In our current globalized world society, there is an increased role for politics without borders. Politics no longer stops at the water’s edge but must play an active role on the world stage. However, unlike politics at the national level which usually has a parliament at which the actors can recite their lines, the world has no world parliament as such. Thus, new and inventive ways must be found so that world public opinion can be heard and acted upon.
The United Nations (UN) General Assembly is the closest thing to a world parliament that we have today. However, all the official participants are diplomats appointed by their respective States – 195 member states. UN Secretariat members, the secretariat members of UN Specialized Agencies such as UNESCO and the ILO, are in the hallways or coffee shops to give advice. Secretariat members of the financial institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF are also there to give advice on costs and the limits of available funds. The representatives of Nongovernmental Organizations (NGO) in Consultative Status with the UN who can speak at sessions of the Economic and Social Council and the Human Rights Council cannot address the General Assembly directly. However, they are also in the coffee shops and may send documents to the UN missions of national governments.
(C) Jérôme Blum
Politics without borders requires finding ways to express views for action beyond the borders of individual countries. Today, most vital issues that touch the lives of many people go beyond the individual State: the consequences of climate change, the protection of biodiversity, the resolution of armed conflicts, the violations of human rights, and a more just world trade pattern. Thus we need to find ways of looking at the world with a global mind and an open heart. This perspective is an aim of world citizenship.
However, World Citizens are not yet so organized as to be able to impact political decisions at the UN and in enough individual States so as to have real influence. The policy papers and Appeals of the Association of World Citizens (AWC) are often read with interest by the government representatives to whom they are sent. However, the AWC is an NGO among many and does not have the number of staff as such international NGOs as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Greenpeace.
The First Officer and External Relations Officer, Bernard J. Henry, and the Legal and Mediation Officer, Attorney Noura Addad, representing the AWC at an OECD roundtable in March 2019 (C) Bernard J. Henry/AWC
We still need to find effective ways so that humanity can come together to solve global problems, that is, politics without borders. Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.
On May 23, the United Nations (UN) Security Council will hold a special briefing to address the issue of food insecurity under the chairmanship of Mr. Alain Berset, President of the Swiss Confederation. During May, the rotating chairmanship is held by Switzerland led by the Swiss Ambassador to the UN in New York, Ms. Pascale Baeriswyl. The meeting will have as background a May 3 report of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) concerning early warning on areas facing acute food insecurity. The report highlights that some 250 million persons are living in this situation of acute food insecurity with the Democratic Republic of Congo leading the list with some 27 million persons due to armed violence and the breakdown of governmental structures. The Congo is followed by Ethiopia, largely due to fighting in the Tigray area. The war in Ukraine is also having a negative impact limiting production and export of food goods – a principal export of Ukraine. In addition to armed conflict, there is the growing impact of the consequences of climate change.
Today, cooperation on food insecurity is needed among the UN family of agencies, national governments, nongovernmental organizations, and the millions of food producers to respond to this food crisis. These measures will have to be taken in a holistic way with actions going from the local level of the individual farmer, the national level with new governmental policies, to measures at the multi-State regional level such as the European Union and the African Union, and at the world level with better coordinated action through the UN system.
(C) Feed My Starving Children
There is a need for swift, short-term measures to help people now suffering from lack of food and malnutrition due to high food prices, inadequate distribution, and situations of violence. Such short-term action requires additional funding for the UN World Food Program and the release of national food stocks. However, it is on the longer-range and structural issues on which we must focus our attention.
The Association of World Citizens has taken a lead in the promotion of a coordinated world food policy with an emphasis on the small-scale farmer and a new awareness that humans are part of Nature with a special duty to care and respect for the Earth’s inter-related life-support system. As Stringfellow Barr wrote in Citizens of the World (1952), “Since the hungry in the world community believe that we can all eat if we set our common house in order, they believe also that it is unjust that some die because it is too much trouble to arrange for them to live.”
A central theme which Citizens of the World have long stressed is that there needs to be a world food policy and that such a world food policy is more than the sum of national food security programs. John Boyd Orr, the first Director General of the FAO, proposed a World Food Board to stabilize food prices and supplies. He resigned as Director General when the food board proposal was not accepted and then devoted much of his energy to the world citizen movement.
For World Citizens, the emphasis must be placed on creating a world food policy which draws upon improving local self-reliance while not creating nationalistic policies which harm neighbors. Food is a key aspect of deep structural issues in the world society and thus must be seen in a holistic framework. The briefing and debate of the UN Security Council may give us strong elements on which to promote a world food policy.
Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.
Benjamin Ferencz, champion of World Law and World Citizenship, died on April 7, 2023 at the age of 103, leaving a strong heritage of action for world law. He was particularly active in the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) located in the Hague.
He was born in March 1920 in what is now Romania, close to the frontiers of Hungary and Ukraine. In the troubled period after the end of the First World War, the parents of Ferencz, who were Jews, decided to emigrate to New York with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. They settled in New York City, and Ferencz changed his Yiddish name Berrel to Benjamin and studied in the New York school system. He did his undergraduate work at City College and then received a scholarship to Harvard Law School, a leading United States (U. S.) law school.
(C) United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
At the end of his law studies at Harvard, he was taken into the U. S. Army and in 1944, he was in Europe with the Army legal section, the Judge-Advocate General Corps. By conviction and interest, he began to collect information on the Nazi concentration camps. He was able to find photos, letters, and other material that he later was able to use as one of the prosecution team in the Nuremberg trials of Germans accused of war crimes. He was also a staff member of the Joint Restitution Successor Organization concerned with the restoration or compensation of goods having belonged to Jewish families. Thus, he developed close cooperation with the then recently created state of Israel.
(C) Leit
From his experiences with the German trials and the many difficulties that the trials posed to be more than the justice of the victors and also the need not to antagonize the recently created Federal Republic of Germany, Ferencz became a strong advocate of an international legal system such as the Tribunals on ex-Yugoslavia of 1993 and on Rwanda (1994). Much of his effort was directed to the creation of the ICC, a creation that owes much to efforts of nongovernmental organizations, such as the Association of World Citizens. It was during this effort for the creation of the ICC that we came into contact.
Benjamin Ferencz leaves a heritage on which we can build. The development of world law is often slow and meets opposition. However, the need is great, and strong efforts at both national and international levels continue.
(C) Adam Jones
(1) See Benjamin B. Ferencz, A Common Sense Guide to World Peace (Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana Publications, 1985).
Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.
The Association of World Citizens (AWC) calls for urgently needed tension-reduction measures in the Israel-Palestine-Lebanon area.
Tensions have led to a barrage of missiles from Gaza and Lebanon and rapid Israeli missiles in return aiming at weakening Hamas and Hezbollah.
Growing tensions had led to Israeli police attacking Palestinian worshipers celebrating the holy month of Ramadan within the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on April 5-6, 2023. The images of Israeli police firing teargas and beating worshipers were widely seen on social media outlets and other media.
Tensions in the area have been growing since the formation of the Netanyahu-led government with right-wing ministers. Government proposals for changes concerning the court system and the appointment of judges have led to strong and widespread protest demonstrations. However, Palestinian issues were not directly addressed by these demonstrations.
Tensions between Israel and Iran and Iranian-backed groups in Syria have also been growing. The dangers of further violence have been raised in the United Nations Security Council, but no positive actions were undertaken. United Nations peacekeeping forces in Lebanon are on “high alert”.
For the moment, there are no high-level public negotiations underway or planned. Thus, tension-reduction measures must be undertaken as unilateral measures by the government of Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and the government of Lebanon. Such tension-reduction measures are urgently needed but may be unlikely. Thus, the AWC calls upon civil society organizations and persons of good will to consider what measures can be taken immediately and what structures may be established so that tension-reduction processes continue. This is an urgent call for creative and courageous actions.
Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.
2023 will see a year-long effort leading to December 10, 2023, the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The effort carries the title “Dignity, Freedom and Justice for All”. Thus, it is useful to look at some of the intellectual preparations both within the League of Nations and among individual thinkers for the Universal Declaration. One of the most widely read was that of Herbert George (H.G.) Wells’ “Declaration of the Rights and Duties of the World Citizen” which is found in his book Phoenix: A Summary of the Inescapable Conditions of World Reorganization published in 1942. The Declaration of the Rights and Duties of the World Citizen had been translated into 10 languages and sent to 300 editors of newspapers in 48 countries.
H.G. Wells was concerned from the 1930s on with the ways the world should be organized with a world organization stronger than the League of Nations. Such a world organization should be backed up and urged on by a strong body of public opinion linked together worldwide by the unifying bond of a common code of human rights and duties.
