International Affairs and World Peace

THE INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS AND WORLD PEACE SECTION is committed to ensuring that the people of Africa, the African Diaspora, and all other oppressed peoples throughout the world enjoy the fundamental human right of self-determination. During NCBL's earliest years, the Section spearheaded campaigns against apartheid in South Africa, and oppressive, racist settler regimes that occupied Mozambique, Angola, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. As these illegal regimes were driven from power, NCBL broadened its focus and began to champion the right to self-determination of the people of Palestine and Northern Ireland. As people's wars of liberation succeeded in removing oppressive regimes in Nicaragua and Grenada, NCBL stood in solidarity with the new governments and challenged through litigation and other forms of advocacy military intervention into these countries by the U.S. NCBL has a longstanding tradition of standing in solidarity with the people of Cuba against continuing threats to its territorial integrity. When the U.S. and France engineered the kidnapping of Haiti's democratically elected President Jean Bertrand-Aristide in 2004, NCBL submitted legal memoranda to regional governments, and also filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court.

THE SECTION'S focus has turned in recent years to controversies surrounding campaigns to return to indigenous people land that was stolen during European colonization of the Southern African region. This issue has received the most attention in Zimbabwe, where the Zimbabwean government developed a plan for land redistribution that came under heavy attack by England and the U.S. In response, NCBL developed position papers and resolutions in support of the right of indigenous people to recover land taken by colonial powers. This effort also led to an ongoing project by the Section to draft, distribute and discuss a model code (law) that can be used by African governments to redistribute land, and also to maintain control of the people's traditional knowledge, and valuable natural resources like oil. The Section looks toward continuing its efforts to arrest domination and exploitation of Africa's wealth by foreign business interests, and a also to challenge the unscrupulous practices of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and others who claim that African countries that have been the victims of centuries of exploitation are somehow indebted to western capitalist interests.