Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: human rights

The Earth Charter

PREAMBLE

We stand at a critical moment in Earth’s history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny. We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace. Towards this end, it is imperative that we, the peoples of Earth, declare our responsibility to one another, to the greater community of life, and to future generations.

Earth, Our Home

Humanity is part of a vast evolving universe. Earth, our home, is alive with a unique community of life. The forces of nature make existence a demanding and uncertain adventure, but Earth has provided the conditions essential to life’s evolution. The resilience of the community of life and the well-being of humanity depend upon preserving a healthy biosphere with all its ecological systems, a rich variety of plants and animals, fertile soils, pure waters, and clean air. The global environment with its finite resources is a common concern of all peoples. The protection of Earth’s vitality, diversity, and beauty is a sacred trust.

The Global Situation

The dominant patterns of production and consumption are causing environmental devastation, the depletion of resources, and a massive extinction of species. Communities are being undermined. The benefits of development are not shared equitably and the gap between rich and poor is widening. Injustice, poverty, ignorance, and violent conflict are widespread and the cause of great suffering. An unprecedented rise in human population has overburdened ecological and social systems. The foundations of global security are threatened. These trends are perilous-but not inevitable.

The Challenges Ahead

The choice is ours: form a global partnership to care for Earth and one another or risk the destruction of ourselves and the diversity of life. Fundamental changes are needed in our values, institutions, and ways of living. We must realize that when basic needs have been met, human development is primarily about being more, not having more. We have the knowledge and technology to provide for all and to reduce our impacts on the environment. The emergence of a global civil society is creating new opportunities to build a democratic and humane world. Our environmental, economic, political, social, and spiritual challenges are interconnected, and together we can forge inclusive solutions.

Universal Responsibility

To realize these aspirations, we must decide to live with a sense of universal responsibility, identifying ourselves with the whole Earth community as well as our local communities. We are at once citizens of different nations and of one world in which the local and global are linked. Everyone shares responsibility for the present and future well-being of the human family and the larger living world. The spirit of human solidarity and kinship with all life is strengthened when we live with reverence for the mystery of being, gratitude for the gift of life, and humility regarding the human place in nature.

We urgently need a shared vision of basic values to provide an ethical foundation for the emerging world community. Therefore, together in hope we affirm the following interdependent principles for a sustainable way of life as a common standard by which the conduct of all individuals, organizations, businesses, governments, and transnational institutions is to be guided and assessed.

PRINCIPLES

I. RESPECT AND CARE FOR THE COMMUNITY OF LIFE

1. Respect Earth and life in all its diversity.

a. Recognize that all beings are interdependent and every form of life has value regardless of its worth to human beings.
b. Affirm faith in the inherent dignity of all human beings and in the intellectual, artistic, ethical, and spiritual potential of humanity.

2. Care for the community of life with understanding, compassion, and love.

a. Accept that with the right to own, manage, and use natural resources comes the duty to prevent environmental harm and to protect the rights of people.
b. Affirm that with increased freedom, knowledge, and power comes increased responsibility to promote the common good.

3. Build democratic societies that are just, participatory, sustainable, and peaceful.

a. Ensure that communities at all levels guarantee human rights and fundamental freedoms and provide everyone an opportunity to realize his or her full potential.
b. Promote social and economic justice, enabling all to achieve a secure and meaningful livelihood that is ecologically responsible.

4. Secure Earth’s bounty and beauty for present and future generations.

a. Recognize that the freedom of action of each generation is qualified by the needs of future generations.
b. Transmit to future generations values, traditions, and institutions that support the long-term flourishing of Earth’s human and ecological communities.

In order to fulfill these four broad commitments, it is necessary to:

II. ECOLOGICAL INTEGRITY

5. Protect and restore the integrity of Earth’s ecological systems, with special concern for biological diversity and the natural processes that sustain life.

a. Adopt at all levels sustainable development plans and regulations that make environmental conservation and rehabilitation integral to all development initiatives.
b. Establish and safeguard viable nature and biosphere reserves, including wild lands and marine areas, to protect Earth’s life support systems, maintain biodiversity, and preserve our natural heritage.
c. Promote the recovery of endangered species and ecosystems.
d. Control and eradicate non-native or genetically modified organisms harmful to native species and the environment, and prevent introduction of such harmful organisms.
e. Manage the use of renewable resources such as water, soil, forest products, and marine life in ways that do not exceed rates of regeneration and that protect the health of ecosystems.
f. Manage the extraction and use of non-renewable resources such as minerals and fossil fuels in ways that minimize depletion and cause no serious environmental damage.

6. Prevent harm as the best method of environmental protection and, when knowledge is limited, apply a precautionary approach.

a. Take action to avoid the possibility of serious or irreversible environmental harm even when scientific knowledge is incomplete or inconclusive.
b. Place the burden of proof on those who argue that a proposed activity will not cause significant harm, and make the responsible parties liable for environmental harm.
c. Ensure that decision making addresses the cumulative, long-term, indirect, long distance, and global consequences of human activities.
d. Prevent pollution of any part of the environment and allow no build-up of radioactive, toxic, or other hazardous substances.
e. Avoid military activities damaging to the environment.

7. Adopt patterns of production, consumption, and reproduction that safeguard Earth’s regenerative capacities, human rights, and community well-being.

a. Reduce, reuse, and recycle the materials used in production and consumption systems, and ensure that residual waste can be assimilated by ecological systems.
b. Act with restraint and efficiency when using energy, and rely increasingly on renewable energy sources such as solar and wind.
c. Promote the development, adoption, and equitable transfer of environmentally sound technologies.
d. Internalize the full environmental and social costs of goods and services in the selling price, and enable consumers to identify products that meet the highest social and environmental standards.
e. Ensure universal access to health care that fosters reproductive health and responsible reproduction.
f. Adopt lifestyles that emphasize the quality of life and material sufficiency in a finite world.

8. Advance the study of ecological sustainability and promote the open exchange and wide application of the knowledge acquired.

a. Support international scientific and technical cooperation on sustainability, with special attention to the needs of developing nations.
b. Recognize and preserve the traditional knowledge and spiritual wisdom in all cultures that contribute to environmental protection and human well-being.
c. Ensure that information of vital importance to human health and environmental protection, including genetic information, remains available in the public domain.

III. SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE

9. Eradicate poverty as an ethical, social, and environmental imperative.

a. Guarantee the right to potable water, clean air, food security, uncontaminated soil, shelter, and safe sanitation, allocating the national and international resources required.
b. Empower every human being with the education and resources to secure a sustainable livelihood, and provide social security and safety nets for those who are unable to support themselves.
c. Recognize the ignored, protect the vulnerable, serve those who suffer, and enable them to develop their capacities and to pursue their aspirations.

10. Ensure that economic activities and institutions at all levels promote human development in an equitable and sustainable manner.

a. Promote the equitable distribution of wealth within nations and among nations.
b. Enhance the intellectual, financial, technical, and social resources of developing nations, and relieve them of onerous international debt.
c. Ensure that all trade supports sustainable resource use, environmental protection, and progressive labor standards.
d. Require multinational corporations and international financial organizations to act transparently in the public good, and hold them accountable for the consequences of their activities.

11. Affirm gender equality and equity as prerequisites to sustainable development and ensure universal access to education, health care, and economic opportunity.

a. Secure the human rights of women and girls and end all violence against them.
b. Promote the active participation of women in all aspects of economic, political, civil, social, and cultural life as full and equal partners, decision makers, leaders, and beneficiaries.
c. Strengthen families and ensure the safety and loving nurture of all family members.

12. Uphold the right of all, without discrimination, to a natural and social environment supportive of human dignity, bodily health, and spiritual well-being, with special attention to the rights of indigenous peoples and minorities.

a. Eliminate discrimination in all its forms, such as that based on race, color, sex, sexual orientation, religion, language, and national, ethnic or social origin.
b. Affirm the right of indigenous peoples to their spirituality, knowledge, lands and resources and to their related practice of sustainable livelihoods.
c. Honor and support the young people of our communities, enabling them to fulfill their essential role in creating sustainable societies.
d. Protect and restore outstanding places of cultural and spiritual significance.

IV. DEMOCRACY, NONVIOLENCE, AND PEACE

13. Strengthen democratic institutions at all levels, and provide transparency and accountability in governance, inclusive participation in decision making, and access to justice.

a. Uphold the right of everyone to receive clear and timely information on environmental matters and all development plans and activities which are likely to affect them or in which they have an interest.
b. Support local, regional and global civil society, and promote the meaningful participation of all interested individuals and organizations in decision making.
c. Protect the rights to freedom of opinion, expression, peaceful assembly, association, and dissent.
d. Institute effective and efficient access to administrative and independent judicial procedures, including remedies and redress for environmental harm and the threat of such harm.
e. Eliminate corruption in all public and private institutions.
f. Strengthen local communities, enabling them to care for their environments, and assign environmental responsibilities to the levels of government where they can be carried out most effectively.

14. Integrate into formal education and life-long learning the knowledge, values, and skills needed for a sustainable way of life.

a. Provide all, especially children and youth, with educational opportunities that empower them to contribute actively to sustainable development.
b. Promote the contribution of the arts and humanities as well as the sciences in sustainability education.
c. Enhance the role of the mass media in raising awareness of ecological and social challenges.
d. Recognize the importance of moral and spiritual education for sustainable living.

15. Treat all living beings with respect and consideration.

a. Prevent cruelty to animals kept in human societies and protect them from suffering.
b. Protect wild animals from methods of hunting, trapping, and fishing that cause extreme, prolonged, or avoidable suffering.
c. Avoid or eliminate to the full extent possible the taking or destruction of non-targeted species.

16. Promote a culture of tolerance, nonviolence, and peace.

a. Encourage and support mutual understanding, solidarity, and cooperation among all peoples and within and among nations.
b. Implement comprehensive strategies to prevent violent conflict and use collaborative problem solving to manage and resolve environmental conflicts and other disputes.
c. Demilitarize national security systems to the level of a non-provocative defense posture, and convert military resources to peaceful purposes, including ecological restoration.
d. Eliminate nuclear, biological, and toxic weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.
e. Ensure that the use of orbital and outer space supports environmental protection and peace.
f. Recognize that peace is the wholeness created by right relationships with oneself, other persons, other cultures, other life, Earth, and the larger whole of which all are a part.

THE WAY FORWARD

As never before in history, common destiny beckons us to seek a new beginning. Such renewal is the promise of these Earth Charter principles. To fulfill this promise, we must commit ourselves to adopt and promote the values and objectives of the Charter.

This requires a change of mind and heart. It requires a new sense of global interdependence and universal responsibility. We must imaginatively develop and apply the vision of a sustainable way of life locally, nationally, regionally, and globally. Our cultural diversity is a precious heritage and different cultures will find their own distinctive ways to realize the vision. We must deepen and expand the global dialogue that generated the Earth Charter, for we have much to learn from the ongoing collaborative search for truth and wisdom.

Life often involves tensions between important values. This can mean difficult choices. However, we must find ways to harmonize diversity with unity, the exercise of freedom with the common good, short-term objectives with long-term goals. Every individual, family, organization, and community has a vital role to play. The arts, sciences, religions, educational institutions, media, businesses, nongovernmental organizations, and governments are all called to offer creative leadership. The partnership of government, civil society, and business is essential for effective governance.

In order to build a sustainable global community, the nations of the world must renew their commitment to the United Nations, fulfill their obligations under existing international agreements, and support the implementation of Earth Charter principles with an international legally binding instrument on environment and development.

Let ours be a time remembered for the awakening of a new reverence for life, the firm resolve to achieve sustainability, the quickening of the struggle for justice and peace, and the joyful celebration of life.

March 11, 2000
Stop Using Child Soldiers

“I would like to say to other child soldiers…please do not lose your childhood as well as your future.” -Abdi, former child soldier from Somalia.

There are an estimated three hundred thousand child soldiers around the world. Thousands of children 15 years of age and much younger are recruited every year in countries where contemporary conflicts are uprooting them from their childhood. The considerable numbers of child soldiers make one pause to think that the world is being sucked into a desolate moral vacuum, an endless void where children are now exploited as armed fighters. Angola recruits children at 17 and Uganda at 13 years of age as volunteers. The situation is urgent.