At the end of the First World War, H.G. Wells was a strong advocate of the League of Nations, but as time went on, he became aware of its weaknesses. He wrote in 1939, “The League of Nations, we can all admit now, was a poor and ineffective outcome of that revolutionary proposal to banish armed conflict from the world and inaugurate a new life for mankind… Does this League of Nations contain within it the gem of any permanent federation of human effort? Will it grow into something for which men will be ready to work for and, if necessary, fight – as hither to they have been willing to fight for their country and their own people? There are few intimations of any such enthusiasm for the League at the present time. The League does not even seem to know how to talk to the common man. It has gone into official buildings, and comparatively few people in the world understand or care what it is doing there.”
Thus, there was a need for a clear statement of world values that could be understood by most and that would be a common statement of the aspiration on which to build a new freedom and a new dignity. Wells had a strong faith in international public opinion when it was not afraid to express new and radical thoughts that cut across the conventional wisdom of the day. He wrote in 1943, “Behind the short-sighted governments that divide and mismanage human affairs, a real force for world unity and order exists and grows.”
Wells hoped that the “Declaration of the Rights of the World Citizen” would become the fundamental law for mankind through the whole world – a true code of basic rights and duties which set out the acceptable shape of a just world society.
Wells set out 10 rights which combined civil liberties already common to many democratic states with economic and social rights which were often considered as aspirations but not as rights. Thus, among the 10 rights we find the Right to Participate in Government, Freedom of Thought and Worship, the Right to Knowledge, Freedom from Violence including Torture, along with the Right to Education, the Right to Medical Care, the Right to Work with Legitimate Remuneration, the Protection of Minors, Freedom of Movement about the Earth.
The drafters of the United Nations (UN) Charter in 1945 included a pledge by member states “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in equal rights of men and women, and of nations large and small.” Much of the debate from 1946 when the UN Commission on Human Rights was created until December 1948 when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed concerned the relative place of civil liberties and of economic, social, and cultural rights.
While the text of H.G. Wells is largely forgotten today, he had the vision of the strong link between freedom of thought based on civil liberties and the need for economic dignity set out in the economic, social, and cultural rights.
Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.
The Human Rights Council, building on the earlier practice of the United Nations (UN) Commission on Human Rights, has a number of Special Rapporteurs devoted to certain themes – usually specific violations of human rights – or to specific countries. These Special Rapporteurs are independent experts selected by the Council. They usually report their findings at each session of the Council. When violations concern more than one issue, there can be joint Reports to the Council or joint Appeals to a government. Such a collective Appeal to the government of Pakistan sent on October 26, 2022 was made public on January 15, 2023.
The joint Appeal by six Special Rapporteurs concerned the sequence of rape of young women, forced conversion to Islam, followed by marriage to the rapist. The Appeal was led by the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, the Special Rapporteur on Sexual Exploitation of Children, the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and Girls, and the Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children. The subject of the Appeal is not new, having been raised previously by Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs), including by the Association of World Citizens (AWC).
However, the Appeal by the Special Rapporteurs clearly identifies a systemic problem on which the Pakistani government has failed to act. The girls raped are usually minors under 18 years of age and belong to Hindu and Christian minorities of the country, often rural and poor. Most Christians in Pakistan are converts from low caste or “untouchables” (Dalit) Hindus. Seeing no future within the Hindu-influenced caste system, they converted to Christianity which has no caste structure. Most of the Pakistani Hindus and Christians are illiterate and have little or no political influence.
A peace tour arranged by different social activists and minority rights activists in Lahore, Pakistan, with the participation of Muslim, Christian and Hindu youth. (C) RedMiNote
The Pakistani police and the court employees are agents of these human rights violations. Illiterate parents sign with a thumbprint document that they do not understand and are then filled in by the police to attest that the girl is older than 18, the legal age for marriage. If the girl or her family agrees to the marriage with the rapist, the rapist cannot be arrested and tried for the rape. As the practice takes place usually in rural areas, there are few if any NGOs to take up the specific cases. Urbanized Christian groups in Pakistan have made some protests of the practice but are often unaware of the specific rural cases.
NGOs have brought evidence of the practice to the attention of the Geneva-based Special Rapporteurs. When a human rights violation is given to the UN human rights secretariat, it is sent on to the Geneva-based Ambassador of the country mentioned. The Ambassador may not reply at all or more usually will reply saying that the facts are incorrect or deliberately misleading. However, as in the Pakistani case, the evidence piles up. In this current situation, there is, two months ago, a newly appointed High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, formerly UN Undersecretary-General for Policy. The Special Rapporteurs may have wanted to see how he will act on violations of a powerful country. The situation in Pakistan merits close watching.
Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.
“I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for death. I am not on his payroll. I will not tell him the whereabouts of my friends nor of my enemies either”.
–Edna St-Vincent Millay, U. S. poetess.
