This Treaty Locks in 2029. Have You Heard of It?
On the Crimes Against Humanity Convention.
Good morning team,
This week, I returned from Tucson and immediately tracked several meetings: The 51st Universal Periodic Review, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, and yesterday the…here it comes: First Preparatory Committee for the United Nations Conference of Plenipotentiaries on Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Humanity.
Before I unload about the latter, let me tell you something that might sting most of us a little.
Right now, while most are planning your UNPFII agenda, figuring out which side-event will get the most traction, booking flights, checking the cheapest hotels, and debating which statement will perform best, not knowing there’s a brand new global treaty being negotiated that will define how the international system responds to mass violence for the next fifty years. If you’ve never heard of it, you’re not alone.
That’s exactly the problem.
The rooms where this treaty is being written are open right now. The text is still soft. States are not yet arguing over definitions, victim rights, jurisdiction. And Indigenous Peoples are barely in the building.
Prepare for some tough love from someone who watched our people show up many times to the plenary with powerful statements while states already wrote the rules in informal sessions the year before.
Why This Treaty Matters More Than UNPFII
Here’s what we have in international law right now:
Genocide Convention
Geneva Conventions for war
Rome Statute for the ICC
Here’s what we don’t have: A dedicated global treaty that forces every state to prevent and punish crimes against humanity. To change their domestic laws. To cooperate across borders. To actually protect victims.
That’s the gap this convention is meant to fill.
Think about crimes against humanity as the highest level of systematic violence. Widespread attacks against civilians. Persecution. Forced displacement. Disappearances. Gender-based violence. Not random abuse, but policy. Not isolated incidents, but patterns.
Now here’s the question I need you to sit with.
When diplomats and legal experts picture “crimes against humanity,” what do they see?
Military juntas
Civil wars
Urban repression
Torture in detention centers
All real. All terrible.
But how often are they picturing our realities?
Long-term campaigns of forced relocation
Systematic destruction of lands, waters, sacred sites that make survival as a people impossible
Patterns of sexual violence against Indigenous women and girls tied to resource extraction
Indigenous land defenders disappearing year after year with total impunity
These are crimes against humanity. They fit the legal definition perfectly. But they don’t look like what’s in the diplomats’ mental frame. They don’t match the images in the textbooks. They happen slowly, quietly, under the cover of “development” and “national security” and “resource projects.”
And if we’re not in the room shaping that frame, if we’re not there with language and examples and specific proposals, we’re choosing to live with whatever others decide for us.
Again.
The Timeline You Didn’t Know About
Let me break this down so it’s clear.
2019: The International Law Commission adopts Draft Articles. This is the skeleton of the future treaty.
2019 to 2024: States argue about whether to even start negotiations. Classic UN. Lots of foot-dragging. Some countries actively blocking. Others pushing hard.
Late 2024: The General Assembly’s legal committee finally agrees to move from “discussing” to “negotiating.” That’s huge. That’s the shift from talk to action.
December 2024: Resolution 79/122 gets adopted. The roadmap is set. Working group. Preparatory committee. Then diplomatic conferences in 2028 and 2029.
Right now, 2026: The preparatory committee is meeting in New York. States are refining the text based on their proposals. This is when the treaty’s DNA gets written.
Are you still with me?
We are at the moment when the text is still changeable.
The definition of crimes
The rights of victims
How jurisdiction works
What happens to officials who claim immunity
Who gets to participate in the negotiations at all
All of it is being debated right now.
And here’s what I see in our movement: 99% of the energy going to “What are we doing at UNPFII this year?” and maybe 1% going to “How do we get into treaty negotiations?”
That’s a misalignment.
That’s not a strategy problem. That’s a behavior problem.
What’s Being Fought Over Right Now
Let me give you the specific battlegrounds. These should ring very loud bells for us.
Which acts count as “crimes against humanity”? There are debates about persecution, enforced disappearance, slavery-like practices, and gender-based violence. States are arguing about scope. That’s where our realities either get included or erased.
How strong are victims’ rights? Groups are pushing for explicit rights to participation, information, protection, and real reparations. Not vague language. Not symbolic gestures. Actual standing in actual proceedings. This is about whether Indigenous victims can participate meaningfully or just get mentioned in preambles nobody reads.
What jurisdiction will states have? How far does universal jurisdiction go? Will states be obliged to prosecute or extradite? Will they cooperate across borders when the perpetrators are powerful and the victims are Indigenous?
How do immunities work? Will senior officials be shielded? Will the treaty push back against immunity claims? This matters when the people ordering the violence are the same people hiding behind state sovereignty.
Who gets to participate in the negotiations? There was already a fight in late 2024 about limiting NGO and civil society access to the process. Sound familiar? The pattern of closing doors right when Indigenous voices might matter most.
Every single one of these issues directly shapes whether Indigenous Peoples can realistically seek accountability when states or corporations orchestrate violence against us.