Child soldiers are considered to be all children under 18 according to Article 1 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. In reality, child soldiers are children young enough to lift a rifle. In 1998 alone, there were 35 major armed conflicts where children were used as soldiers. Violent conflict has always made victims of non-combatants, but now, more and more, the combatants are children.

Contemporary armed conflicts have increased the risks for children because of the proliferation of inexpensive light weapons, such as the Russian-made AK-47 or the American M-16 assault rifles, which are easy for children to carry and use. An AK-47, for example, can be easily assembled by a 10-year old boy. The international arms trade is largely unrestricted making assault rifles cheap and widely available in the poorest communities. In the Sub-Saharan area, for example, an AK-47 can be purchased for as little as six dollars on the streets. It is often suggested that too much money is spent for defense in both the developed and developing countries of the world, and that some of that money might instead be used to relieve hunger and to promote children’s survival and development. But, worldwide, many national budgets stay sharply skewed in favor of defense year after year. If security means the protection of our most precious assets, child survival should be high on the agenda of all defense departments. Why isn’t it? Perhaps in reality, the operational function of defense establishments is not so much to maintain the security of the country as a whole but to assure that the powerful remain in power. Rather than serving all their citizens’ interests, defense budgets serve the survival of the rich, not the children or the poor.

How are child soldiers recruited?

Governments in a few countries legally conscript children under 18. In the UK, teenagers who are 16 can enlist in the military for a three-to five-year-tour-of-duty. In the US, a 17-year-old can enlist in the Marines. In both countries these young soldiers can be sent to war zones.

Even where the legal minimum age is set at 18, the law is not necessarily a safeguard. Child soldiers may be kidnapped or forced by adults to join an army. Others may be forced to join armed groups to defend their families and villages.

Once recruited as soldiers, children are treated as adults. Children often serve as porters, carrying heavy loads such as ammunition or injured soldiers. Children are extensively used also as lookouts, messengers, and for common household and routine maintenance duties such as cleaning and assembling artillery. In Ugandan armies, children can volunteer at 13. They are forced to hunt for wild fruits and vegetables, loot food from gardens, plunder granaries, and perform guard duty.

Most of the children in armies come from conditions of poverty. These conditions may drive parents to offer their children for service or sell them into slavery. Children are also recruited in areas where there is a high level of illiteracy among their families and a strong prevalence of violence and ignorance in their communities. Most child soldiers, for example, never go to school throughout their childhood.

The enslavement of children into guerrilla groups is a serious issue addressed recently by an international labor group. In July 1999, the International Labor Organization (ILO) unanimously adopted Convention No.182 which prohibited and called for immediate action on the elimination of the worst forms of child labor, especially the “forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict.” The United States delegation to the ILO had opposed efforts to include a broad prohibition on child soldiers. Although trade unions and many governments supported a total ban on the participation of children in armed conflict, strong US pressure on the delegates to the ILO Convention resulted in the adoption of a much narrower, general prohibition on “forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflicts.”

Physical, Psychological and Economic Harm

Uncertain food supply and nonexistent health care are the worst economic consequences that wars bring into the reality of children on a daily basis. During the 1990s, an estimated two million children were killed in armed conflicts. Countless others have been seriously injured or have been forced to witness or take part in horrifying acts of violence. The shock, trauma, or Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTS) is generally not professionally treated immediately, if ever.

Conflicts hurt children physically and psychologically. Children suffer the consequences of armed conflicts on their bodies because of the effects of maiming, torture, sexual violence or the multiple deprivations of war that expose them to hunger or disease. The psycho-social impacts of violence on children are as severe as physical wounds. Children respond to the stress of armed conflict with increased anxiety, developmental delays, sleep disturbance and nightmares, lack of appetite, withdrawn behavior, learning difficulties, and aggressive behavior.

International law — The Geneva Conventions

Humanitarian law focuses on situations of armed conflicts. Human rights law establishes rights that every individual should enjoy at all times, during both peace and war, such as the right to life, liberty and security.

The international humanitarian law of armed conflict is reflected in four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and two 1977 Protocols. The Fourth Geneva Convention, relative to the protection of civilian persons in time of war, is one of the main sources of protection for children. It prohibits not only murder, torture or mutilation of civilians, but also any other measures of brutality whether applied by civilian or military agents.

In 1977, these Geneva Conventions were supplemented by two protocols that unite two main branches of international humanitarian law — the branch concerned with protection of vulnerable groups and the branch regulating the conduct of hostilities. Protocol I requires fighting parties in international armed conflicts to distinguish at all times between combatants and civilians to ensure that the only legal targets of attack are military. Protocol II addresses non-international armed conflicts, that is to say, conflicts inside the borders of a nation. This protocol lists the fundamental rights of all who are not taking an active part in the hostilities, namely, the right to life, liberty and security of person. It also provides that children be given the care and aid they require for a normal childhood, including education and family reunion.

Human rights law establishes rights that every individual should enjoy at all times, during both peace and war. The obligations, which are incumbent upon every nation, are based on the Charter of the United Nations and on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In formal legal terms, the primary responsibility for ensuring human rights rests with nations, since they alone can become contracting parties to the relevant treaties.

Almost 190 states have agreed to the Geneva Conventions, making them the most widely ratified conventions in history. The majority of these states has also agreed to Protocol I and Protocol II. Although the United States has ratified the 1949 Geneva Conventions, it has not ratified the two protocols, objecting to the nature of these protocols.

UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

The Convention on the Rights of the Child focuses on situations of armed conflicts and the impacts on children. It was adopted by the General Assembly in November 1989 as the most comprehensive and specific protection for children worldwide. The Convention recognizes a list of rights that apply during both peacetime and war, such as protection of the family; essential care and assistance; access to health, food and education; and the prohibition of torture, abuse or neglect.

Article 38 is known as the armed conflict article, but with regard to protection from recruitment it has little to offer. While the rest of the Convention is generally applicable to “every human being below the age of 18 years,” Article 38 makes a point of allowing children under 18 to take direct part in hostilities and to be recruited into a nation’s armed forces. It is all the more extraordinary because these restrictions are already embodied in international humanitarian law to which the article refers. Article 39 states that governments “…shall take all appropriate measures to promote physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration of a child victim of…armed conflicts.” These articles, especially Article 38, call upon nations to respect international humanitarian law as a whole. On the other hand, these articles restate their provisions only on the age limits of a child soldier and, in actuality, offer no relief to an increasingly urgent situation. Three hundred thousand child soldiers — even one child soldier — are too many.

The Convention: a commitment or a farce?

In the ten years it took to negotiate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, many participating nations argued about the age limits. Both the United Arab Emirate and the United States did not want the minimum age for military recruitment to be 18. Currently the US accepts 17-year-olds with parental permission as voluntary recruits into the US Marines. According to the US Defense Department statistics, 17-year-olds make up less than one-half of 1% of all active US troops. The UK, which allows volunteer soldiers at 16 years, joined the US in its opposition. Some UK 16 year olds fought in the Falklands War and 200 were at the front in the Gulf War in 1991. The UK was even less ready than the US to make a compromise by raising the minimum age to 18.

By the conclusion of the negotiations, the US and UK positions prevailed, and Article 38 stated that governments “shall take all feasible measures to ensure that persons who have not attained the age of fifteen years do not take a direct part in hostilities.” The irony is that despite its winning many concessions from others in the negotiations and ultimately achieving its way on Articles 38 and 39, the UK signed and ratified the Convention in 1992, but has ignored its provisions. The United States still has not ratified the Convention.

In a letter made public on December 21, 1998, a broad group of US leaders called on President Clinton to support an international prohibition on the use of child soldiers. The letter, identifying the use of children as soldiers as “one of the most alarming and tragic trends in modern warfare,” was signed by the leaders of forty human rights, religious, peace, humanitarian, child welfare, veterans and professional organizations. Signers of the appeal included Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll Jr., US Navy (retired); Robert Muller, President of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation; Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell, General Secretary of the National Council of the Churches; Dr. David Pruitt, President of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry; Dr. William Schulz, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA; Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch; Bob Chase, President of the National Education Association; Randall Robinson, President of TransAfrica; Charles Lyons, President of the US Committee for UNICEF.

The debate on age continues and more efforts have been made by other countries. In August 1999, the Nordic Foreign Ministers from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, signed a declaration against the use of child soldiers. In this declaration the Nordic Foreign Ministers supported an optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child stipulating that anyone under the age of 18 years not be recruited into their armed forces nor allowed to take any part in hostilities. This optional protocol has not yet been added to the Convention.

On August 25, 1999 the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1261 condemning the effects of war on children. The resolution strongly condemns the targeting of children and the recruitment of children in armed conflicts, but it does not call for a total prohibition on any recruitment or participation in armed conflict of children under the age of 18. Following the principles of international law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court the resolution prohibits only the use of children under the age of 15 in armed conflicts because it is considered a war crime. According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court “conscripting or enlisting children under the age of 15 into the national armed forces or using them to participate actively in hostilities” is considered a war crime. (Art. 8, XXVI)

Rehabilitation of Child Soldiers: a Step Towards a Better Future

In recent years there have been important international developments in establishing rehabilitation centers for ex-child soldiers. Rehabilitation centers now exist in Africa and Colombia. In Africa there is the Family Home Care Center in Lakka, Sierra Leone directed by COOPI, an Italian NGO, in collaboration with UNICEF and the Family Homes Movement. There is also the Reconstruindo a Esperança (Rebuilding Hope) Center in Maputo, Mozambique where a group of psychiatrists help former child soldiers re-enter mainstream society. In Colombia the Colombian Welfare Institute (ICBF) houses combatant children while awaiting openings in a rehabilitation center.

The use of child soldiers is arguably worst in Africa. It is there, however, that the most progress has been made in raising the age of conscription to 18 and in involving ex-child soldiers in rehabilitation centers. The 1990 African Charter for the Rights and Welfare of the Child prohibits both recruitment and use of children under 18 as soldiers. It has thus far been ratified by only 15 of the 53 African countries members of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). Among the 15 states that have ratified are Angola, Benin, Mozambique, Senegal Togo, and Uganda. Although the Charter came into force on November 20, 1999, Angola and Uganda are still recruiting children under the age of 18. Angola recruits children at 17 and Uganda at 13 years of age as volunteers.

In October 1999 a Conference was held in Berlin on the use of child soldiers in Europe. The conference brought a new hope to the child soldiers issue. Its Berlin Declaration calls for the swift adoption and implementation of new international law prohibiting all participation in armed conflict of children under 18 years of age. However, the declaration was weakened by the refusal of a number of European states to adopt 18 as the minimum age for the participation in armed conflict — notably Austria, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and the UK. In addition, the UK intends to continue its policy of recruiting girls and boys at 16 years of age and deploying them at 17.

Despite this, a gleam of hope has started to light the path towards change. The US Congress has already passed a resolution (S.Con.Res.72) introduced by Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN), which condemns the use of child soldiers, calls for greater support for rehabilitation and reintegration efforts for ex-child soldiers, and urges the US not to block a ban on the participation of children under 18 in the armed forces. The resolution was referred to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on November 10, 1999.

In addition, the UN Secretary-General Special’s Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Olara A. Otunnu, presently serves as advocate for children in armed conflicts and is recognized widely for his catalytic work with the United Nations and NGOs concerned about the child soldiers issue. Otunnu has been an advocate for child soldiers, who recognize in him a source of hope for their future. Otunnu has made an outstanding contribution to the protection and the rehabilitation of children involved in armed conflicts by informing and mobilizing international public opinion. He has made people more aware of the fact that the welfare of children affected by armed conflict is a priority issue for the entire world.

It is uncertain if substantial changes can be made in a short time when the international debates center on legal age rather than on the humanitarian problems that these children have to face; but as Otunnu said in his report to the United Nations General Assembly on October 26, 1999, “hopes have been renewed by the extraordinary things done by ordinary people.” The efforts of these ordinary people, such as you and me, cannot be underestimated.

