Mar 05, 2008

UNPO Backs UBUNTU’s Call For Greater Respect of Human Rights


Sixty years after the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UNPO has joined with the UBUNTU Forum and others to call for greater observance of the right of all the world’s citizens to peace, development, and protection of the environment.

Sixty years after the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UNPO has joined with the UBUNTU Forum and others to call for greater observance of the right of all the world’s citizens to peace, development, and protection of the environment.

Below is a declaration issued by the UBUNTU Forum:

On the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Human life and dignity require the recognition and satisfaction of Human Rights to PEACE, to DEVELOPMENT (to food, to water...) and to the ENVIRONMENT, and they require that NOW!

On this 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and at the initiative of the World Forum of Civil Society Networks – UBUNTU, we, the undersigned, wish to emphasise that all Human Rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent, in full accordance with the Declaration of the World Conference on Human Rights made in Vienna (United Nations, 1993). And so that none may claim not to have heard our call, we also wish to raise our voices to proclaim that in view of the scale and gravity of the challenges faced by humanity, it is urgent to recognise and satisfy Rights emerging as imperative needs, and thus needs on which decision-making is now essential and can no longer be postponed. There is no other way to attain the fulfillment of the Right to Human Life – the sine qua non for the exercise of all other Human Rights -, a right that is daily violated through growing violence and poverty.


Hence this is what is required NOW!:


I.-The HUMAN RIGHT TO PEACE. 

Though not yet explicitly regarded as a human right, it cannot be doubted that if this Human Right to Peace is not established, the other human rights cannot be realized. With the United Nations (“We, the peoples…”) being sidelined by the most prosperous countries (“We, the powerful…”) and with the democratic principles being replaced by the laws of the market (“We, the rich…”), our tragic inability to resolve conflicts peaceably is persisting. Resorting to force brings ignominious profits for industry's colossal war machine, fuelling war economies. We shall not desist from denouncing this, nor from endeavoring to build a world system of democratic governance precisely to put an end to this intolerable situation. We cannot refrain from demanding just solutions for the dramatic conflicts such as those raging in Gaza, Darfur, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Congo...among the forty-plus armed conflicts estimated to exist now.

The force of reason should always prevail over the reason of force. “If you want peace, prepare for war”: the conviction that being armed is the best assurance of security is one of the most tragic of our age-old irrational beliefs. It is evident that worldwide disarmament, under the control of the United Nations, is fundamental for scaling back violence and strengthening peace. If disarmament is a prerequisite for peace, and thus for life, then it too becomes another Human Right that must be recognized and adopted forthwith. Yet the fact is that now, after a ten-year period (1988-1998) in which world military spending had been decreasing, we are witnessing renewed escalation in arms spending, which is once more exceeding 2,700 million dollars a day...and this at a time when attaining the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 requires 500 million dollars a day!

Specifically, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is going through its bleakest, most contradictory period since the Cold War: some countries are given de facto authorization to produce nuclear weapons, while others are the object of sanctions on account of their nuclear-energy programmes... and, most alarming of all, the United States, with its anti-missile shield, is prompting the Russian Federation to threaten non-compliance with the Reykjavik agreements, with both countries in fact confirming the existence of programmes to renovate and modernize their nuclear arsenals, in violation of the NPT.

International civil society must make its voice heard to break the current deadlock of the Disarmament Conference and, in this context, transform the forthcoming NPT Review Conference (2010) into a definitive and irreversible turning point on the path to the Human Right to Disarmament as Freedom from War and Violence are essential for peace.

 

II.- The HUMAN RIGHT TO DEVELOPMENT (INCLUDING FOOD, WATER, THE SATISFACTION OF BASIC NEEDS

The Right to Development is implicitly recognised in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (United Nations, 1966), which establishes among others the Human Right to “be free from hunger”, to “the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health”, and so on, while this Human Right is explicitly recognised in the Declaration on the Right to Development (Assembly General of the United Nations, 1986, and confirmed at the Vienna Conference of the United Nations, 1993). The commitments reached at the Copenhagen World Summit for Social Development (United Nations, 1995) stress the importance of development being in all cases integrated, sustainable, endogenous and human. The implementation of all these rights would actually lead to the full realization of the article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

Nevertheless, 50% of humanity is still living below the poverty line, and the problems over food for the world are worsening alarmingly. Sixty thousand people die of hunger and poverty every day. The Right to adequate food, the Right to drinking water and the Right to satisfy basic needs, including infrastructures, now clearly demonstrate the global urgency of something that morally can no longer be postponed. Only meeting those Human Rights effectively can ensure the right to human life. In this sense, it is particularly important to avoid that new sources of energy (bio fuel, etc.), which attract much investment, do not reduce the production of food, nor put up its price.