If you care about land defenders disappearing, women being targeted, communities being displaced by policy, this treaty is about you.
Even if nobody sent you an invitation.
Strategy or Behavior?
You’d be absolutely stunned how many people want a strategy. Or worse, think they have a strategy. But not willing to change their behavior, even when they need to.
Let me show you the difference.
Strategy is hosting a side-event on accountability at UNPFII.
Behavior is tracking the CAH process, building a small working group, and being present at every major step for four years.\
Or.
Strategy is pushing for a strong paragraph on crimes in the UNPFII recommendations.
Behavior is sitting with legal experts, understanding the Draft Articles, and identifying exactly which provisions need to reflect Indigenous realities.
Strategy feels good. You can put it in a grant report. You can tweet about it. You can post a clip of you on Facebook with the caption “Speaking truth to power”
Behavior is different. Behavior is showing up to the boring meetings. Reading the legal text when nobody’s watching. Building relationships with state missions before anyone realizes this treaty matters.
Behavior is what actually moves the needle.
Here’s the pattern I see, check if you’re guilty of some:
You over-invest in peak events and under-invest in the negotiations that matter
You obsess over what to say on stage but spend almost no time asking what states are actually negotiating
You focus on strategy for the next COP instead of behavior that consistently places you where the rules are being written earliest
If your energy is 99% “what are we doing at UNPFII?” and 1% “how do we insert ourselves in the CAH negotiations for the next three years?” that’s backwards.
You can’t complain five years from now that the crimes against humanity treaty doesn’t reflect Indigenous realities if you weren’t anywhere near the negotiations when the text was being shaped.
Showing up late is a choice. So is quietly organizing to be in the room before everyone realizes it matters.
Why I’m Telling You This Now
I hear the objection before you say it: “We don’t have capacity to follow another UN process.”
That’s real. I get it. Budgets are tight all around.
But here’s the thing. That’s exactly why I got into the BBNJ treaty negotiations early. That’s why I’ve been tracking Article 6 carbon markets for 7 years. That’s why I see things through even when the process is tedious and the rooms are half-empty.
I know that that doesn’t sound sexy in a grant report, but the alternative is worse.
The alternative is showing up at the end, after the text is locked, after the compromises have been made, after other interests have shaped every paragraph. And then writing an angry statement about how Indigenous Peoples were excluded.
You weren’t excluded. You just weren’t there.
There’s a difference.
If your organization can send five people to UNPFII and zero to the negotiations that will define crimes against humanity for a generation, that’s not about capacity. That’s about priorities.
What if you reallocated your energy from symbolic presence to structural influence?
Stop doing:
One less UNPFII trip for social media content
One less year repeating the same speech with slightly different ChatGPT wording
Start doing:
One additional process tracking the CAH process
One coalition call per month focused only on treaty text
You don’t need to dominate this process. You just need to not be absent.
Use UNPFII Differently
Here’s how this all connects.
Most people arrive at UNPFII thinking: “How do I make the strongest statement in my three minutes?” And then sneak in an extra 30 seconds.
You can arrive thinking: “How do I use UNPFII as a networking hub to influence the CAH convention for the next three years?”
That means:
Use your UNPFII meetings to ask states about their CAH positions
Host one focused closed-door conversation with Indigenous leaders instead of another generic panel
Leave New York with a list of missions open to Indigenous perspectives in their CAH interventions
UNPFII becomes a launchpad. Not the main stage.
That’s the shift from event-centered activism to process-centered influence. That’s what behavior over strategy looks like in multilateral diplomacy.
This is what I usually do at the Forum, it isn’t glamorous work.
But it’s the work that means, when the final treaty drops in 2029, you can look at it and say: “We got that provision in. We blocked that weakening clause. We were in the room.”
Before You Go
Btw, you know that the UN Water Conference is happening this year. I’m already seeing relatives gear up, plan statements, mobilize for the big moment.
But here’s the truth about the Water Conference. There’s no negotiated text. An action plan at best. Lots of visibility, lots of speeches, very little that creates binding obligations.
The CAH Convention? This creates teeth. Legal obligations. State accountability. Mechanisms that actually bite.
Same thing with BBNJ. The treaty on marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction. COP1 will likely be held at the end of this year. This also has teeth. Real implementation decisions. And I’m early to that process too.
See the pattern?
The events that get the most attention in Indigenous spaces are often the ones with the least structural power. The processes that will actually shape international law for decades fly under the radar until it’s too late.
If you read this and thought, “I had no idea this was happening,” good.
You’re not supposed to feel ashamed. You’re supposed to feel early enough.
The negotiations are just beginning. The text is still soft. The question is whether Indigenous Peoples will be architects of this treaty or just victims cited in someone else’s examples.
The treaty nobody told you about? Now you know.
Just wanted to put this on your radar.
That’s it for this week.