There are many things that we as citizens can do to make a change and give more hope to solving the problem of child soldiers. These include: Join the US campaign to stop the use of child soldiers, by writing or calling the President, the Secretary of State and the members of Congress on this issue. Support the implementation of the Wellstone Senate Resolution. Cooperate with others in your community to publicize the issue of child soldiers in all media – newspapers, radio talk shows, and TV. Support the adoption of an Arms Trade Code of Conduct that would ban the shipment of conventional weapons to countries violating human rights and where light weapons can be easily purchased on the market by children. An Arms Trade Code of Conduct bill (HR2269) has been introduced by Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-GA). The bill is now held in the House International Relations Committee and the House Armed Services Committee. Support humanitarian organizations, such as Human Rights Watch (HRW), UNICEF, Amnesty International, Free the Children, and Rädda Barnen (Swedish Save the Children), that unhesitatingly struggle to set the minimum age at 18, support the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and advocate demobilizing and reintegrating child soldiers into the community.

The efforts of ordinary people can help renew the culture of peace in all countries. The culture of a country is very important and people who get together and combine their forces can eliminate the sources of violence that are nourished by the availability of light weapons, violence in the entertainment media, and tolerance of domestic violence, and other factors. A global change occurred when ordinary people helped to conduct the campaign to ban landmines, and now it is time to do something to stop the use of child soldiers. Do not let the opportunity slip away to give hope to these children. Believe in the power of one. Even if your voice may seem faint, do not hesitate to let others hear about this serious and urgent matter. You really can create change!

Stefania Capodaglio was the first Ruth Floyd Intern for Human Rights at the foundation’s Santa Barbara headquarters. She is a student at the Catholic University of Milan.

December 14, 1999
Interview with Olara A. Otunnu, UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict

Mr. Otunnu, I started to study the issue of child soldiers almost two months ago and since then I discovered the tough reality that these children have to face every day. Today there are almost 300,000 child soldiers around the world and that number is constantly growing. Do you think there is a chance to reduce that number and how would it be possible?

Yes, we can reduce that number assuming a three-pronged approach.

One: It is very important for the international community to raise the age limit for recruitment and participation of young persons in conflict. The present age limit is 15 and I am campaigning with others to raise this to 18. Clearly, the higher the age limit the more children we can protect. 18 is important because in the Convention on the Rights of the Child anybody below 18 is defined as a child. Also in many countries the age of majority is 18 and in many countries as well the age of voting is 18. So it is very important to raise the age for recruitment and participation. That is why I have been putting a lot of stress calling on states to cooperate on the present project on the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. That project is meant to raise the age limit for participation and for recruitment and the next meeting of the Working Group on the Optional Protocol is scheduled for January in Geneva and I hope everybody will work actively to cooperate to bring this matter to a successful conclusion.

The second measure is mobilizing an international, political, social movement of pressure that can lean on governments and insurgencies who abuse children in this way and they can feel the pressure of the international public opinion. It is very important to do this.

Thirdly, even though a significant number of children are abducted and forced to become child soldiers, we also know that there are many who volunteer to become child soldiers or are enticed to become child soldiers because of economic, social collapse in their societies, which make the alternative of being with armed groups more attractive than staying at home when there is no schooling, no economic production, the family is braking apart and the option of getting a gun and acquiring false power , or being fed, or being in the uniform looks more attractive to them. Children who are attracted by ideology, nationalist ideology come to fight for an ethnic group; or by religion come and fight for a religion; or by political ideology come and fight for a new society to re-establish democracy to overthrow a dictatorship.

In other words we need to address the economic, social, political factors that facilitate the abuse of children in this way. These are three measures we need to take in order to reverse this trend of abomination.

Q: I am sure you saw many child soldiers when you traveled around the world. What did you see in their eyes?

Often is partly despair, is partly resignation and it is partly indifference and a sense of alienation, feeling out of it. This especially becomes acute when a child is becoming an adult and begins to realize more fully what they have been doing and how terrible what they have been doing. As well as also realizing the extent to which they have been exposed. So you have got a child victim in a way at both ends of a gun: the child who is firing the gun and the child who is being fired at.

Q: I know you were born in Northern Uganda and that you spent your childhood in that area. Uganda is currently recruiting children as volunteers at the age of 13. Since you grew up in Uganda have you ever been forced to join the army or have you ever seen one of your friends joining the army at that age?

No, when I was growing up in Uganda children were not been recruited into the army. This is a new phenomenon in Uganda. It is something that began in the 1980s when the NRA, the National Resistance Army, which is now the government in Uganda, pioneered the recruitment of children into its guerrilla movements and that is where the term KADOGÓS comes from. Kadogós means “little ones.” That is a term by which now child soldiers are known in Eastern Africa from Burundi to Uganda, from Rwanda to Sudan, and that term originated in a practice of the NRA in Uganda in the 1980s. And then the second wave of the recruitment of children is what we are seeing today in Northern Uganda by the LRA, the Lord’s Resistence Army, an insurgency group which is in opposition to the present government. So it is a relatively new phenomenon in Uganda and it did not exist when I grew up.

Q: What do you think about the 17 and 16 year olds who can volunteer respectively in the US marines and the UK armed forces?

We are having a dialogue with the UK government and the US government about the issue of raising the age limit for recruitment and for participation. As you know, my own position is that the age limit should be raised to 18 and both countries up until now have difficulties with that issue. We have an ongoing dialogue going on with the US and the UK on this issue and I hope that it would be possible to have these two countries joining in a consensus in January in Geneva when we discuss the finalization of the Optional Protocol.

Most of the children in armies come from conditions of poverty. Do you believe that if their families can live in better conditions they won’t join the army or the rebels anymore?

As I said earlier there are children who are abducted or kidnapped and forced to become child soldiers. That obviously is something that needs to be stopped by leaning on those who are doing this.

Yes, there are children who because of conditions of poverty, economic-social breakdown will tend to gravitate towards the armed groups who may appear to them to offer better alternatives than the poverty, the despair, the misery in which they live. And it is not by accident that most Child Soldiers tend to be children from very poor, depressed and marginalized communities.

Yes, by tackling those conditions we would be tackling this issue.

Q: Children respond to the stress of armed conflicts with physical and psychological trauma. What can be done for them and what do you think would be better for them after they leave the army?

Definitely is very important to address their trauma because when children go and join up armed groups they are exposed to be killed and they kill. They see violence and atrocities. Children have committed some of the worst atrocities in situations of conflict precisely because they are not fully conscious of what they are doing. They are indoctrinated; they are molded into a particularly efficient, ruthless and unquestioning tool of warfare. In many cases they are even drugged.

So we must address their trauma, we must somehow address how to win them off violence. Violence becomes a normal way of life for them.

How do you wean them off this? Of course we must address how to re-insert them back in the society, how to make their families accept them back, how to make the local community accept them back, because in many cases they feel this is no longer their child who left home, it’s a new person who is used to violence and who has committed atrocities. And then of course in terms of loss of childhood and schooling to find ways to give productive work to these children in order to become adults either vocational training or some kind of training for those who are young enough to try to re-introduce them to schooling.

The four Geneva Conventions, the UN Declaration on Human Rights, but above all the UN Conventions on the Rights of the Child are the primary agreements in international law for the protection of children worldwide. The Convention on the Rights of the Child is generally applicable to every human being below the age of 18 years. But Art. 38 makes a point of allowing children under 18 to take direct part in hostilities. Do you think the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child will prevent the recruitment of children under the age of 18?

As I said earlier, that is why the present effort to bring to a close of the project of the Optional Protocol is so important. Because an important aspect of that is raising the age limit for recruitment and participation and I personally advocate that we should adopt the age limit of 18. The present age limit is 15, which is much too low and I hope that in the upcoming month of January 2000 in the meeting in Geneva we agree on raising the age limit for recruitment and participation.

Q: What do you think about the rehabilitation centers for ex-child soldiers in Mozambique, in Sierra Leone and in Colombia?

They tend to be inadequate in relation to the magnitude of the problem because in all these three countries children have been massively used as child soldiers and quite often there is not enough capacity in these rehabilitation centers. There are not enough resources to put in faith that capacity. Also we need to develop more expertise and learn from other experiences.

That is why the experience of Mozambique is very important for us to learn from what works and from what does not work, so that this can be applied in Sierra Leone, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Afghanistan, in Sri Lanka and so on. We learn from previous experiences of doing this and then of course we also need to put into place whenever there is any program for this arming, demobilization and rehabilitation. We are not only addressing the older people, the adults, but as a dimension, a framework, which addresses the situation of children who have been serving as combatants or have served in other ways within the armed groups. Because serving as combatants only is one way of recruitment. Children are used also as porters, cooks and spies.

Q: What would you like to tell to the young people around the world about the child soldiers issue?

I would like to tell them that is one of the most cynical features of today’s warfare the way with which adults are using children to be the channel for their own hate and passion. And in this way children are not only victims, they are not only victimized by the conflict, but children have also been victimizers of other children and other civilians. This is one of the worst crimes one could commit: depriving children of their innocence, of their childhood and then turning them into war machines. We must move to reverse this trend. Children have no place in warfare at all, their place is at school, in the family, in the playground and we must deprive them of that.

Q: Is there anything concrete that ordinary people, like you and me, can do for these child soldiers?

You can join in adopting the three-pronged strategy. You can join in the campaign through your Congressperson, through your Senator, through your government, through your school, through your city, the campaign to raise the age limit for recruitment and participation.

You can secondly join in a national and eventually international campaign of political pressure that can lean on the organizations that are abusing children in this way.

You can thirdly join by urging your own government and other institutions to which you are linked to contribute through their policies, through their resources to addressing the economic, political, social factas that facilitate the use of children in this way.

At your level, in your school, in your community, you can begin that movement.

Finally I think one can also build children to children linkages. Children of any community in this country can link up with children who have been exposed to wars in Sri Lanka, in Sierra Leone or in Kosovo with a school, with the hospital, with a village and learn about their experiences. So I hope children who are in the US blessed with a country that has peace, a country that is prosperous and democratic, would become advocate of children who are not so fortunate caught up in situations of conflict.

* The UN has appointed Olara A. Otunnu as the UN Secretary-General Special’s Representative for Children and Armed Conflict. Otunnu presently serves as advocate for children in armed conflicts and is recognized widely for his catalytic work with the United Nations and NGOs concerned about the child soldiers issue.

Stefania Capodaglio was the first Ruth Floyd Intern for Human Rights at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Santa Barbara headquarters. She is a student at the Catholic University of Milan in Italy.

September 18, 1999
Arms Trade Code of Conduct

As of this writing, about 33 wars are raging across the world and 90% of their casualties are civilians. Over 25 million people have been killed in conflicts since the end of World War II. Yet rather than pursuing real disarmament, governments are spending over $2 billion every single day on armies and weapons. And regimes that abuse human rights are eagerly supplied by the world’s arms producers.

A global Arms Trade Code of Conduct would prohibit the world’s arms producers, virtually all developed countries, from providing military assistance and conventional arms transfers to foreign governments that do not meet certain requirements. These requirements would include democratic governance, respect for human rights, non-involvement in acts of armed aggression, and participation in the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms, which was established on December 1991.

Conventional arms include more than rifles and submachine guns. Also included are battle tanks, missiles and landmines. The conventional arms category is broad and ambiguous because it groups many types of dangerous weapons together under the category of “conventional” arms! Sensitive military and dual-use technologies are also included, such as telecommunications systems, sensors, lasers and sophisticated satellites that monitor and prevent unforeseen attacks from other countries. Also, military and security training for expertise in the use of such weapons, munitions, sub-components and sensitive technologies are considered conventional arms. All this can be supplied with little restraint to developing countries, some of which disregard democracy and blatantly abuse human rights.

The United States is the world’s number one arms exporter. As a democratic nation, it has a responsibility to take the lead in curbing the weapons trade. In 1996, thirty three nations including the Russian Federation, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States (but not China) signed the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Technologies. This agreement was an important step toward the control of the arms trade. The Wassenaar Agreement was set up to contribute to global security and stability by promoting “transparency” of arms exports. The Agreement requires clear and detailed information about arms exports and imports for each country once a year. The problem is that the Wassenaar Arrangement has been signed by only a few nations. The world needs a global Code of Conduct.