In this year of 2008, the international community will devote much effort in many directions to reviewing what is known as the Monterrey Consensus on Financing for Development (United Nations, 2002). Civil Society must mobilise so that measures enabling progress to be made once and for all on meeting those rights may be adopted at the Summit, which is to be held in Doha during December of 2008. For that purpose, the indispensable increase in financing for development, among other things, must be the result of redistributing world wealth justly and equitably. Specifically, it is necessary to define and to implement, WITHOUT FURTHER DELAY, international levies on the foreign-exchange market and other financial initiatives, with the funds so collected being channeled directly into the United Nation's multilateral funds for financing development. Other measures such as the cancellation of external debt as well as the increase of official aid to development continue to be essential.

 

III.- THE HUMAN RIGHT TO THE ENVIRONMENT.

Equally urgent and undeferrable is the need to put an end to the destruction of the environment that the current economic model has been causing at a particularly speedy rate since the Industrial Revolution. Life in general and human life in particular may find themselves having to inhabit the earth under increasingly difficult conditions.

However, the document approved at the recent Bali Conference on Climate Change (to replace the Kyoto Convention in 2012) is geared more towards adapting to climate change (essential in developing countries in the South) than to countering it. Humanity seems to be in the process of condemning itself to suffer, instead of dealing with or palliating the causes behind this situation.

The fundamental commitment of all generations is to assure sustainable development: Meet the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. In effect, since Rio the rights to development and to environment are inseparable.

The great challenge is thus to decouple once and for all the notion of sustainable human development from the notion of economic growth in the form of increased production and consumption. As was established at the Rio and Johannesburg Summits, “present-day production and consumption patterns are unsustainable”.

It is thus imperative that civil society brings a decisive influence to bear in the forthcoming Conferences in Poland (2008) and Denmark (2009) so that the steps that the future of human life on the earth ineluctably requires may be taken with the indispensable efficacy.

For all the reasons set out above, the UBUNTU Forum calls upon all representatives of society to claim these Human Rights without further delay and in a spirit of urgency, and will continue to promote its “World Campaign for in-depth Reform of the System of International Institutions”, out of the conviction that only a new world democratic governance can take the decisions for halting the most negative global trends, while also providing for the universal satisfaction of Human Rights, beginning with the rights most closely bound up with the Right to human life. 

 

Signed:

Federico Mayor

Adolfo Pérez Esquivel

Mario Soares

Susan George

Noam Chomsky

Nawal El Saadawi


Ramesh Singh

Action Aid International

 

Aminata Traoré

African Social Forum

 

Chico Whitaker

Right Livelihood Award & Brazilian Commission Justice and Peace

 

Roberto Savio

Inter Press Service

 

William Pace

World Federalist Movement-Institute for Global Policy

 

Cândido Grzybowski

Instituto Brasileiro de Análises Sociais e Econômicas

 

Andrei Grache

World Political Forum

 

Tomas Magnusson

International Peace Bureau

 

Colin Archer;

International Peace Bureau

 

Ricardo Díez Hochleitner

Honorary President Club of Rome

 

Shula Koenig

People's Movement for Human Rights Learning

 

ICAE

International Council for Adult Education

 

Herman Spanjaard

International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War

 

Cornelio Sommaruga

Président honoraire de Initiatives et Changement International, Caux

 

Sara Longwe

African Women’s Development and Communication Network

 

Fatma Alloo

Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era

 

Alice M.Abok

African Women's Economic Policy Network

 

Anselmo Lee

Forum Asia

 

Conny Reuter

SOLIDAR

 

Lois Barber

EarthAction

 

Paul Ortega

Pax Romana ICMICA/MIIC 

 

Sean O Siochru

Communication Rights in Information Society Campaign

 

Marino Busdachin

Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization

 

Ernesto Lamas

Asoc. Mundial Radios Comunitarias - América Latina Caribe

 

Carlos Tünnermann

Instituto Latinoamericano de Educación para el Desarrollo

 

Roberto Papini

Instituto Internazionale Jacques Maritain

 

Francine Mestrum

Agence européenne pour la défense des droits de l'homme

 

Arcadi Oliveras

Justice and Peace Europe

 

Jorge Nieto

Centro Internacional para la Cultura Democrática

 

Fernando A. Iglesias

Democracia Global, Movimiento por la Unión Sudamericana y el Parlamento Mundial

 

Patrice Barrat

Bridge Initiative International

 

Fèlix Martí

Honorary President Linguapax Institute

 

John Foster

North-South Institute

 

Hasen Lorgat

Transparency International South Africa

 

Carlos Villán

Asociación Española para el Desarrollo y la Aplicación del Derecho Internacional de los DDHH

 

Markus Brun

FASTENOPFER

 

UPC

Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya

 

Antoni Giró

Rector, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya

 

Mary Racelis

Professor University of the Phlippines

 

Richard A. Falk

Princeton University; California University

 

Hall Gardner

Professor American University of Paris

 

Josep Ferrer

Professor Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya

 

Antonio Papisca

Professor Padova University

 

Ferran Requejo

Professor Universitat Pompeu Fabra

 

Josep Xercavins

Secretariat Fòrum UBUNTU; Professor Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya