Mission Statement

Our mission is to use dignified diplomacy to encourage the negotiation and adoption of a new treaty that establishes peace as a fundamental human right. The new treaty will fill a gaping void in the scheme of the international bill of actionable rights. “Actionable” because the envisaged treaty will be enforceable rather than declaratory, as it stands currently in the Declaration of the Right to Peace adopted by the UN General Assembly. 

In international law, declarations of international organisations are not enforceable: treaties are. The right to peace needs to be converted into a treaty right so that victims of wars of aggression and other unlawful armed conflicts can actually enforce, through civil claims, their right to peace against the authors and accomplices of violence. 

The founder and management team have direct experience in recognising where the treaty right to peace can give hope to people who experience peace violations through acts of aggression, war and other violations of human rights, especially the rights to life, liberty and security of the person.

What We Are

The Right to Peace Project is a nonprofit organisation that seeks to make the basic human right to peace a treaty right. As it is, the right to peace is only a declaratory right because it is not backed up by an actionable treaty. The mission of the Right to Peace Project is to use dignified diplomacy to encourage the negotiation and adoption, by the UN General Assembly, of a new treaty that establishes peace as a fundamental human right. 

Our Goal

With the adoption of a universal, actionable treaty right to peace, innocent victims of wars of aggression and violence would have the right to pursue civil remedy against any head of state, supporter or terrorist actor who has caused that person to suffer damage as a result of a breach of their right to peace.

Why We Are Different

Over the years, other bodies, including the Advisory Committee of the Human Rights Council, have pursued a United Nations Declaration on the right to peace. However, there has not yet been a definition narrow enough to define what constitutes a person’s right to peace, therefore the effort has been stalled. In addition, the scope of the drafts have been too broad and too inclusive, ranging from the prohibition of the threat of force, conscientious objection to military service, rights to education, racial and gender discrimination, to environmental protection, and so on. In contrast, the scope of the Right to Peace Project is very narrow and specific. The Right to Peace Project seeks only to have the international community negotiate and adopt a treaty that imposes a direct civil remedy upon those who commence wars, and their accomplices and facilitators, thereby violating the right to peace of the victims of those wars, whether it be an international war of aggression or an internal armed conflict.

Who We Are

We can make an impact. The founder and president of the Right to Peace Project, Dr. Chile Eboe-Osuji, former justice and president of the International Criminal Court (ICC), directs operations from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. As president of the ICC, he regularly met and worked with policy decision-makers, heads of state, and heads of government. His experience spans across various UN diplomatic bodies, as legal advisor for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and as a prosecutor for the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. He knows the diplomatic community and is well known internationally. His experience in negotiation and knowledge of international law are leveraged to meet the goals of the project, through the use of dignified diplomacy to encourage negotiation and adoption of the treaty.

Why Our Work Matters

In the normal course of conflict, wars are waged, sometimes for months and sometimes for decades, leaving swathes of destruction in their wake. In the end, peace agreements are made, the parties shake hands and essentially “go home.” But lives are wrecked for innocent civilians, who had nothing to do with the decision to start the war. Something needs to be done, first to deter wars of aggression from starting in the first place, and second, to compensate the innocent casualties of war, who have lost loved ones, property, livelihoods, and even homelands. A ratified treaty right to peace is the solution. 

Deterrence

A fully enacted right to peace has enormous benefits beyond the immediate remedy of compensation for victims. Warmongers and accomplices all over the world will know that they run the risk of personal civil liability, exposing their assets to reparation claims. Personal financial liability will act as a deterrent that can put a stop to the chronic incidence of armed conflicts, as we see in Ukraine, Syria, South Sudan, and Yemen, to name a few. 

The Endgame

The endgame of this mission is to give victims of aggression the ability to regain their dignity after suffering losses due to the belligerence of others and to deter future wars of aggression, by creating a risk of personal civil liability against the aggressors. And in the event of an occurrence of aggression, the victims have a viable recourse to judicial compensation, in national courts around the world. 

The Right to Peace Project nonprofit organisation will engage in fundraising activities to raise the capital needed to support engagement with high-level diplomats and heads of state, and to raise public awareness in the initiative to have the right to peace for all human beings, a right that is guaranteed by a ratified treaty.