In the United States, the Executive Office approves which countries receive military assistance and arms. Once a year, the President gives Congress a list of countries which will receive arms shipments from U.S. manufacturers. All U.S. arms transfer decisions take into account the multiple U.S. interests involved in each arms transfer. Sales are approved by the Executive Office on a case-by-case basis. All U.S. arms transfer decisions take into account certain criteria including; “Appropriateness of the transfer in responding to legitimate U.S. and recipient security needs”, “Consistency with international agreements and arms control initiatives”, and “The human rights, terrorism and proliferation record of the recipient and the potential for misuse of the export in question” (Criteria for Decision-making on U.S. Arms Exports, The White House, Feb. 17, 1995).

Nevertheless, 85% of U.S. arms transfers during 1990-95 went to the nations that did not meet the proposed Code’s criteria. In fact, they went to the Middle East (Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, Israel and Lebanon) and to 43 of the 53 countries in Africa, the continent with the most violent conflicts. In President Clinton’s first term, over two-thirds of all arms Wes agreements with the Third World went to dictatorships which are still violating human rights. In 19917 Clinton approved $83 billion in military assistance to dictatorships, an all-time record even during the Cold War years.

More than half of U.S. weapons sales are now being financed by taxpayers instead of foreign arms purchasers. During fiscal year 1996, the government spent more than $7.9 billion to help U.S. companies secure just over $12 billion in agreements for new international arms sales. The largest single subsidy program for U.S. weapons exporters is the Pentagon’s Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program. Another Pentagon’s subsidy is the Defense Export Loan Guarantee (DELG) fund. Furthermore the Pentagon has also been leasing or giving away massive quantities of highly capable U.S. weapons that have been declared “surplus” relative to current needs. In addition to Pentagon programs, other agencies provide subsidies for sales of weapons. After the Pentagon’s FMF program, the second largest subsidy comes from the Economic Support Funds (ESF) program administered by the Agency for International Development. The “Dual Use” Funding of the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im Bank) is another source of funding for military exports. In addition the Senate and House Armed Services Committees are working hard to increase the Pentagon spending encouraged by the “Big Three’ weapons contractors — Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon.

Besides the United States, there are other countries that export conventional arms to countries violating human rights. France, for example, sent arms to Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates and Rwanda. Human Rights Watch and media reports indicate that the French government continued to supply arms to Rwanda for at least two months after international news reports of genocide became public knowledge and after the imposition of an international arms embargo on May 17, 1994. Later, during hearings in March-June 1998, Bernard Debré, who was France’s Minister of Cooperation in 1994, acknowledged that the French government had continued to supply arms to the Rwandan government “ten days after the massacres started,” explaining lamely that this was “because France didn’t immediately realize what was happening.”

Sales of conventional arms bolster repressive dictatorships at the expense of the poor. In Togo and Rwanda, populations are crying out for schools and doctors, not for guns and military training. In July 1999 more than 100 bodies were found along the coastline of West Africa just after Togo’s June elections, during which opposition party members allegedly were shot and dumped into the sea. Their bodies washed up on the shores of neighboring Benin. They were killed with conventional arms, in this case, rifles or hand guns. Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, the AK-47 assault rifle can be purchased on the black market for as little as $6.

Jose Ramos-Horta, a Nobel Peace Laureate form East Timor”, was affected personally by the danger of arms sales. In August 1977 his 21-year old sister, Maria Ortencia, along with at least 20 young children in a remote village in East Timor, were killed by Indonesian Air Force pilots. His sister and these children were only a few of more than 200,000 civilians who were killed in East Timor from December 1975, when Indonesia invaded and illegally annexed the newly independent land, to 1979. Indonesia waged this war — and continues to wage this war — using an arsenal of weapons imported from the United States and Europe.

Nevertheless, there are still some people who think that an Arms Trade Code of Conduct is not necessary. Congressman Dan Burton (R-IN), for example, believes that a Code of Conduct “hamstrings the President of the United States in his conducting of foreign policy.” He argues, “If anybody believes that a country that wants to buy weaponry is going to not buy it simply because they cannot buy them from the United States, they are just barking up the wrong tree.” Congressman Mat Salmon (R-AZ) declared that the Code of Conduct is “not about human rights, and is not about foreign policy. This … is about a philosophical difference that exists within the Congress.” I wonder if Jose Ramos-Horta believes that the Arms Trade Code of Conduct is only a big philosophical pillow-fight in Congress!

There is a boomerang effect on U.S. interests, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) explained, citing that the U.S. spends twice as much to fight against countries like Yugoslavia, which was initially armed by U.S. arms exporters. McKinney is the Sponsor of the Code of Conduct bill (HR2269), a bill now pending (Nov 99) in the House International Relations Committee and the House Armed Services Committee. (Contact your legislator)

There are a growing number of people who agree with the establishment of a global Arms Trade Code of Conduct, people who have a very realistic view of the world. Oscar Arias, former President of Costa Rica and 1987 Nobel Peace Prize winner, argues against a “military-dominated mind-set that prevailed throughout the Cold War.” He also states, “It is embarrassing that five permanent members of the UN Security Council are responsible for the largest quantity of arms sales to the developing world. The very countries that should be maintaining world peace and security are the ones most responsible for promoting war and insecurity by producing and selling weapons.”

I believe that the United States now has an unprecedented opportunity to take the lead in this international effort. In my opinion, if the U.S. leads the way for the establishment of a Code of Conduct, other arms exporters will follow.

In 1994 alone, the U.S. taxpayer paid more to subsidize weapons sales than they paid for elementary and secondary education programs. The original meaning of the word “subsidize” derives from the Latin word subsidium which means to help each other. To spend billions in weapons subsidies and billions more to fight against soldiers armed with these same weapons is simply bad policy. I agree with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who pointed out, “All of us whose nations sell such weapons, or through whose nations the traffic flows, bear some responsibility for turning a blind eye to the destruction they cause. And all of us have it in our power to do something in response.” U.S. foreign policy should mirror this statement and reduce weapons sales in order to establish programs that will benefit not only U.S. citizens but also citizens of the global community.

* Stefania Capodaglio was the 1999 Ruth Floyd Intern in International Law and Human Rights at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation headquarters in Santa Barbara, California. Presently she is completing a Political Science degree at the Catholic University of Milan, Italy.

July 25, 1999
No More Kosovos!

I would like to discuss with you what the Global Action to Prevent War program could have done in helping to prevent the Kosovo crisis, what contribution it still might make to a solution there, and what it could do to prevent future Kosovos and Rwandas.

This is a practical way of reviewing the part of the Global Action to Prevent War program that deals with preventing internal conflict and of eliciting your suggestions to improve the project. And your suggestions are much needed – this is a work in progress and one that is intended to help the practitioner.

The full text of the Global Action to Prevent War program is on our website (www.globalactionpw.org). The purpose of Global Action where it concerns crises like Kosovo is to enhance the capabilities for conflict prevention of the UN, of regional security organizations, the international judicial system and human rights institutions, as well as of civil society everywhere, and to bring them all more fully into a highly active conflict prevention role.

To do this, we envision about twenty individual measures, which I would like to describe briefly. (For clarity, I have numbered them in this paper.)

Please bear in mind that it is unlikely that any of these measures alone could have decisive effect. They have to act together.

To start with, (1) Global Action foresees a specific treaty commitment to admit official human rights monitors immediately on request to the host country and to facilitate their visits.

Most countries have already undertaken numerous human rights covenants. There is no point in pressing for additional ones. What is needed is implementation of existing commitments. We know that acute Serb abuse of the Kosovars has been going on for at least ten years since Milosevic revoked the autonomy of Kosovo in 1989. Yugoslavia is a signatory of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and many other human rights covenants. These commitments are being violated by the Serb authorities.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has an agreed but complicated procedure for admitting human rights observers even when the host government is reluctant. It was invoked in Chechnya after much negotiation. What we are proposing here is a worldwide commitment that will make immediate entry of monitors to check compliance with existing human rights commitments a recognized right.

If human rights monitors had visited Kosovo at the outset of the abuses there and immediately publicized their findings, reporting them to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, to the international courts, and to the Security Council, and had done this repeatedly, this would have inhibited Milosevic.

Many NGO’s and diplomatic observers were in Kosovo observing the remarkable development of non-violent self-government there, but their reports did not get action out of Western governments. This is one of the several missed opportunities for preventing Kosovo.

Remember that the explicit standard for existing human rights covenants, both for the UN and for the OSCE, is that the status of human rights within a given country is not solely a matter of national sovereignty, but a legitimate interest of the international community.

(2) Another of our measures could have had even more effect — an international treaty on minority rights. This treaty would have promoted Kosovar autonomy and protected that autonomy, once granted, against arbitrary change. And its terms would have given the Kosovars status to complain to the international community and places to lodge these complaints – the UN Human Rights Commission, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and ultimately, the Security Council. After many years of negotiation, in 1992, the General Assembly adopted a declaration on rights of minorities. We want to go a further step to give the declaration binding treaty power.

(3) We would back this treaty on minority protection by a commitment to teach non-violent conflict prevention and productive intergroup relations in every participating country at every level of education – using the concepts covered in UNESCO’s program for a culture of peace.

(4) Global Action foresees the establishment of a professional mediator corps at the UN, with counterparts in regional security organizations.

(5) To feed into these positions and to provide the trained peacekeepers I will mention later, we also propose that, in UN member states, service in mediation, humanitarian aid, and in peacekeeping, be an accepted alternative to military conscription. Where armed forces are professional and there is no conscription, we ask governments to set up a career public service in these fields and to place these practitioners in senior government positions.

We foresee that a corps of trained mediation professionals at the UN, at the disposal of the Secretary General and Security Council, would collect and analyze information about potential trouble spots and also about proven methods of conflict prevention. They would be sent out individually or in small teams to areas where conflict might develop. Their status would be protected and all UN member states would be committed to receiving them on their territory and facilitating their stay. Small teams could stay on site for months, becoming acquainted with the local population, working with local and foreign NGO’s, trying to bring hostile groups together, proposing solutions, investigating incidents and, if helpful, making their findings publicly known.

The OSCE already does valuable work of this kind. Our proposal is that the work be intensified and be carried out by trained professionals with a reputation for institutional neutrality. Today, the Secretary General sends out small missions of this kind, but he has neither permanent professional personnel nor adequate funds for this function. A small group of mediation professionals could also be assigned to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague to permit it to undertake a more proactive conflict prevention role.

These professional mediators in the field could warn UN Headquarters if there is a real possibility of armed violence. (6) They could also alert the Conflict Mediation Panel of the General Assembly that we propose. This open-ended committee of General Assembly members would be a less formal, more flexible conflict prevention group than the Security Council. It would not be subject to the veto and could set its own agenda by majority vote.

In this case, the General Assembly Conflict Mediation Panel would send a team to Kosovo composed of UN representatives from various countries. It would hold on-site hearings, publicizing them if it seems desirable. In the Panel’s sessions in New York, as many as possible of them public sessions, it would invite Kosovars and Yugoslav diplomatic representatives, and perhaps some officials from Serbia, to tell their side of the story, and to listen to the Panel’s advice on what to do. It would be the obligation of this Panel to give the UN and the world public comprehensive, balanced information on the disputed issue and to propose possible solutions.

One of the problems of conflicts like that in Rwanda and Kosovo is that, although government officials are often aware of these conflicts at an early stage, they do not publicize their reports. Media coverage in these early stages is often sporadic. As a result, the conflicts often hit an unprepared world opinion only when they are at an advanced state and organized killing has already begun. To give civil society a chance to do its job, it has to be brought in early. The same goes for governments in other areas and for national legislatures that may have to decide on aid, sanctions, or peacekeeping operations.

In this case, the work of the professional mediators and of the Conflict Mediation Panel would alert the international community, along with NGO’s and publics in major UN member states, to the Kosovo problem. The media would intensify its coverage of Kosovo, and the political opposition in Yugoslavia would have grounds early on to question the actions of their government in Kosovo.

(7) An important feature of our proposal is a reformed Security Council, expanded in membership and restricted in use of the veto through an informal understanding among the permanent members of the Security Council.

