2015 New Year's Message

By David Gallup

World Service Authority celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2014. As we move into the new year, we reflect on WSA's accomplishments and on current and new projects.

The WSA was founded on January 1, 1954 to act as the administrative branch of the World Citizen Government, a government of, by and for the people of the world. It was created out of necessity by Garry Davis who had renounced his national citizenship after World War II. As a "stateless" human being, Davis needed a government to help him affirm his rights and responsibilities as part of humanity and to the earth. He was not alone. Millions of refugees after WWII had no government that they could count on to recognize their rights. Today, the UN's refugee agency confirms that the world is facing the worst refugee crises since WWII with more than 50 million refugees internally and externally displaced around the world.

Then and now, the WSA has been providing documentation services to individuals, without national recourse, who are considered persona non grata due simply to not possessing any identification documents or to loss of national citizenship. The WSA has issued close to one million World Passports and millions of ID cards, birth certificates, asylum cards, etc. The WSA has provided documents for free to many refugees and stateless persons confined to refugee camps because they lack travel or ID documents.

In addition to its documentation service, the WSA established a World Judicial Commission and later a Legal Department to provide legal advocacy and education in human rights and world law. For the past 25 years, the Legal Department has drafted thousands of advocacy letters, affidavits of support, legal briefs, and intergovernmental petitions to help those who have been persecuted, faced governmental harassment, and been arbitrarily detained.

To further the educational component of its mission, the WSA's Human Rights Awareness Project has provided hundreds of thousands of copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in multiple languages to individuals, schools, secular and religious organizations, non-profits, NGOs and intergovernmental organizations. Everyone who requests information from the WSA and those who are issued documents from the organization receive a copy of the Declaration.

In addition to the services mentioned above, the following projects of the WSA respond to the urgent needs of the global public in an ever-increasingly globalized world. Please join one of our projects.

Current Projects:

World Court of Human Rights Development Project: educating about, promoting and implementing the draft Statute of the World Court of Human Rights. Establishing a fully-functioning human rights tribunal at the global level and subsidiary regional tribunals in which individuals would have personal jurisdiction at the global level to prosecute claims of human rights violations that they have suffered.

World Refugee Fund: fundraising to offer free legal advocacy and documentation to refugees and stateless persons.

World Citizen Legal Fund: establishing a global network of lawyers who will represent world citizens suffering from various human rights violations (not only refugees or stateless persons). Implement an urgent action network to intervene in individuals' cases where local justice systems are failing. Seek funding to defray costs of representing individuals and groups around the world in their human rights claims.

World Government House: the publishing branch of the World Service Authority. Publishes and produces books, newsletters, periodicals, reports, brochures, pamphlets, videos, DVDs, etc.

World Media Association: promoting the right to freedom of expression to the global public and within the media. Providing protection for the media to exercise this right.

World Citizen Social Media, Tele-seminars, and Videoconferencing: providing to the global public educational information by telephone, Internet, and video about world citizenship, human rights, and WSA activities. The WSA's YouTube channel, Facebook page, Twitter account, and World Citizen Blog provide updates on global events with a world citizen viewpoint.

World Speakers Bureau: providing speakers for various global events and venues who can discuss the concept and legal status of world citizenship and world law.

World Citizen Referendum: on-line referendum in which the global public can vote on crucial issues that affect humanity and the earth. Thousands of votes have been cast since the referendum went on the Internet in 1997. Located at http://www.worldservice.org/wref.html

World Citizen Forum: forum to discuss the concept and legal status of world citizenship, world law and world government. The WSA created the online World Citizen Forum in 1999 at YahooGroups. Now more than 5,000 individuals participate in this daily online forum. Information about the group and how to subscribe is located at https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/WorldCitizen/info

ICC Petition: Garry Davis filed a petition in 2010 before the International Criminal Court against the nuclear weapons heads of state for their stockpiling, manufacturing and threat to use nuclear weapons as a crime against humanity. So far, the Court's registrar has not indicated how it will consider the petition.

World Citizen Action Day: May 25th annually. A yearly action day to focus global attention on how each of us can participate in recognizing the importance of human rights, world citizenship, world law, and world government in the process of world peace. Celebrated on the day that Garry Davis gave up his national citizenship in favor of world citizenship.

