Headquartered in White Plains, New York, the Planethood Foundation (PF) was established in 1996. Aiming to “replace the law of force with the force of law,” the Foundation’s philanthropy focuses primarily on empowering the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute and punish suspected war criminals when sovereign national governments will not. The name “Planethood” was taken from a book co-authored by Ben Ferencz, one of the surviving prosecutors of the Nuremberg tribunals. PF’s philosophy derives from President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s assertion that: “The world no longer has a choice between force and law. If civilization is to survive, it must choose the rule of law.”

In recent years, PF has awarded grants to the Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrika Institute (to fund a Ford Foundation-sponsored study evaluating how the ICC could work cooperatively with local peace and reconciliation efforts); the Transitional Justice Institute in Northern Ireland (to fund scholarships for advanced degree programs); a book project launched under the auspices of the World Federalist Movement and the American Coalition for the International Criminal Court (to examine the Rome Statute of the ICC); Americans for Informed Democracy (a student-based organization that holds conferences and seminars on college campuses across the United States on such issues as humanitarian and international justice); and Citizens for Global Solutions (a Washington-based organization focused on “constructive engagement by the U.S. in a wide array of global challenges, ranging from environment to international justice and humanitarian issues”).

PF avidly supports the United Nations Millennium Project, a massive redistributive scheme calling for the governments of wealthy countries to commit a portion of their Gross National Products to promoting “the economic development and welfare of developing countries.”

Since 2006, PF has awarded annual grants of $10,000 to the Ved Nanda Center for International and Comparative Law, to fund stipends for students working or interning abroad in the area of human rights.

PF is a member of the Association of Small Foundations, the Coalition for the International Criminal Court, the International Human Rights Funders Group, and the Peace and Security Funders Group.

(Information on grantees and monetary amounts courtesy of The Foundation Center, GuideStar, ActivistCash, the Capital Research Center and Undue Influence)