The Association of World Citizens (AWC) has repeatedly called upon governments for a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty – a penalty that extensive research has shown has little or no impact on the level of crime and too often opens the door to judicial errors and injustice. In addition to State-sponsored official executions, usually carried out publicly or at least with official observers, a good number of countries have State-sponsored “death squads” – persons affiliated to the police or to intelligence agencies that kill “in the dark of the night” unofficially. These deaths avoid a trial which might attract attention or even a “not guilty” decision.
The January 7 hanging of Mohammad Mehdi Karami, 22 years old, and Seyed Mohammad Hosseini, 39, by the authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran is an obvious effort to crush dissent and demonstrations which have shaken the authorities, set off by the death of Mahsa Animi in September at the hands of the morality police.
The January 7 hangings follow the December hangings of Moshen Shekari and Majidreza Rahmavd, both 23 years old. 14 other persons have been sentenced to death and are at imminent risk of execution – mostly young men. More than 40 persons are facing charges that could carry the death penalty. The four persons hanged did not have fair trials, and the court-appointed lawyers had no time to prepare a defense. The AWC is devoted to universal application of human rights law which includes fair trials and adequate defense – trials carried out with established international norms.
A public execution in Parsabad, Iran on September 20, 2017. (C) Mohsen Zare/Tasnim News Agency
Kenneth Patchen’s (1911-1972) clear words have been a credo for the AWC, opposed to executions on moral grounds:
“This is a man
he is a poor creature
you are not to kill him
This is a man
he has a hard time
upon the earth
You are not to kill him”
Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.
When the Convention on the Rights of the Child was unanimously adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on November 20, 1989, governments took a major step forward in establishing a framework of world law to protect the basic dignity and rights of children in all parts of the world. Thus, on 20 November, we remember with gratitude those who worked to develop the concepts and reality of the Rights of the Child but also to measure the tasks that are before us, especially as members of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). This universal framework is based on the principle that each child should have the possibility to develop into an active and responsible member of society. The way in which a society treats its children reflects not only its qualities of compassion and protective caring, but also its sense of justice, its commitment to the future and its urge to better the human condition for continuing generations.
The effort to create a legal framework for the welfare of the child began early in the League of Nations efforts with the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child of 1924 which was largely based on a text written by the then newly established NGO “Save the Children International Union”. Child welfare has always been a prime example of cooperative efforts among governments, scholars highlighting the conditions of children, and NGOs working actively in the field. The Geneva Declaration served as the basis for the UN General Assembly resolution on the Declaration of the Rights of the Child adopted also on November 20, 1959. The 1959 Declaration was followed with more specific provisions of the Declaration on Social and Legal Principles relating to the Protection and Welfare of Children, the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice, and the Declaration on the Protection of Women and Children in Emergency and Armed Conflict.
In 1978, some representatives of both governments and NGOs in the UN human rights circles in Geneva felt that it was time to bring together these different declarations and provisions into a single text that would have the legal force of a UN convention. The Polish delegation to the UN Commission on Human Rights took the lead in this effort, but some governments felt that the different declarations needed to be closely reviewed and measured against changing realities. Thus, a Special Working Group on the Rights of the Child was created in 1979 under the chairmanship of the Polish representative, the legal specialist Adam Lopatka. Government and NGO representatives worked together from 1979 to 1988 for a week each year. There was a core group, including the Association of World Citizens (AWC), which worked steadily and represented a wide range of different beliefs, values and traditions, as well as a wide range of socio-economic realities.
As a result of serious discussions, the Convention covers a wide range of human rights which can be summarized as the three “Ps”: provision, protection, and participation. Each child has the right to be provided with certain things and services, such as a name and a nationality, to health care and education. Each child has a right to be protected from certain acts such as torture, exploitation, arbitrary detention, and unwarranted removal from parental care. Each child has a right to participate in decisions affecting their lives as well as in community life.
The Working Group managed to come to a consensus on the final version in time for the General Assembly to adopt it on November 20, 1989, the anniversary date of the Declaration. The Convention on the Rights of the Child is meant to provide guidance for governments to review national legislation and policies in their child-related initiatives. It is by examining national law and policy and the effectiveness of government structures and mechanisms that progress can be measured. The Convention also provides a framework of goals for the vital activities of NGOs. NGOs work on two lines simultaneously: to remind governments of their obligations through approaches to ministries, elected officials and the media and to undertake their own operational efforts.
