 December 1977, ELEC held its first international congress in Barcelona.
The young Catalan league had been entrusted with the task of preparing it. Difficulties arose at the opening of the congress. An arbitrary decision of the Spanish Government prohibited the congress. We must remember that we were then only two years after the death of Franco. We ignored this ban and were obliged to meet in makeshift venues, the most prestigious of which was the monastery of Montserrat. Although this unfortunate ban undoubtedly hampered our work, the congress was no less a success in terms of both the number and quality of participants. It adopted the statutes of the International League and proceeded to the election of its international council. A commission of the congress studies the project of a permanent people’s tribunal.
2- On December 16, 1978, Lelio Basso died.
Some months earlier, a committee chaired by our friend François Rigaux had decided to pay tribute to Lelio Basso in the form of a volume of “Mélanges” to which authors from all over the world contributed. The book was to be presented to him on December 16, during a ceremony at the Capitol in Rome. The ceremony took place as planned, but without Lelio Basso, who had died that morning. The day before, he had been slightly ill in the Senate. He was put in hospital for observation. He fell asleep with the first copy of the large book of “Melanges” published in his honour in his hand. He did not wake up.
3- On April 1979, ELEC was recognized as a non-governmental organization (NGO) with consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
This will be the starting point of an important League activity that I will talk about later.
4- In June 1979 the constitutive session of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal was held in Bologna.
Our friend Gianni Tognoni will speak to you later about the work of the Tribunal. If I mention it, at this point of my speech, it is only to underline that with the constitution of the Tribunal we have completed the work undertaken during the life of Lelio Basso: An international Foundation, which has become the Lelio Basso Foundation, dedicated to in-depth study and research, not only on the rights of peoples but also on their liberation, a League with a worldwide vocation to work for the cause of peoples, a Universal Declaration proclaiming the fundamental rights of peoples and finally a permanent Tribunal to judge serious cases of violation of the rights of peoples and to denounce those responsible. We have a coherent system in which all the elements are perfectly articulated and complementary.
5- On June 11, 12 and 13, 1982, we held the 2nd International Congress of ELEC in Rome.
This Congress will primarily deliberate on new issues according to the following agenda:
The peoples in struggle for their liberation: but what liberation?
– People facing hunger
The peoples facing the danger of war.
Indeed, many things had changed in the world since the Barcelona Congress. The Barcelona Congress was held in a context of intensified and even victorious liberation struggles and, at the same time, of peaceful coexistence between the great powers. The Rome Congress was held at a time when the lessons of past and present liberation struggles were being considered, when famine and malnutrition were affecting a large part of the planet, when the danger of war was increasingly threatening all peoples. It was therefore natural that the League should deliberate on these questions. The Rome congress also made some changes to the statutes of ELEC so as to allow direct individual membership in countries where there is no national league and collective membership.
With these dates in mind, how can we summarize ELEC’s activities?
a) First of all, the national leagues have multiplied. Today we have regularly constituted leagues in ten countries (Belgium, Catalonia, Colombia, United States of America. France, Greece, Italy, Puerto Rico, Sweden, Switzerland). Even if we have to take into account the fact that we have individual correspondents in about fifty other countries, this is still clearly insufficient.
b) Our consultative status at the UN has enabled us to intervene on several occasions and on several cases at the Commission and Sub-Commission on Human Rights in Geneva and sometimes at the Decolonization Committee in New York. We have a permanent representative in Geneva, our valiant and efficient friend Véréna Graf and recently a representative in New York, our friend Bill Felice.
I will not list all the cases in which we have intervened, either in the form of oral interventions or in the form of written interventions. You will find them in the brochure that our League has prepared for this tenth anniversary.
In addition, ELEC was invited to and participated in the UN international conferences in Paris and on Palestine in Geneva, as well as in several seminars, such as the UN Committee on Namibia seminar in Georgetown, Guyana. She also participated in NGO conferences organized by the United Nations, including on Palestine and disarmament, and in the working group on indigenous peoples.
Our interventions focus on the rights of peoples. We try as much as possible to make the voice of peoples in struggle or of enslaved peoples heard in international forums.
c) I will not give you the list of colloquia, conferences or meetings organised by the International League or by national leagues. You will find it in the brochure I have just quoted. But what must be added is that, apart from the meetings organised by us, we have been invited to participate in and sometimes even to sponsor many international meetings. In particular, we have played an important role in the major European peace gatherings.
d) As for the works, brochures, bulletins etc. published, either by the International League or by national leagues, you will find a list in the brochure I quoted earlier.
In short, through our national sections, through our interventions at the UN, through the meetings we organize or sponsor, through our various publications, our League has succeeded in placing itself among the most highly regarded NGOs. It seems to me that this development is in line with the type of movement we defined at the Rome Congress. We recalled then that it was our duty to denounce violations of the rights of peoples wherever they occurred.
But we added that we could not limit ourselves to that, to act with regard to the rights of peoples as Amnesty International acts with regard to human rights.
We must also look for the political and now often strategic causes of these violations and, ultimately, the economic ones, so that we can tackle not only the effects but also the causes.
Does this mean that we must be what was called in 18th century France a thinking society? We must be that, but not only that. It is also our responsibility to take all the necessary initiatives in favour of the defence of the rights of peoples.
There are several non-governmental organizations dedicated to the defence of human rights, some of them with undeniable competence and effectiveness. But we are the only NGO devoted exclusively to the rights of peoples.
We are the only one who is able to combine action and reflection in this field.
This means that ELEC expects a lot from the lessons of this Athens conference. A better knowledge of the state of the world in 1986, of the situation of peoples struggling for their liberation, of the experience of those who have moved from struggle to state institutions, of the problems of foreign debt for which the peoples are ultimately paying the price, of the way in which the struggle against hunger, for peace, disarmament and non-alignment must be approached, all this will enable us to go further in our own struggles.
But ideas are not enough. It is still necessary to implement them and to become the great association for the rights of the peoples with a vocation to be present wherever it is possible in the world.
It is in the hope that your interest in our League will not remain unfulfilled that we begin the work of this important international meeting.