We suggest that this reformed Security Council should make a deliberate decision to undertake a highly pro-active role in conflict prevention and should make the commitments in professional backup and financing needed to carry out this role.

In the Kosovo case, backed by information from the Mediation Corps, whose personnel would serve the Council as professional staff for this program, and by information from the General Assembly’s Conflict Mediation Panel, the Security Council would invite the Yugoslav government to appear before it in a series of hearings to explain its policy in Kosovo. The Council would present the reasons for its own concern over the situation. It would give its advice to the Yugoslav government on treatment of the Kosovars and offer its assistance, both in personnel and money, to carry out this advice. In proposing this procedure, we are thinking also of other unresolved internal conflicts like those in Sudan and Sri Lanka. In the case of Kosovo, if the problem continued, the Council would invite the Yugoslav government to appear before it again and would warn it of the probable future consequences of its anti-Kosovar practices. It would point out to the Yugoslav government and the world public that the problem in Kosovo was becoming a threat to international security.

This activity by the Security Council would prepare the road to further Council action, including the possibility of full negative publicity, the use of emissaries to Yugoslavia’s leaders, carefully selected economic sanctions, of preventive deployment of a peacekeeping force if the Yugoslav government is prepared to agree, or as a last extreme measure, of peace enforcement. The international community would be alerted at each step.

(8) We believe the Security Council and the main UN member states should move step by step toward an agreed concept for humanitarian intervention based on the idea that governments are entrusted with stewardship of the welfare of their people, especially their human rights, and are accountable for their conduct of this stewardship, and that when this stewardship is misused or abused in an extreme way, the international community should be prepared to intervene in some form.

The Council would decide in the individual situation whether this is the case and what action should be taken. Actual practice of the Security Council is moving toward this concept. A clear statement of it would have advantages for member state governments and publics.

We are proposing that civil society be closely linked to this process by (9) formal liaison with the UN Secretariat and the Security Council and regional organizations and with a biennial conference of NGO’s working on all aspects of the conflict reduction field, with participation of the Secretary General and the presidents of the General Assembly and Security Council, to discuss field experience, good and bad methods and improved liaison at all levels.

If the Security Council is blocked from action by vetoes, then resort should be made to the General Assembly by shifting action to the Conflict Mediation Panel or, in extreme cases, through the Uniting for Peace resolution used in the Korean War and in the big Congo peacekeeping operation of the 1960’s, when the Soviet Union paralyzed the Security Council with vetoes. These proposals for a General Assembly Conflict Mediation Panel, for a proactive role for the Security Council, and for resort to the Uniting for Peace procedure are not “future music.” They could be invoked today.

(10) This is a logical point to mention that the Global Action project foresees the establishment of universal membership regional security organizations in each major region, each with conflict prevention capability. When intervention is carried out by a regional security organization, the Security Council should give its approval.

We do not know the long term future of NATO. It may merge with OSCE or both may finally be absorbed into the European Union structure. But, according to our approach, NATO’s membership would have to become universal and NATO would have to recognize the authority of the Security Council.

(11) We propose in the Global Action program that all newly concluded treaties should provide for referral of disputes to the International Court of Justice for adjudication, giving the court a more active role in conflict prevention. These activities need not be limited to interstate disputes: Under the minority rights treaty we propose, the UN Human Rights Commissioner and the Kosovar community in Yugoslavia would both have status to bring complaints to the Court.

(12) We also assume effective operation of an International Criminal Court and authority under its procedures for the Kosovars to inform the court’s prosecutor at an early stage that abuses of their human rights are taking place. Effective operation of the Criminal Court will mean that the Court’s existence and practices would have a deterrent effect on actions and practices like those of the Yugoslav government against the Kosovars. We believe other aspects of the Global Action program will also have deterrent effects.

(13) The Global Action program foresees the existence of full-time UN volunteer peacekeeping forces, a brigade in each major geographic region, with the capacity to call on member states for backup forces. (14) These units would be financed by the proceeds of an international tax, possibly on airline tickets, levied by member state legislatures.

If the Yugoslav government was prepared to accept the force, the Security Council could propose preventive deployment of this force in Kosovo, stating an emergency was beginning to emerge. If the Yugoslav government refused, the Council could call for further steps, including carefully articulated economic sanctions and the use of military force under Chapter 7.

In contrast to the present situation, these pre-financed peacekeeping troops would be ready to move on a few hours notice. (15) They would be backed by a standing UN police force composed of volunteer personnel who could also take on the job of maintaining order in Kosovo. There are many occasions, including Kosovo, where inviting in a police force poses much less of a challenge to national sovereignty than an outside peacekeeping force and could therefore be more acceptable to the host country and to the Security Council as well. UN-directed police personnel have been deployed in Haiti and the OSCE has also done so in Bosnia.

If either of these forces had already been available, they might have provided a vital component for a negotiated solution of the Kosovo problem. In fact, I have been proposing that a United Nations peacekeeping force be substituted for NATO troops as an international peacekeeping force for Kosovo. A proposal to do this could bring about earlier agreement to end the Kosovo crisis than may be achieved otherwise.

We are talking here of a more powerful Security Council and regional security organizations. To limit the possibility of abuse of power and to enhance accountability of these organizations, we want to (16) institute on a step-by-step basis the practice of judicial review of Security Council decisions by the International Court of Justice.

What about the opposite problem from that of arbitrary action, the question of political will? Would governments and institutions really act to use this improved international security system?

We believe so. First, authority in the system we are describing would be widely dispersed. There would be many separate decisionmakers: NGO’s, human rights officials, UN officials and representatives and governments. Above all, the potential victims themselves would have a much louder voice.

What about timely decisions by regional security institutions or the UN Security Council to send peacekeepers? The issue of political will might become critical at this point.

(17) As one measure to deal with this issue, Global Action proposes that the president of the General Assembly or his representative should participate in meetings of the Security Council to report on Assembly views and keep the Council engaged — and also accountable.

As regards the Security Council’s capacity to act in a timely way without veto, we believe that the five permanent members, in their own self-interest of saving the Council from the cold war oblivion it would otherwise suffer and of preserving their own international influence as members of a functioning Council, may ultimately agree informally among themselves to restrict use of the veto. This restriction could be very limited, ad hoc, or general. Resort to the Conflict Mediation Panel of the General Assembly or to the Uniting for Peace procedure are possible alternatives.

In addition, we are suggesting that (18) the Secretary General of the UN should be given authority by Charter amendment or decision of the Security Council to deploy a peacekeeping military or police force of limited size for conflict prevention only. For the deployment to continue beyond 30 days, it would have to be confirmed by the Security Council.

Speaking more generally, when we raise the issue of political will, we are talking about education. A large part of what we call political will is learned behavior. (19) The Global Action project foresees an intense education program for political leaders at all levels, government officials, military officers and NGO’s on recognition of the signs of possible conflict and the logic of determined early action to prevent conflict.

For Kosovo, we know the lesson already: the costs of failure to intervene early in the Kosovo crisis include the costs of the current NATO military campaign, the costs of caring for the refugees, the costs of an international force, the costs of rehabilitating Kosovo, as well as possibly Serbia, a total which will probably exceed $50 billion for all NATO countries for the next two years.

Governments do not like to take early action. By and large, they believe that most incipient crises will dissipate and that there will be no need to incur the political and economic costs of action to cope with them. That is one lesson they draw from experience. That lesson is wrong in the field of internal conflict. Here, governments have to learn that when certain indicators are present, it is a necessity to pay for the insurance policy of early preventive action. Doing so will save more lives and it will be cheaper to pay these insurance costs than to risk the heavy costs of waiting.

Using round figures, the maximum cost of applying all the measures proposed by Global Action for Kosovo and described in this paper would perhaps have been $400 or $500 million — excluding the standing peacekeeping brigades, $100 million — as contrasted to the loss of life and uprooting of thousands of lives and costs of at least $50 billion in the belated action now going on.

This lesson about the need to act early can in fact be learned. A whole generation of Westerners went through World War II and came out with one lesson – the danger of allowing the human and material resources of Europe to fall under hostile hegemony. Without real hesitation, they followed that lesson into the cold war. Debate during the cold war was mainly about the methods.

To cite another example, in the century between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and World War I, the British political class learned the lesson of early warning and early intervention and acted on these lessons scores of times. Sometimes the objective was laudable, sometimes not, but the point is that this kind of alertness can be learned.

That is the kind of political understanding and political will that must ultimately arise with regard to prevention of conflict. It must be part of the training of every NGO, legislator, diplomat, and soldier on the planet to recognize and react to these symptoms early on. It is a central part of the job of supporters of Global Action to help to carry out this educational task with their political leaders and government officials.

This description covers only that part of the Global Action program aimed at reducing the outbreak of internal war. Global Action’s program of conflict prevention is backed by a systematic program of transparency on all the components of military power, confidence-building, and conventional disarmament to prevent interstate war and big power war — a necessary complement.

Let me draw a conclusion from these comments: This list of preventive measures is not and cannot be complete. We need the help of everyone who has ideas on this issue and of the many experienced workers in this field. Please give us your suggestions and help us make the Global Action approach better.

Our argument is not that any single one of the 18 or 19 measures I have described today would have prevented the Kosovo disaster.

It is that, working together, these measures, combined with the widespread conviction that armed conflict can in fact be prevented, and combined with insistent pressure from civil society – from all of us — can be a powerful force in drastically reducing the outbreak of armed conflict and in preventing future Kosovos.

This is the main subject that the United Nations and world civil society should be working on in their preparations for the agenda-setting Millennial forums next year – and this is the subject that we at the Hague Peace Appeal conference should be thinking of today.

* Jonathan Dean is an adviser on International Security Issues for the Union of Concerned Scientists, Suite 310, 1616 P Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036, 202-332-0900 FAX: 202-332-0905, Global Action to Prevent War.

May 1, 1999
Nuclear Weapons: A Call for Public Protest

Nuclear weapons, which are instruments of genocide, incinerate human beings. The Peace Memorial Museums in Hiroshima and Nagasaki display gruesome evidence of the atomic bombings of those cities; one can see walls where human shadows remain after the humans who cast those shadows were incinerated into elemental particles.

During World War II the Nazis put their victims into gas chambers and then incinerated them in ovens. While the Nazis took their victims to the incinerators, those who possess and threaten to use nuclear weapons plan to take these weapons, that are really portable incinerators, to the victims. Nuclear weapons eliminate the need for gas chambers. They provide a one-step incineration process — for those fortunate enough to die immediately.

The behavior of the Nazis leading up to and during World War II is universally condemned. The German people are often criticized for failing to oppose the atrocities of the Nazi regime. How much more culpable would be the citizens of the states that now possess nuclear weapons should these instruments of genocide be used again!

The German people lived in fear of the Nazis. The same cannot be said for the citizens of the nuclear weapons states, particularly the Western nuclear weapons states. Their silence in the face of their governments’ reliance upon these portable incinerators makes them virtual accomplices in planned crimes against humanity.

It is no excuse to say that these instruments of genocide exist only to deter an enemy. In the first place, there are no enemies among nuclear weapons states in the aftermath of the Cold War. More important, there is no justification for threatening to murder hundreds of millions of people in the name of national security. Deterrence is only a theory, and on many occasions, most famously the Cuban Missile Crisis, it has come close to breaking down.

The International Court of Justice has found that the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be generally illegal, and that it would be virtually impossible to use nuclear weapons without violating the laws of armed conflict and particularly international humanitarian law. The Court in 1996 reaffirmed that all nuclear weapons states have an obligation under international law to achieve nuclear disarmament “in all its aspects.”

Given the immorality and illegality of using or threatening to use nuclear weapons, where is the public outrage at the continued reliance upon these weapons by the governments of nuclear weapons states in the aftermath of the Cold War? Many people seem to believe that the threat of nuclear holocaust ended with the end of the Cold War, but this is far from the actual situation. Despite some bilateral phased reductions in the U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons stockpiles, there are still some 36,000 nuclear weapons in the possession of the nuclear weapons states, with the largest number still stockpiled by the former Cold War enemies, the U.S. and Russia.

Worse yet, our nation’s foreign policy is still wedded to the threatened use of these weapons. In late 1997 President Clinton signed a Presidential Decision Directive reserving the right for the United States to be the first to use nuclear weapons, and giving the Pentagon increased flexibility to retaliate against smaller states that might use chemical or biological weapons against the U.S. or its allies. This Presidential Decision Directive was prepared in secret with no public discussion, and came to public light only because it was leaked to the press.

Another secret study that has recently come to light reveals a frightening approach to nuclear arsenals within the U.S. military command. The study, “Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence,” was prepared by the U.S. Strategic Command, and was released only after a freedom of information request by a non-governmental organization concerned with security issues.

The study states, “Because of the value that comes from the ambiguity of what the U.S. may do to an adversary if the acts we seek to deter are carried out, it hurts to portray ourselves as too fully rational and cool-headed.” It continues, “The fact that some elements (of the U.S. government) may appear to be potentially `out of control’ can be beneficial to creating and reinforcing fears and doubts within the minds of an adversary’s decision makers. That the U.S. may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked should be part of the national persona we project to all adversaries.”

In effect, this study by the U.S. Strategic Command says that the U.S. should not only continue to base its national security on threatening to retaliate with nuclear weapons, but its decision makers should also act as though they are crazy enough to use them. One is left with the eerie feeling that these supposedly rational planners advocating irrationality may be just crazy enough to actually use these weapons if an opponent was crazy enough to call their bluff or appeared to them to do so.

Military leaders in the U.S. and other nuclear weapons states are not giving up their reliance upon their nuclear arsenals. There is little reassurance in their secret studies that argue for portraying themselves as “irrational and vindictive.”

A former commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, General Lee Butler, has made many strong public pleas for nuclear weapons abolition since his retirement from the Air Force in 1994. He recently stated, “I think that the vast majority of people on the face of this earth will endorse the proposition that such weapons have no place among us. There is no security to be found in nuclear weapons. It’s a fool’s game.”

General Butler was also a member of a prestigious international commission organized by the Australian government, the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. This commission issued a report in 1996 stating, “The proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used — accidentally or by decision — defies credibility. The only complete defence is the elimination of nuclear weapons and assurance that they will never be produced again.”

If the American people and the citizens of other nuclear weapons states want to end their role as unwilling accomplices to threatened mass murder of whole nations, they must make their voices heard. They must demand that their governments proceed with nuclear disarmament “in all its aspects,” as called for by the International Court of Justice.

If we fail to protest our reliance upon these instruments of genocide, and if these weapons are ever used, it will be “We, the People” who will stand culpable before history of even greater crimes than those committed by the Nazis. We will not have the excuse that we, like most Germans in the Nazi era, did not protest because we feared for our lives. It will be our indifference when we could have made a difference that will be the mark of our crime against humanity.

January 11, 1998
Human Rights, Wrongs, and Responsibilities

This is the 50th Anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document of vision and decency, which was proclaimed as a “common standard” for all humanity by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948. At its heart, this is a document about the equal and inalienable right of every person to live in dignity.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is one of the great documents of the 20th century. In fact, it is one of the great documents of all time. It gives voice to the common aspirations of all humanity to be treated fairly and justly. It includes civil and political rights, and also economic, social and cultural rights. It holds high the value and worth of each individual.

Despite the importance of this document, however, it is not widely known or appreciated throughout much of the world. Very few Americans are familiar with the document, and fewer still have read it and know of its contents. This is a failure of our educational systems. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights should be at least as well known to Americans as our own Bill of Rights, which it surpasses in its comprehensiveness.

No document, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, can solve the problems of humanity simply by its existence on paper. Far from it. Set down on paper, the Universal Declaration represents only the vision and hope of those who proclaimed it. To give life to the document, each generation must work actively and diligently to uphold its principles. To bring the Universal Declaration to life, each of us must work to uphold human rights and oppose human wrongs.

This is what Mahatma Gandhi did in his nonviolent protests for an end to colonialism in India. This is what Martin Luther King, Jr. and the freedom riders and other civil rights activists did in putting their bodies on the line for equal rights for all citizens in the United States. This is what the mothers of the disappeared did in standing in silent protest in Argentina during its “dirty war.” This is what Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress did in their struggle against apartheid in South Africa. This is what Bishop Oscar Romero did in working for justice in El Salvador, and what Rigoberta Menchu Tum has done in Guatemala. This is what Aung San Suu Kyi and her followers do in Burma today.

Upholding human rights and opposing human wrongs is the work of all who seek to provide food and shelter for the hungry and destitute, for all who seek justice, for all who seek an end to tyranny and oppression, for all who seek peace and an end to violence, for all who work to rid the world of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.

Human rights demand human responsibilities. The worst atrocities of the 20th century were committed by governments, often against their own people. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a response in part to the genocidal abuses which occurred during World War II. But genocide has not gone away in the latter half of this century. We have only to think of Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda.

It is our responsibility to build an international community that is strong enough to prevent the commission of genocide from occurring ever again. A step in this direction was taken this past summer in Rome when delegates of more than 100 countries agreed to a treaty to establish an International Criminal Court. This court would hold accountable perpetrators of the most serious international crimes — genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. Unfortunately, once again, as with the Landmines Convention in 1997, the United States was not among the countries supporting this important step forward.

The Fall 1998 issue of Waging Peace Worldwide includes comments on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by Richard Falk, Frank Kelly, and Nelson Mandela. The winning essay in our Swackhamer Peace Essay Contest discusses “Human Rights and Responsibilities” is also included in this issue, as well as a proposal for a United Nations Volunteer Force by Tad Daley, comments on establishing an International Criminal Court by Kofi Annan and Benjamin Ferencz, and Senator Douglas Roche’s inaugural speech in the Canadian Senate.

January 11, 1998
The Universal Declaration at Fifty: David Krieger interviews with Richard Falk

DK: As we approach the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights how do you assess the progress in implementing its important standards?

RF: The formulation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 50 years ago was an achievement that has produced results far in excess of anything that could reasonably have been anticipated at the time it was adopted. It was originally viewed as an awkward response to vague aspirations and public opinion. There was no real feeling of serious commitment surrounding its adoption. It was a prime example of what is often called “soft law.” It was viewed as something that the governments gave lip service to in this declaratory form that was not even legally obligatory and had no prospect of implementation. Many of the participating countries at the time didn’t practice human rights in their own societies, so there was an element of a hypocrisy built into the endorsement of this declaration from the moment of its inception. One has to ask why did something that started with such low expectations of serious impact on the world turn out to be one of the great normative documents of modern times, perhaps of all times.

The Declaration has been referred to as the most important formulation of international human rights law ever made. I think one of the things that helps explain this rise to prominence was that the citizens associations concerned with human rights found effective ways to take the Declaration seriously, as well, and to exert effective pressure on many governments to take the Declaration or parts of it seriously. This was a very instructive example of the degree to which what states do with respect to normative issues can be very much influenced by the degree of effective pressure brought to bear by civil society, both within particular countries and transnationally. The role of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and other groups, I think, was instrumental in putting the provisions and the impetus of the Declaration onto the political agenda of the world.

DK: You feel that the progress that has been made in human rights since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights could not have happened without strong pressure from groups in civil society?

RF: Yes, I’m saying that was an indispensable condition for the partial implementation of the Declaration. There were other factors that I think are also important to identify. One of them was the fact that once human rights emerged with this greater visibility, then governments, particularly in the West, found it a useful way to express their identity, their role in the world. It was useful as a means to exert pressure on the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc. It was part of the Cold War, a normative dimension that related the conflict to widely shared values. This was the idea that freedom was definitely linked to the promotion of human rights.

Then came the Helsinki Process in the mid-1970s in which the Soviet bloc was given a kind of stability for the boundaries that emerged in Europe at the end of WWII. In exchange, Moscow accepted a kind of reporting obligation about human rights compliance in their countries at the time. Conservatives in the U.S. criticized the Helsinki Accords harshly because they argued that the agreement was a give-away; they alleged it is legitimizing these improper boundaries and in exchange we get this kind of paper promise that has no meaning at all.

As events turned out, the Helsinki emphasis on human rights was much more important than the stabilization of boundaries. Reliance on human rights was critical for a process of legitimizing and mobilizing the opposition forces that operated in Eastern Europe, particularly groups like Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, Solidarity in Poland and even the Moscow Trust group in the Soviet Union. It became clear that, in terms of struggles of resistance within particular societies against oppressive states, international human rights norms provided important political foundations for their commitment and their activity. I think this interplay between human rights norms and procedures at an international level and resistance politics in societies governed in an oppressive manner. was a second important strand.

The third one that I would mention is the anti-Apartheid campaign, which was based on a worldwide normative consensus that Apartheid represented an unacceptable form of racial persecution that was, in effect, such a systemic violation of human rights that it amounted to a crime against humanity. This was reinforced by grassroots activists in the critical countries of the United Kingdom and the United States that put such pressure on their governments that even Thatcher’s Britain and Reagan’s U.S. felt obliged to go along with an international sanctioning process that was directed at Apartheid, and probably contributed to the peaceful abandonment by the majority of the white elite of Apartheid. This was something no one could have anticipated a decade before it occurred – people thought either Apartheid was so well established, so much in control of the society, that it was not feasible to challenge it, or that the challenge would come about by a very difficult and bloody civil war. I think that mounting this peaceful challenge was a major triumph in terms of peaceful transformation that was aided by a kind of human rights demand that itself can be traced back to the foundations that one finds in the Universal Declaration.

DK: Do you feel that the successes that have been achieved up to this point can be built upon, and the Universal Declaration will become an even more significant document and guideline for the 21st century?

RF: This is a matter of conjecture that is hard to be very clear about at this stage because you find that both possibilities seem susceptible of pretty strong supportive arguments. My sense is that there is a sufficient constituency committed to human rights that will continue to invoke the Universal Declaration and the authority that it provides as a foundation for carrying on campaigns of one sort or another. One of the things that emerged in the 1990s was the degree to which transnational women’s groups and indigenous peoples had organized themselves around a human rights agenda. Their presence was definitely felt in Vienna at the UN Human Rights Conference in 1993, and elsewhere, evidently believing that their own objectives and movements as capable of being articulated by reference to human rights demands and aspirations.

I think there is a political ground on which post-Cold War world human rights can advance further. There are also the important efforts now, outside the West, expressing different concerns but asking the same question: “What do we want the human rights process to become?” These voices are saying, we didn’t participate in the initial formulations. We think the Declaration and its norms are too individualistic or too permissive in terms of the way it approaches the relationship of the individual to the community. This is a common criticism you find in Islam and Asia. How can the Declaration be extended to represent all the peoples of the world and allow them the sense that it not only substantively is reflective of their values, but also that they’ve had some opportunity to participate in the articulation of the norms. I think it is very important that we recognize the incompleteness of the normative architecture that has flowed from the Declaration, if understood as including the International Covenants that were formulated in 1966, and other more focused treaty instruments.

There is still very important work to be done on creating a more universally acceptable and accepted framework for the implementation of human rights.

DK: One of the human rights treaties that has been created in the aftermath of the Universal Declaration is the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It’s nearly universally adhered to. The only two countries that currently have not ratified this important convention are Somalia and the United States. Somalia apparently doesn’t have its government organized well enough to do so, but the United States doesn’t have any excuse. Why is the United States holding out on making this Convention universal, and why is it refusing to give its support to a Convention so broadly adhered to?

RF: One needs to understand that this pattern of holding out against a nearly universal consensus is not limited to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The United States has been playing this obstructive role in a number of different settings, including the Landmine Treaty and the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol on the Emission of Greenhouse Gases. I’m not sure about the real objections to the Convention on the Right of the Child. I know the Pentagon has mounted pressure because of the recruiting age of soldiers and the feeling that it would not be cost effective for them to give up the right to recruit young people under the age of 18, which I think is the age in the Convention. The present recruiting age of American soldiers includes people who are 17. It seem like a small difference to justify a holdout on a treaty that enjoys such wide backing.