To help governments to fulfill their obligations and to review national practices, a Committee on the Rights of the Child was created as called for in article 43 of the Convention. The Committee is composed of 10 independent experts elected for a four-year term by the States which have ratified the Convention. The Committee usually meets three times a year for a month each time in Geneva to review and discuss reports submitted by governments, once every four years. The sessions of the Committee are largely carried out in a non-confrontational dialogue with an emphasis on “unmet needs”. The discussion usually lasts six to nine hours for each country. The Committee members have received information and suggestions from NGOs in advance. The Committee members ask many questions and, based on the government’s responses, make suggestions for improving the promotion and protection of children’s rights in the country.
By creating a common legal framework of world law, the Convention on the Rights of the Child has increased levels of governmental accountability, bringing about legislative and institutional reforms, and increasing international cooperation. As James P. Grant, then UNICEF’s Executive Director, said, “Transcending its detailed provisions, the Convention on the Rights of the Child embodies the fundamental principle that the lives and the normal development of children should have first call on society’s concerns and capacities and that children should be able to depend upon the commitment in good times and in bad, in normal times and in times of emergency, in times of peace and in times of war, in times of prosperity and in times of recession.
(C) UNICEF ROSA
Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.
Pramila Patten, the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on sexual violence in times of conflict reported mid-October 2022 that rape is increasingly used in the armed conflict in Ukraine as a weapon to humiliate and discourage the populations. There had been an earlier September 27 report to the High Commissioner for Human Rights setting out many of the same facts and calling for international action.
In the past, sexual violence had often been dismissed as acts of individual soldiers, rape being one of the spoils of war for whom rape of women was an entitlement. However, with the 2001 trials of war crimes in former Yugoslavia by the International Criminal Tribunal for ex-Yugoslavia, the first convictions of rape as a crime against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war were handed down against Bosnian Serb soldiers. Bosnian Serb fighters were charged with mass rape and forced prostitution involving dozens of Muslim women and girls, some only 12 years old. The case had taken five years of investigations and more than 30 witnesses for the prosecution. The three soldiers being tried were given a sentence of 12 years imprisonment.
Since then, we have seen patterns of systematic rape become part of International Humanitarian Law, and since 2002 one of the crimes that can be prosecuted within the International Criminal Court. (1)
There have been reports of systematic rape in Ukraine since 2014 with the creation of the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk by both Ukrainian and separatist soldiers. However, little international attention was given to these reports. It is only with the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops on February 24, 2022 that international attention has focused on reports of rape especially in areas that were for a time under the control of the Russian military or the militias of the two People’s Republics. (2)
Unfortunately, it would seem that the armed conflict in Ukraine will drag on. There are few signs of a willingness for a negotiated settlement. International Humanitarian Law moves slowly. Rape as a war weapon is used in other armed conflicts such as those in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Darfur, Sudan, and Syria. Strong nongovernmental pressure is needed to keep governmental and UN efforts going on.
Notes
1) For a good overview of both specific armed conflicts and the slow but steady international response, see Carol Rittner and John K. Roth (Eds), Rape: Weapon of War and Genocide (St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2012)
2) See Amnesty International “Ukraine 2021”: http://www.amnesty.org, Secretary-General’s Report, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, http://www.osce.org
Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.
November 6 is set by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in Resolution A/RES/56/4 as the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict. Throughout history, in armed conflicts, water wells have been poisoned, crops set on fire, forests cut down, and animals killed to gain military advantage. Today, many armed conflicts have been linked to the exploitation of natural resources such as timber, diamonds, and fertile land and water.
The Association of World Citizens (AWC) has stressed that protection of the environment needs to be an important part of conflict prevention. The resource base that people depend upon for their livelihood needs to be safeguarded. Most recently, the AWC has highlighted the deliberate destruction of food-related resources in the armed conflict between the Ethiopian federal forces and the opposition movements in Tigray.
Humera in Tigray near the border with Sudan and Eritrea (C) Jnyssen
Since November 4, 2020, fighting has gone on in Tigray with the deliberate destruction of crops and agricultural infrastructures. UN-led humanitarian food relief was prevented from entering the area. Fortunately, at the start of November 2022, a ceasefire and a peace agreement facilitated by the African Union (AU) was signed in South Africa where the negotiations had been held. The AU has designated a team of 10 persons to follow up the process. However, the restoration of the agricultural infrastructure will be a lengthy process. It is not sure that all the factions involved will agree to the ceasefire. The situation merits a close watch.
There are currently other conflicts linked to natural resources, such as those in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The International Day must serve as a reminder, but efforts of protection need to be permanent. The AWC will continue its efforts.
Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.
Association of World Citizens 