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Millennium Conference
UN Summit on the Future of the World
Dear Member,
In September 2000 the United Nations will hold a special Millennium Assembly and Summit on the future of the world. TheWestminster United Nations Association is drafting the enclosed document entitled, " A Charter for Global Democracy" in order to collect signatures internationally to raise political support for democratic reform of global governance.
Please respond and make your suggestions and comments. IF YOU AGREE with the content of the document, please REPLY and give your:
NAME ....................................................................
ORGANIZATION (if any) .........................................
ADDRESS ................................................................
PHONE .....................................................................
The Research Centre for Global Governance (RCGG) will transmit your wishes to the Westminster United Nations Association.
Looking forward to your active participation,
With best wishes,
Dr. F. Sefidvash,
RCGG Coordinator
Charter 99
A Charter for Global Democracy
Our call for international accountability, justice,
sustainable development and democracy
In September 2000 the United Nations will hold a special Millennium Assembly and Summit on the future of the world.
Dear Representatives to the Millennium Assembly,
This Charter is addressed to you and all the governments and peoples of the world you represent. It is a demand for global democracy.
Throughout the century now coming to an end there have been well meaning and sometimes eloquent calls for world government. Calls which pointed to the unfairness, inequality and injustice of the present distributions of wealth, power and policy making - which mean that today one in five of us lives in absolute poverty. Calls which emphasised the dangers to peace and even to human survival. [ALTERNATIVE: If only we could work together as one world, then we could solve the worlds problems together..
If only! Yet these]
These calls were always dismissed , - sometimes with a sigh, sometimes with contempt- as impractical, as impractical. But during the 1990s, demands for international government have taken on a new energy and precision:
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The Commission on Global Governance made an unprecedented international effort to draw up a framework for global politics.
- Spurred on by tThe Earth Summit in Rio, Agenda 21, The Earth Charter, the Real World coalition, Earth Actions Call for a Safer World and many other declarations have united peoples efforts for sustainable development.
- The Hague Agenda for Peace represents a world-wide coalition committed to replacing the causes of war with a culture of peace.
- The campaign against landmines successfully changed international law, although much remains to be done.
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International conferences at Cairo, Copenhagen and Beijing have made world issues of gender equality, family and social rights, world issues.
- Jubilee 2000 has co-ordinated a world-wide campaign to cancel the unpayable debts of the worlds poorest countries.
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The International Commission on Rights and Responsibilities made a distinguished and expert attempt to codify Human Duties and Responsibilities.
- After fifty years of campaigning, a Statute to create an International Criminal Court was adopted in 1998 at Rome to reinforce international law.
In addition, a growing scholarly literature on all aspects of globalisation has begun to explore how governments can regulate and democratise international affairs.
There are now detailed, practical measures which set out an ambitious agenda for democracy in international decision-making, now increasingly known as global governance.
We believe that there is a profound and important reason for this historic shift.
It is that in many ways we now have world government.
It is not to be found at the United Nations. Rather, the UN has been sidelined, while the real business of world government is done elsewhere. Global policies are discussed and decided behind closed doors by exclusive groups, such as the G8, OECD, the Bank of International Settlements, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation and others. These agencies are reinforced by informal networks of high officials and powerful alliances such as NATO and the European Union. Together they have created what can be seen as dominant and exclusive institutions of world government. All too often they are influenced by transnational corporations which pursue their own world strategies.
These agencies of actual world government must be made accountable. If there are to be global policies, then let them be answerable to the peoples of the world.
Therefore Wwe call on you, therefore, to start the new century by initiating the process of democratic global governance following. Under three headings fundamental principles:
- openness and accountability
- environmental sustainability
- justice.
The first aim should be is to make the already existing processes of world administration and governance accountable. We want to know what decisions are being taken and why. We want the decision takers to know they are answerable to the public in every country which feels the breath of international bodies.
Then we want all decisions to be compatible withanswerable to public criteria of ecological and environmental sustainability.
Finally, if most ambitiously, we want them to be compatible withanswerable to the principles of justice, including social and economic justice. These are three fundamental principles for a democratic world.
What we want from the Millennium Assembly and Summit Member States is decisive action to put these principles into practice.
We do not think they will be easy to achieve. But we believe the difficulties can and must be overcome. We do not think that we do not claim to have all the answers. What we do know is that in our era everyone is linked through our shared environment, trade and communications. We live together as neighbours, and as neighbours we must respect the rights of all persons to address common problems. A joint effort of learning and negotiation, of trial and error, will be needed.
