The Gaza Tribunal: Creating an Archive Against Genocide

This episode of Speaking Out of Place is being recorded on May 15, 2025, the 77th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba, which began the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land. We talk with Lara Elborno, Richard Falk, and Penny Green, three members of the Gaza Tribunal, which is set to convene in Saravejo in a few days.  This will set in motion the process of creating an archive of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people with an aim to give global civil society the tools and inspiration it needs to further delegitimize Israel, end its genocidal acts, help bring about liberation for the Palestinian people.

Lara Elborno is a Palestinian-American lawyer specialized in international disputes, qualified to practice in the US and France. She has worked for over 10 years as counsel acting for individuals, private entities, and States in international commercial and investment arbitrations. She dedicates a large part of her legal practice to pro-bono work including the representation of asylum seekers in France and advising clients on matters related to IHRL and the business and human rights framework. She previously taught US and UK constitutional law at the Université de Paris II - Panthéon Assas. She currently serves as a board member of ARDD-Europe and sits on the Steering Committee of the Gaza Tribunal. She has moreover appeared as a commentator on Al Jazeera, TRTWorld, DoubleDown News, and George Galloway's MOAT speaking about the Palestinian liberation struggle, offering analysis and critiques of international law.

Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University (1961-2001) and Chair of Global Law, Faculty of Law, Queen Mary University London. Since 2002 has been a Research Fellow at the Orfalea Center of Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Between 2008 and 2014 he served as UN Special Rapporteur on Israeli Violations of Human Rights in Occupied Palestine.

Falk has advocated and written widely about ‘nations’ that are captive within existing states, including Palestine, Kashmir, Western Sahara, Catalonia, Dombas.

He is Senior Vice President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, having served for seven years as Chair of its Board. He is Chair of the Board of Trustees of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. He is co-director of the Centre of Climate Crime, QMUL.

Falk has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize several times since 2008.

His recent books include (Re)Imagining Humane Global Governance (2014), Power Shift: The New Global Order (2016), Palestine Horizon: Toward a Just Peace (2017), Revisiting the Vietnam War (ed. Stefan Andersson, 2017), On Nuclear Weapons: Denuclearization, Demilitarization and Disarmament (ed. Stefan Andersson & Curt Dahlgren, 2019.

Penny Green is Professor of Law and Globalisation at QMUL and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. She has published extensively on state crime theory, resistance to state violence and the Rohingya genocide, (including with Tony Ward, State Crime: Governments, Violence and Corruption, 2004 and State Crime and Civil Activism 2019). She has a long track record of researching in hostile environments and has conducted fieldwork in the UK, Turkey, Kurdistan, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Israel, Tunisia, Myanmar and Bangladesh. In 2015 she and her colleagues published ‘Countdown to Annihilation: Genocide in Myanmar’ and in March 2018