Some Reflections on the Justiciability of the Peoples' Right to Peace
| Autor | Antônio Augusto Cançado Trindade |
| Ocupação do Autor | Juiz da Corte Internacional de Justiça (Haia) |
| Páginas | 269-291 |
XII
Some Reections on the Justiciability of the Peoples´
Right to Peace
I. Introduction: Two Significant Antecedents
The subject of the rights of peoples has already a relatively long history in
International Law. The right of peoples´ to peace, in particular, was retaken by the
United Nations, by an initiative of Cuba, in a ceremony held on 16 December 2009. I
had the honour to deliver, on the occasion, at the U.N. headquarters in Geneva, the
key-note address, acceding to a kind invitation of the United Nations. Shortly after-
wards, a summary of it has been published in a recent U.N. report1, but not the full
text of my pronouncement. I think that there can hardly be a more proper moment
to do so now that this U.N. report has been distributed and publicized worldwide by
the United Nations Organization itself.
In my aforementioned key-note address of 16 December 2010, at the United
Nations in Geneva, I began by recalling that two decades had already passed since I
addressed, in that same U.N. headquarters in Geneva, the U.N. Global Consultation on
the Right to Development as a Human Right. On that previous occasion, on the basis of
the 1986 U.N. Declaration on the Right to Development, I dwelt upon such concep-
tual aspects as the subjects, legal basis and contents of the right; its obstacles and
possible means of implementation; and its relationship to other human rights. Al-
though I think th at much of what I said in Geneva in 19902 would have a direct bear-
ing on the peoples’ right to peace, it was not my intention to go through that again
in the current exercise on the peoples’ right to peace.
Reference made to this antecedent, I recalled only that the 1990 U.N. Global
Consultation proved to be a worthwhile exercise3 following the 1986 U.N.
1 “[Key-Note Address by A.A. Cançado Trindade: Some Reflections on the Justiciability
of the Peoples´ Right to Peace – Summary]”, in U.N., Report of the Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights on the Outcome of the Expert Workshop on the Right of
Peoples to Peace (2009), doc. A/H RC/14/38, of 17.03.2010, pp. 9-11.
2 A.A. Cançado Trindade, Legal Dimensions of the Right to Development a s a Human Right:
Some Conceptual Aspects, U.N. doc. HR/R D/1990/CONF.36, of 1990 (U.N. Global Consultations
on the Right to Development as a Human Rig ht), pp. 1-17, esp. p. 13. And, for a detailed accou nt
of the aforementioned U.N. Global Consultation, cf. A.A. Cançado Trindade, Direito das
Organizações Internacionais, 4th. ed., Belo Horizonte/Brazil, Ed. Del Rey, 2009, pp. 289-312.
3 Cf. U.N. Centre for Human Rights, The Realizat ion of the Right to Development, N .Y.,
U.N., 1991, pp. 3-53.
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ANTÔNIO AUGUSTO CANÇADO TRINDADE
Declaration: in fact, in the decade following the formulation of this latter and the
1990 U.N. Global Consultation, the right to development found significant endorse-
ments in the final documents adopted by the U.N. World Conferences of the nine-
ties, which have brought it into the conceptual universe of International Human
Rights Law. This seemed to have been the understanding of the U.N. General As-
sembly decision 48/141 (of 20.12.1993, on the creation of the post of U.N. High Com-
missioner for Human Rights.), which, in its preamble, reaffirmed inter alia that “the
right to development is a universal and inalienable right which is a fundamental
part of the rights of the human person”.
Before turning to the peoples’ right to peace, I further briefly referred to a
second significant antecedent of the exercise of 16 December 2009, which promptly
also came to my memory. While the recent cycle of U.N. World Conferences was tak-
ing its course, I was privileged to integrate, in 1997, the UNESCO Group of Legal
Experts entrusted with the preparation of the Draft Declaration on the Human Right to
Peace (meetings of Las Palmas Island, February 1997; and of Oslo, June 1997). We
duly inserted the right to peace into the framework of International Human Rights
Law4, asserting peace as a right and a duty5. After the Las Palmas and Oslo meet-
ings, UNESCO launched consultations with 117 member States (Paris, March 1998),
at the end of which three main positions of the governmental experts became dis-
cernible: those fully in support of the recognition of the right to peace as a human
right, those who regarded it rather as a “moral right”, and those to whom it was an
“aspiration” of human beings6; the main d ifficulty, as acknowledged by the Report of
the Paris meeting, was its official recog nition as a legal right7.
It had become clear that that exercise as to the right to peace did not have the
same outcome as the one pertaining to the r ight to development. In other words, the
1984 U.N. Declaration on the Right of Peoples to Peace8 has not yet generated a sig-
nificant projection as the 1986 U.N. Declaration on the Right to Development. And
this, ironically, despite the fact that, in a historical perspective, the right to peace has
been deeply-rooted in human conscience for a much longer period than the right to
development (infra). The initiative by UNESCO was not the only exercise to that ef-
fect.
4 A.A. Cançado Trindade, “ The Right to Peace and the Conditions for Peace”, 21 Diálogo
– The Human Right to Peace: Seed for a Possible Future – U NESCO/Paris (June 1997)
pp. 20-21.
5 The document was prepa red as a contribution of U NESCO to the 50th anniversary (in
1998) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
6 UNESCO/Executive Board, Report by the Director-General on the Results of the
International Consultation of Governmental Experts on the Human Right to Peace (Final
Repo rt), document 154 EX/40, of 17.04.1998, p. 10.
7 Cf. ibid., pp. 2 and 10.
8 Annex to the U.N. General Assembly resolution 39/11, of 12 November 1984.
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