Many vital issues can best be tackled effectively at a global level: the environment, biodiversity and climate change; international security and disarmament; international trade, [add: and] finance [cut: and labour rights]; epidemics; communications; international crime.
We are convinced that [Simon: keep: a joint effort of learning and negotiation, of trial and error, will be needed. The first question is where should we start? We believe that the answer has to be at the UN. The inadequacy of the UN is well known. All around we see the principles of the United Nations subverted, sidelined and suppressed. Since the UN Charter was signed, more than 30 million people have been killed in war, most of them unarmed civilians; millions more people have been slaughtered in genocide and ethnic conflict; over 100 million people have fled their homes due to conflict or persecution, with over 20 million remaining as refugees today; permanent members of the Security Council have armed belligerents and engaged in war; Governments have invested more in preparing for war than in strengthening peace; human rights have been violated with little redress.
Nevertheless the UN as an institution can hardly be blamed for the appalling behaviour of its member states. Without the UN, wars would have been even more frequent; they would have gone on longer; there would have been a greater number of victims, and many more refugees living without hope. The United Nations is the only arena in which all countries sit side by side. For all its weakness, it retains an unmatched legitimacy in world affairs.
The UNs founding Charter legally mandates you to:
- 1. maintain international peace and security;
- 2. develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
- 3. achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural or humanitarian character;
- 4. be a centre for harmonising the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.
[CUT ALL: The United Nations [is made up of states which still remain the prime expression of national self-determination. The UN] is the only arena in which all countries sit side by side. For all its weakness, it retains an unmatched legitimacy in world affairs.] ALTERNATIVE: CUT FIRST LINE ONLY (SB agree)
We call on you to create effective mechanisms which can to hold all world bodies to account, whether they are be international economic alliances, or agencies for environmental, financial, social, sporting, or any other activity. All should have to answer regularly for what they have done and intend to do, for their impact on the world community and for their adherence to the UN Charter and international law. We want action to start the process now.
The creation of democratic global governance may be long and complicated. [But it will be achieved, because the need for it is simple and urgent. It can also be achieved.]]
World-wide campaigns led to the end of apartheid in South Africa, to the creation of an International Criminal Court, to the ban on landmines and now to debt-reduction for the worlds poorest countries. The time has come to make democratic reform of international affairs our priority both as an end in itself and as a means of obtaining the many social and economic reforms [that cry out to be solved and] which, as we have learnt over the past fifty years, are all too likely to be perpetuated if global power is left in the hands of secretive institutions.
[ALTERNATIVE: The time has come to make democratic reform of international affairs our priority, both as an end in itself and as a means of obtaining solving the many serious social and economic reforms problems. that cry out to be solved. As we have learnt over the past fifty years, tThese problems are all too likely to be perpetuated if global power is left in the hands of secretive undemocratic institutions.]
Many other reforms are needed. The following 12 points are a summary of the many demands and proposals being made across the world for better international governancement.
A SHORTER VERSION OF THE FOLLOWING HAS BEEN MOVED INTO THE 12 POINTS
12 points for urgent action
As an urgent first step, we call on you to use the authority of the United Nations to bring [ADD: all] the agencies of world government to account.
In the development of democratic global governance, we call on you, our representatives to the Millennium Assembly and Summit, to:
Strengthen democratic accountability and participation in international decision-making:
- Give the UN General Assembly powers to scrutinise the budgetswork of UN agencies and other agencies of global governance; create an elected second UN Chamber, an annual Forum of Civil Society; open international institutions to increased participation by civil society [and elected representatives from member countries]; and strengthen co-operation between all international groupings under the UN system.
2. Create within the UN system an accountable, equitable and effective mechanism to monitor, supervise and regulate intertransnational corporations and financial institutions; and require transnational companies to adhere to an international code of conduct covering agreed principles concerning human rights, the environment and core labour standards.
3. Give UN institutions an additional and independent source of revenue such as taxation of foreign exchange transactions, aircraft and shipping fuels, arms sales and licensing use of the global commons.
- And in carrying out your mandate we call on you to:
Maintain international peace and security:
4. Reform the UN Security Council to open all decision-making to public scrutiny; phase out the single country veto and permanent membership; establish equitable representation from each region of the world; and provide effective authority to mediate and intervene in disputes at an early stage, within national boundaries where necessary.