Let me take the opportunity to say that the fact that something is put into treaty form or is in the Universal Declaration is no assurance that it’s going to be taken seriously, either by the human rights part of civil society or by governments. One needs to come to the awareness that when we talk about human rights what we really mean is civil and political rights. Social, economic and cultural rights, which are broadly set forth in the Universal Declaration and are the subject of a separate covenant that was signed in 1966, have received very little implementation over the years. The human rights organizations are by and large devoting all their resources to the promotion of selected items of political and civil rights. For much of the world, particularly the non-Western world, economic and social rights are at least as important, if not more important, than civil and political rights. This is one of the reasons that these organizations are viewed with some suspicion, even the Western human rights organizations that tell governments to be less authoritarian or to increase freedom of participation, freedom of assembly, freedom of expression. I had a conversation a couple of years ago with Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in Malaysia, and he was very sensitive to this issue and spoke about it with sincerity and conviction. It’s also, of course, a convenient pretext for not being responsible and accountable in the area of political and civil relations. It is true that for human rights to be broadly accepted as a desirable source of obligation they have to be seriously responsive to the problems of acute poverty and economic and social deprivation as well as to the problems that arise from authoritarian governments and from the absence of democratic practices.

DK: Do you think that the United States and other Western states are failing in that regard? And, for that matter, also civil society? Have they failed to push for economic and social rights sufficiently?

RF: Yes, I think there’s no question, especially in the recent period where the Reagan and Thatcher administrations were very clear that they didn’t even regard economic and social rights as a genuine part of human rights. They felt these claims were an importation of a socialist ethos that was inconsistent with the way in which a market-oriented constitutional democracy should operate, and that was basic to the existence of a legitimate form of government. There is that real question. In civil society it’s been partly the feeling that it was much more manageable to conceive of human rights violations as challenges that involved very basic affronts to human dignity that arose out of abuses of governmental power, like the torture of political prisoners or summary executions and disappearances. These abuses captured the political imagination, and they were discreet policies of governments that were in many ways objectionable. Focusing on them seemed to facilitate access to media coverage. It seemed to raise issues that one could get some sort of results in relation to. It didn’t raise the ideological question of whether economic and social rights were somehow an endorsement of a socialist orientation toward policy.

DK: Of course, preventing torture and disappearances and other abuses of state power is quite important. It’s also a real problem that there is not safety net–that people are continuing to starve to death and to suffer and die from lack of health care and other very basic human rights–the right to be treated with dignity, the most basic right of all. What might we do from this point on to see that those rights are not pushed to the side or neglected entirely?

RF: There’s no question that by affirming economic and social rights, one doesn’t want to undermine the pressure to prevent the acute violations of civil and political rights. I think there are some new initiatives – there’s a new Center for the Promotion of Economic and Social Rights in New York City, started recently by several Harvard Law School graduates, that is trying to do good work in this area to bring a balance into the human rights picture. It’s not only the sense that one needs to focus on economic and social rights, but also one needs to focus on the structures that generate these violations. There’s a group in Malaysia called JUST, headed by Chandra Muzaffer, that has been very active in trying to show that the global market forces are systematically responsible for the polarization of societies throughout the world, essentially making the rich richer and the poor poorer. The dynamics of globalization contribute to an atmosphere in which even governments feel almost helpless to prevent the impoverishment of a portion of their own societies because of the strength of global capital. It’s important that we understand the thinking that is going on around the world about these issues of economic and social rights.

DK: How do you feel about the failure of the international community to adequately respond to situations of genocide that have arisen in Bosnia and Rwanda and other places? Hasn’t there been a terrible failure to uphold the right to life for hundreds of thousands, even millions of people?

RF: Yes, I think it is a revelation of the moral bankruptcy of the organized international community and of a disturbing and recurrent acceptance in this world of sovereign states of the most severe human wrongs being committed as being beyond control or prevention. At the same time, I have some mixed feelings about those who advocate intervention to overcome genocidal behavior without understanding the political and military obstacles that lie on that path. Intervention is a very difficult political process to use effectively as the United States found out in Vietnam and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Cheap, shallow intervention is almost worse than non-intervening. I had many disagreements with friends about the policies that should be pursued with respect to Bosnia during the unfolding of the tragedy there a few years ago. I didn’t see it as beneficial for the United Nations to establish these safe-havens or to make half-hearted gestures because, and I feel in retrospect that this view has been at least vindicated in that setting, that it would create new options for those who were committing the crimes. Unless there was the political will to defend the safe-havens – as the Srebrenica tragedy showed there was not – it would really herd potential victims together in a way that made ethnic cleansing more efficient and more horrible in its execution. One has to be very careful not to embrace a kind of facile interventionism because of our feeling of the utter moral bankruptcy of a world order system that can’t respond to genocide. To jump from inadequacy to futility is to disguise the true nature of the problem and the solution.

DK: We’ve also experienced a failure of sanctions, which has been particularly evident in relation to the sanctions imposed upon Iraq in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War. This failure has led to the more vulnerable parts of society suffering as a result of the sanctions. What do you see as the answer to this? Do we need to reform the international system? Do we need to have an international security force? If we have problems making sanctions work and problems with intervention, what do we do when we see the worst abuses of human rights occurring?

RF: It’s a difficult challenge for which there’s no quick fix, in my view, because it’s not accidental that we don’t have adequate intervention. We don’t have a Peace Force that is disengaged from geopolitics and able to act independently. Sanctions of the sort that were imposed on Iraq have these devastating effects on civilian society. It comes out of a rather profound dominance of international political life by geopolitical considerations. In the case of the Iraqi sanctions, there was a sense of incompleteness in which the war was waged and ended, leaving Saddam Hussein in control after depicting him as such a brutal, dictatorial leader. Sanctions were a cheap way for the victorious coalition to somehow express their continuing opposition without incurring human or financial costs of any significance. The fact that the real victims of this policy were the Iraqi people was not really taken into account. I’ve seen Madeleine Albright and others confronted by this reality and they brush it aside. They just don’t want to confront that reality, and tend to say “Saddam Hussein is building palaces. If he were using his resources for his people….” The whole point of the critique is that this is a leader that is not connected with the well being of his people. If we know what the effect after seven years of these sanctions is and yet insist on continuing them, we become complicit in the waging of indiscriminate warfare against the people of Iraq.

DK: At this point in time, nearing the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and approaching the new millennium, what advice would you offer to young people with regard to human rights and responsibilities?

RF: The last fifty years shows how much can be done by activists, young people and others, on behalf of making human rights a serious dimension of political life. I think that what needs to be carried forward is a more comprehensive implementation of the human rights that exist, filling in some gaps on behalf of indigenous peoples and the perspectives of non-western society, extending the serious implementation to matters of economic and social rights. We should push hard for this as something that one takes seriously, also for one’s own society. I think Americans particularly are good at lecturing the rest of the world as to what they should be doing, but are generally rather unwilling to look at themselves critically. We could begin the new millennium particularly with that kind of healthy self-criticism, not a kind of destructive negativism, a healthy self-criticism that would allow us to realize that we too are responsible for adherence to these wider norms of human rights; that we really have to rethink the enthusiasm that so many parts of our country have for capital punishment, for instance, in relation to the worldwide trend toward its abolition. I think we have to ask the question, do we really want to endow our state, or any democratic state, with the legal competence to deprive people of life by deliberate design? If we do endow the state with such power, it seems to me we are endorsing a kind of sovereignty-first outlook that has many other wider implications that are not desirable, and that run counter to deeper tendencies toward the emergence of global village realities.

January 1, 1998
Captain Cousteau’s Legacy: Rising to Our Full Stature as Human Beings

Jacques Cousteau was larger than life. He was a man who lived fully. He was a resistance fighter during the Second World War, the inventor of the Aqua-Lung, a world famous explorer of the oceans, filmmaker, and writer. Captain Cousteau was at home in the water, and he brought the wonder and mystery of the oceans and its creatures into the lives of people everywhere. He took to calling our Earth the “water planet,” acknowledging the extraordinary treasure that makes life possible and makes our planet unique in the known universe.

Captain Cousteau’s vision encompassed the planet and the future. He once wrote, “There are no boundaries in the real Planet Earth. No United States, no Soviet Union, no China, no Taiwan…. Rivers flow unimpeded across the swaths of continents. The persistent tides — the pulse of the sea — do not discriminate; they push against all the varied shores on Earth.” For Captain Cousteau there was only one planet Earth, and only one humanity. He spent a good part of his life fighting to preserve our planet for future generations.

In 1989 the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation presented its Distinguished Peace Leadership Award to Captain Cousteau. On the day that he was scheduled to be in Santa Barbara to receive the award, the Concord which he boarded in Paris was delayed on the runway for hours due to an equipment problem. When Captain Cousteau realized that he would not be able to make his connection in New York to be in Santa Barbara in time for the event, he deboarded. That evening more than 700 members and guests of the Foundation heard Captain Cousteau speak to them from Paris over a speaker telephone at the Red Lion. Many were disappointed by his absence.

When I told Captain Cousteau how much he was missed at the banquet in his honor, he said that he would come to Santa Barbara the following weekend to be with us and receive the Foundation’s award. I remember being surprised when I met Captain Cousteau at the airport by the straightness of his bearing (for a man nearly 80 years old), by his abundant energy (after a long flight), and by the warmth of his manner.

We arranged for Captain Cousteau to speak in the sunken gardens of the Courthouse. A large crowd came out to greet him on a beautiful sunny afternoon.

In his remarks, Captain Cousteau spoke of the dangers of nuclear accidents and expressed anger at the manner in which these accidents were treated by technocrats. “A common denominator,” he said, “in every single nuclear accident — a nuclear plant or on a nuclear submarine — is that before the specialists even know what has happened, they rush to the media saying, ‘There’s no danger to the public.’ They do this before they themselves know what has happened because they are terrified that the public might react violently, either by panic or by revolt.”

He concluded his speech saying that “The problem is to get rid of the arrogance of technocrats. We want to know the truth when an accident occurs. And we want to fight. We want the right of all people to decide on what risks they will or will not take, to protect the quality of life for future generations.”

He received a tremendous outburst of applause, to which he responded, “The time has come when speaking is not enough, applauding is not enough. We have to act. I urge you, every time you have an opportunity, make your opinions known by physical presence. Do it!”

In 1995 I wrote to Captain Cousteau to thank him for his outspoken opposition to French testing in the Pacific. He wrote back setting forth eight points in the antinuclear position taken by the Cousteau Society. These included opposition to “any development of atomic weapons, including any kind of test, either in the air, underground or in specially equipped laboratories.” Another point in Captain Cousteau’s letter called for outlawing “any nuclear activity from any country…as we have outlawed chemical or bacteriological warfare.” He said that nuclear bombs were “criminal,” and that we must all struggle to outlaw them.

Captain Cousteau spoke out for many causes — the Earth, the environment, his beloved oceans, future generations. His Bill of Rights for Future Generations was signed by millions of people throughout the world. The first Article of this document stated, “Future generations have a right to an uncontaminated and undamaged Earth and to its enjoyment as the ground of human history, of culture, and of the social bonds that make each generation and individual a member of one human family.”

Men such as Jacques Cousteau are rare. They are treasures, teaching what is real and important. We were privileged to have Jacques Cousteau among us — as we are privileged to have other great peace leaders among us, including many others who have received the Foundation’s Distinguished Peace Leadership Award. If we fail to listen to these leaders of vision, we will bear a heavy burden of responsibility for the devastating destructiveness that our technologies make possible; and the burden of future generations will be even greater.

The life of Captain Cousteau reminds us that we may all rise to our full stature as human beings, and stand straight and proud of our humanity and of the legacy we leave to the next generation. But we cannot reach this stature by complacency, indifference, or blind obedience to authority or dogma. We must think for ourselves, and believe, as Captain Cousteau did, that a better future is not only necessary but possible — if we are willing to work for it.

*David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

July 20, 1997
The Human Right to Peace Declaration

Lasting peace is a prerequisite for the exercise of all human rights and duties. It is not the peace of silence, of men and women who by choice or constraint remain silent. It is the peace of freedom – and therefore of just laws – of happiness, equality, and solidarity, in which all citizens count, live together and share.

Peace, development and democracy form an interactive triangle. They are mutually reinforcing. Without democracy, there is no sustainable development: disparities become unsustainable and lead to imposition and domination.

