The role of the Permanent People’s Tribunal in the face of ecogenocide in Cerrado

Abstract

This paper seeks to understand how the Permanent Peoples Tribunal, in its structure and organisation, articulates the notions of rights violations, vulnerabilities and justice, based on the subversion of the notion of victim (active), memory (which challenges history) and justice (concrete and symbolic). To do this, we start with case number 49, also known as the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal in Defence of the Cerrado Territories, which was conducted in 2021 and 2022 in Brazil. The theoretical framework is based on studies of the criminality of the powerful and environmental justice from a decolonial perspective. We also articulate the theoretical tools brought by Achille Mbembe and Judith Butler. The work is structured in three parts. In the first part, we look at the creation of the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal and describe the case of the Cerrado Tribunal. We then discuss the case from the point of view of the concept of necropolitics in order, finally, to bring notions of resistance into line with some of the postulates of transitional justice.

Keywords

• Permanent People’s Tribunal
• human rights
• environmental victimisation
• eco-genocide
• decoloniality
• necropolitics