5. Establish a permanent, directly recruited UN Rapid Reaction Force to hold the peace in a crisis, police gross violations of human rights and support multilateral defence against aggression and genocide;
6. Make the UN register of arms mandatory; ratify and implement the Landmine Ban Treaty; outlaw all weapons of mass destruction; initiate programmes to control the arms trade, convert the arms industry to peaceful production and cut military spending world wide; strengthen accountability to the UN of all international military action to the UN; and reduce the size of national armies as part of a multilateral global security system.
Uphold fundamental human rights:
7. [Establish world citizenship based] Secure on compliance with and respect for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and all international conventions on Human Rights, including the Elimination of Racial Discrimination; Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; Civil and Political Rights; Rights of the Child; and the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, and Conventions of the ILO..
Strengthen justice under international law:
8. Ratify the International Criminal Court; accept compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court and the Human Rights Committee; increase the Courts powers of enforcement; open the ICJ to individual petition and secure the judicial independence of the ICC.
Promote social progress and better standards of life:
9. Establish a strong UN institution for Economic and Environmental security to promote international prosperity, protect the global commons and secure sustainable development.10. Establish an International Environmental Court to enforce international treaties on the environment and protect the global commons.
11. Declare climate change to be an essential global security interest and [establish a high-level international urgent action team to] assist the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties on Climate Change to set a scientifically based global ceiling on greenhouse gas emissions, to allocate national shares of permissible emissions based on convergence to equal per capita rights, and to work with governments, companies, international agencies and NGOs to cut emissions of greenhouse gases to a sustainable level.
12. Make poverty reduction a global priority, by: secure universal access to safe drinking water, essential health care, education, family planning, gender equality, sustainable development and economic opportunities, and strengthen the capacity of development agencies to eliminate malnutrition, preventable diseases and absolute poverty through conservation and equitable sharing of global resources. Cancel the unpayable debts of the poorest nations and institute measures to prevent severe debt burdens from ever building up again.
These are just some of the most important issues crying out for urgent action by the world community. We call on you to set in motion a process
to hold all agencies of global governance to account and democratise international decision-making according to the principles set out in this letter.[With my/our signature, I/we stand for open, accountable, just, environmentally sustainable and democratic decision-making in international affairs in the Charter for Global Democracy.]
Signed
NAME: ..
ORGANISATION (if any): .
ADDRESS: .
.PHONE:
To support the campaign, contact:
Westminster UNA, Chair: Titus Alexander, 32 Carisbrooke Road, London E17 7EF, tel: 0181 521 6977
Background
The Charter for Global Democracy was initiated by Westminster United Nations Association and is supported by the Association of World Federalists, One World Trust, Royal Commonwealth Society, Commission on Global Governance, Global Commons Institute, New Economics Foundation, World Development Movement and a growing number of organisations, as well as many individuals. Joins us in the world-widemovement for a just and democratic world.
Using the Charter
The Charter aims to build public support and political will to create a democratic and inclusive system of international decision-making by
- setting out key principles and priorities for transforming global governance ;
- urging national parliaments, town councils, state and regional bodies, trade unions, womens groups, political parties, churches, companies, other organisations and individuals to debate these issues and develop the ideas set out in the Charter;
- encouraging people to discuss, study, publicise and lobby round the key principles;
- getting individuals, organisations and representative bodies to sign the Charter
- presenting the Charter to the Millennium Assembly of the UN in September 2000 and to member governments
People and organisations who have signed
Titus Alexander, author & educator
Lord Peter Archer, QC
Anthony Barnett, author and founding Director of Charter 88
Simon Burrall, One World Trust
Barry Coates, Director, World Development Movement
Peter Luff, Director, Royal Commonwealth Society
Linda Malvern, author,
George Monbiot, writer and campaigner
Tony Colman MP, All Party UNA, GLOBE UK
Anthony Giddens, LSE Director
Alexandra Jones, Westminster Foundation for Democracy
Lord Frank Judd, Commission for Global Governance,
Ken Livingstone
Sir Shridrath Ramphal
Anita Roddick, founder, Body Shop
Irv Stolberg, UNA-USA,
Joan Walley MP
Ted Wheatley, UK-Association of World Federalists
Dan Wheatley
Association of World Federalists
Commission on Global Governance,
Global Commons Institute,
New Economics Foundation
Royal Commonwealth Society,
Westminster United Nations Associations
World Development Movement