In 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations and UNESCO and the United Nations Year for Tolerance, we stressed that it was only through a daily effort to know others better – I am the ‘other’! – and respect them that we would be able to tackle at source the problems of marginalization, indifference, resentment and hatred. This is the only way to break the vicious circle that leads from insults to confrontation and the use of force.

We must identify the roots of global problems and strive, with imagination and determination, to check conflicts in their early stages. Better still prevent them. Prevention is the victory that gives the measure of our distinctively human faculties. We must know in order to foresee. Foresee in order to prevent. We must act in a timely, decisive and courageous manner, knowing that prevention engages the attention only when it fails. Peace, health and normality do not make the news. We shall have to try to give greater prominence to these intangibles, these unheralded triumphs.

A universal renunciation of violence requires the commitment of the whole of society. These are not matters of government but matters of State; not only matters for the authorities, but for society in its entirety (including civilian, military, and religious bodies). The mobilization which is urgently needed to effect the transition within two or three years from a culture of war to a culture of peace demands co-operation from everyone. In order to change, the world needs everyone. A new approach to security is required at world, regional and national levels. The armed forces must be the guarantors of democratic stability and the protection of the citizen, because we cannot move from systems of complete security and no freedom to systems of complete freedom and no security. Ministries of war and defence must gradually be turned into ministries of peace.

Decision-making procedures and measures to deal with emergencies must be specially designed to ensure speed, co-ordination and effectiveness. We are prepared for improbable wars involving the large-scale deployment of inordinately costly equipment, but we are not equipped to detect and mitigate the natural or man-provoked disasters that occur repeatedly. We are vulnerable to the inclemency of the weather, to the vicissitudes of nature. The protection of the citizen must be seen as one of the major tasks of society as a whole if we really wish to consolidate a framework for genuinely democratic living. Investing in emergency help and relief measures and – above all – in prevention and the long term (for example, in continent-wide water distribution and storage networks) is to be prepared for peace, to be prepared to live in peace. Currently, we are prepared for possible war, but find ourselves surprised and defenceless in our daily lives in the face of mishaps of all kinds.

The United Nations system must likewise equip itself with the necessary response capacity to prevent the recurrence of atrocities and instances of genocide such as those which today afflict our collective conscience – Cambodia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Liberia, Somalia and Rwanda…

There is today a general desire for peace, and we must applaud the clear thinking and strength of mind displayed by all the warring parties in the accords that have been reached in El Salvador, Namibia, Mozambique, Angola, South Africa, Guatemala and the Philippines. These agreements fill us with hope but also sadness, when we think of the lives sacrificed on the long road to the cease-fire, and of the open wounds, so difficult to heal. Thus, as we revive the concept of the ‘construction of peace in the minds of men’, we now call on all adversaries who still put their trust in weapons to lay down their arms and seek reconciliation.

Condemnation will not suffice. It is time for action. It is not enough to feel outrage when we learn of the number of children exploited sexually or at work, of refugees or of those suffering from hunger. We must react, each of us to the best of our abilities. It is not just a matter of looking at what the government is doing. We must part with something of ‘our own’. We must give, give of ourselves. We must stop imposing models of development, models for living. The right to peace, to live in peace, implies jettisoning the belief that some are virtuous and correct while others are wrong, and that some are always giving while others are always in need.

It is clear that we cannot simultaneously pay the price of war and the price of peace. Guaranteeing lifelong education for all would enable us to: control population growth, improve the quality of life, increase civic participation, reduce migratory flows, level out differences in income, assert cultural identity and prevent the destruction of the environment through substantial changes in energy use patterns and urban transport; promote endogenous development and the transfer of knowledge; foster the swift and effective operation of justice, with appropriate machinery for international co-operation; provide the United Nations system with appropriate facilities to tackle transnational problems in time. None of this can be achieved in a context of war. What is needed, then, is to reduce the investment in arms and destruction in order to increase investment in the construction of peace.

The distillation of traditions, thoughts, languages, forms of expression, memories, things forgotten, wishes, dreams, experiments, rejections, culture finds its supreme expression in our everyday behaviour. Infinite cultural diversity is our great resource, which is underpinned – this is our strength – by universal cultural values that must be passed on from the cradle to the grave. Family members – especially mothers – teachers, the media, everyone must help to spread the ethical principles, the universal guidelines that are so necessary today for haves and have-nots alike: the latter because they have a right to the basic minimum standards that human dignity demands; the more fortunate because material goods fail to deliver the expected pleasure. Where there is no longing, possession brings no enjoyment. In education, tools are useful. But nothing can replace the friendly words of a teacher, or the caresses and smiles of parents. The only real education is education by example . . . and love.

Learning without frontiers – whether geographical, or frontiers of age or language – can help to change the world, by eliminating or reducing the many barriers that today impede universal access to knowledge and education. Education must help to strengthen, reclaim and develop the culture and identity of peoples.

Globalization carries with it a danger of uniformity and increases the temptation to turn inwards and take refuge in all kinds of convictions – religious, ideological, cultural, or nationalistic. Confronted with this threat, we must ’emphasize the forms of learning and critical thinking that enable individuals to understand changing environments, create new knowledge and shape their own destinies’. Indigenous peoples must be placed on an equal footing with other cultures, participating fully in the drafting and application of laws. Peace means diversity, a blending – of ‘hybrid, wandering cultures’ as Carlos Fuentes put it; it means multi-ethnic and multilingual societies. Peace is not an abstract idea but one rooted firmly in cultural, political, social and economic contexts.

Above all, this profound transformation from oppression and confinement to openness and generosity, this change based on the daily use by all of us of the verb ‘to share – which is the key to a new future – cannot be achieved without our young people, and certainly not behind their backs. We must tell them – they who represent our hope, who are calling for our help and who seek in us and in external authorities the answers to their uncertainties and preoccupations – that it is in themselves that they must discover the answers, that the motivations and glimpses of light that they are seeking can be found within themselves. Although at times it may be difficult, given both their consternation and our own, to present the situation to them in those terms, our position as lifelong teachers and learners obliges us to say to young people, as Cavafy put it in a poem: ‘Ithaca gave you the journey . . . She has nothing left to give you now’. Each according to his own plan. Each according to his own way of thinking. Free from self-serving outside interference, especially when it robs the young of their own ‘core’, the intellect, talent and resourcefulness which are the most precious individual and collective treasure of humankind. Sects and the escape provided by drug addiction are the clearest symptoms of this pathological state of mind that is our great problem today. Indeed, education means activating this immense potential and using it to its fullest so that each may become the master and architect of his or her own destiny. We cannot give to youth what we no longer possess in youthful vitality but instead we can offer what we have learned through experience, the fruit of our failures and successes, of the burdens, joys, pain, and perplexity and the renewed inspiration of each new moment.

Let youth hold high the banner of peace and justice! So convinced am I of the relevance of this goal to the proper fulfilment of our mission that I have proposed to the General Conference that it designate ‘UNESCO and youth’ as a central topic for discussion at its next session. That will be an appropriate moment since the General Conference will be considering for adoption the ‘Declaration on the Safeguarding of Future Generations’.

At all the United Nations conferences, regardless of the subject under consideration (environment, population, social development, human rights and democracy, women, housing), there has been a consensus that education is the key to the urgently needed change in the direction pursued by todays world, which is increasing disparities in the possession of material goods and knowledge, instead of reducing them. To invest in education is not only to respect a fundamental right but also to build peace and progress for the world’s peoples. Education for all, by all, throughout life: this is the great challenge. One which allows of no delay. Each child is the most important heritage to be preserved. UNESCO may at times give the impression that it is only interested in preserving stone monuments or natural landscapes. That is not true. Those efforts are the most visible. And the heritage thus safeguarded the least vulnerable. But we must protect our entire heritage: the spiritual, the intangible, the genetic heritage – and, especially, ethics. These are the basic, universal values that our Constitution sets forth with inspired clarity. If we sincerely believe that each child is our child, then we must radically change the parameters of the ‘globalization’ currently under way. And the human being must become the beneficiary and main actor of all our policies and strategies.

A system collapsed in 1989 because, concentrating on equality, it forgot liberty. The present system focused on liberty, will know the same fate if it forgets equality – and solidarity. The din made as the ‘Iron Curtain’collapsed drowned out the tremor that ran through the foundations of the ‘winning’ side in the Cold War. We must, then, for the sake of both principle and self-interest, redouble in every field the fight against exclusion and marginalization. We must all feel involved. We must all work to ease the great transition from the logic of force to the force of reason; from oppression to dialogue; from isolation to interaction and peaceful coexistence. But first we must live, and give meaning to life. Eliminating violence: that is our resolve. Preventing violence and compulsion by going, as I said before, to the very sources of resentment, extremism, dogmatism and fatalism. Poverty, ignorance, discrimination and exclusion are forms of violence which can cause – although they can never justify – aggression, the use of force and fratricidal conflict.

A peace consciousness – in the interests of living together, of science and its applications – does not appear overnight, nor can it be imposed by decree. First comes disillusionment with materialism and enslavement to the market, and then a return to freedom of thought and action, sincerity, austerity, the indomitable force of the mind, the key to peace and to war, as affirmed by the founders of UNESCO.

Science is always positive, but the same cannot always be said of its applications. Advances in technology and knowledge can be used to enrich or to impoverish the lives of human beings; they can help to develop their identity and enhance their capacities or, on the contrary, they can be used to undermine the personality and coarsen human talent. Only conscience, which is responsibility – and thus ethical and moral – can make good use of the artefacts of reason. Conscience must work in tandem with reason. To the ethics of responsibility we must add an ethics of conviction and will. The former springs from knowledge, and the latter from passion, compassion and wisdom.

We are now approaching the end of a century of amazing scientific and technological progress: we can diagnose and treat many diseases which cause suffering and death; we communicate with extraordinary clarity and speed; we have at our disposal instant, limitless information. However, antibiotics and telecommunications do not compensate for the bloody conflicts which have cut down millions of lives in their prime and inflicted indescribable suffering on so many innocent people. All the obscenities of war, brought home to us nowadays by audio-visual equipment, do not seem able to halt the advance of the huge war machine set up and maintained over many centuries. Present generations have the almost impossible, biblical task of ‘beating their swords into ploughshares’ and making the transition from an instinct for war – developed since time immemorial – to a feeling for peace. To achieve this would be the best and most noble act that the ‘global village’ could accomplish, and the best legacy to our descendants. With what satisfaction and relief should we be able to look into the eyes of our children! It would be also the best way to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in 1998.

Other ‘rights’ have been added since 1948. These should all be taken into account, and to them should be added the right which underlies them all: the right to peace – the right to live in peace! The right to our own ‘personal sovereignty’, to respect for life and dignity.

Human rights! At the dawn of the new millennium, our ideal must be to put them into practice, to add to them, to live and breathe them, to relive them, to revive them with every new day! No one nation, institution or person should feel entitled to lay sole claim to human rights, still less to determine others’ credentials in this regard. Human rights can neither be owned nor given, but must be won and deserved afresh with every passing day. Nor should they be regarded as an abstraction, but rather as practical guidelines for action which should be part of the lives of all men and women and enshrined in the laws of every country. Let us translate the Declaration into all languages; let it be studied in every classroom and every home, all over the world! Today’s ideal may thus become the happy reality of tomorrow! Learning to know, to do, to be and to live together!

In these first days of the new year – a time for taking stock and making plans – I appeal to all families, educators, religious figures, parliamentarians, politicians, artists, intellectuals, scientists, craftworkers and journalists, to all humanitarian, sporting and cultural organizations and to the media to spread abroad a message of tolerance, non-violence, peace and justice. Our aim must be to foster understanding, generosity and solidarity, so that with our minds more focused on the future than on the past, we may be able to look ahead together and build, however difficult the conditions or inhospitable the setting, a future of peace, which is a fundamental right and prerequisite. Thus, ‘We, the people’ will have fulfilled the promise we made in 1945, our eyes still seared by the most abominable images of the terrible conflict that had just ended – ‘to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war’, ‘to construct the defences of peace in the minds’ of all the peoples of the Earth.

January 5, 1997