World Citizen Day: July 27th annually. A yearly celebration to promote understanding of the life and legacy of World Citizen Garry Davis, celebrated on his birthday. Affirms our individual right to declare our world citizenship status and our link to humanity and the earth.

World Birth Card Project: providing birth registration identification cards to undocumented children and adults around the world. Because of the lack of birth registration procedures in many countries, children cannot go to school and be given inoculations, and adults cannot exercise their right to work, vote, health care, social security, etc.

WSA Document Enhancement Project: focusing on increasing the recognition of WSA documents as well as on improving their appearance, utility, and ease of issuance.

Mundialization: a grassroots program that strengthens the understanding of world citizenship around the globe. It is a process of formally declaring one's city a "world city," recognizing its connection and responsibility to the rest of the world, that we all share the same basic problems, and pledging that its citizens will take actions that reflect that recognition. To date, nearly 1,000 cities, states, schools and other organizations have officially mundialized.

Programs In Formation:

World Law Institute: teaching human rights and world constitutional law to the general public and providing global legal perspectives and opinions on legal and judicial issues around the world. The Institute will develop World Citizen and World Law Curricula for pre-school, primary, secondary and university-level schools regarding human rights, world citizenship, and world law. It will promote and implement a "Model World Parliament" program. It will develop multi-lingual educational software to reach larger audiences. A subsidiary initiative of the Institute, the Space Law Project will provide education about evolving laws to maintain peaceful uses of space and prohibit military uses by nation-states. As another subsidiary initiative, experts in the fields of human rights, world law and world citizenship will provide human rights consulting through seminars and training sessions to activists, organizational leaders and the general public, offering tools and techniques for acting globally.

World Citizen Museum: establishing an online (virtual/digital) museum and a physical (actual) museum to chronicle the world citizenship movement for future generations. Collecting, preserving and promoting the artifacts that relate to world citizenship, world peace, human rights, human unity. Digitizing the written, photographic, audio, and visual archive of World Citizen Garry Davis.

World Guards Project: establishing a world peace force (like Gandhi's satyagraha movement) which proactively would intervene in disputes to prevent conflict from rising to a violent level both locally and globally. Roving ombudspersons and mediators would use non-violent peace and conflict resolution tools and strategies to settle disputes.

World Syntegrity^® Project: empowering individuals to govern themselves and devise a global flexible constitutional process for humans to govern the world in a participatory way. Groups meet around the world to answer the question, "How can we as sovereign world citizens govern our world?" Almost 30 group meetings throughout the world have already taken place.

World Citizen Party, World Candidates Commission, World Elections Commission, World Parliament Commission: educating about, promoting and implementing a system to call for candidates to participate in a global elections. The Commissions will guide the development of the structures and institutions of world law and fully-functioning world government.

World Government Postal Service: facilitating mail services to regions of the world where the Universal Postal Union is not functioning or where governments have halted mail from one country to another due to ethnic, national or other discrimination.

Future Programs:

World Citizen Radio and Television Broadcasting: will offer timely commentary on global events with a world citizenship perspective.

World Citizen Clubs: will provide educational, networking and social opportunities for students to discuss, learn about and promote world citizenship ideals.

World Energy and Water Grid: will link human use of electrical energy and fresh water throughout the world in order to make distribution and use more equitable and to prevent violent conflict over energy and water usage.

World Sustainable Development Organization: will monitor local and regional development procedures and set and implement standards for human and environmental sustainability.

World Mutual Abundance Bank: will establish a valid global monetary and compensation system. Two monetary units have been created: the World Kilowatt Bill, which has already been printed in limited quantities, and the Mondo, suggested by Garry Davis in his 1984 bookWorld Government, Ready or Not!

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World Service Authority and the World Citizen Government offer an alternative model to the nation-state, as a system to organize human interaction. Through its various projects and programs, the WSA is developing the global institutions of law that will help us all to live together peacefully.

We encourage all world citizens in this New Year to resolve to participate in this process.

Pick a project that interests you, and let us know how you can lend a hand -- info@worldservice.org 

66th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The UDHR and the WCHR

By David Gallup

      On this 66^th anniversary of the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), we have a milestone in the progression of human rights to celebrate – the first phase of the creation of a World Court of Human Rights is nearly complete.

     The Design Team of the World Court of Human Rights (WCHR) Development Project held face-to-face and online meetings over the last year to draft an up-to-date Statute for this Court that will provide a venue for victims of human rights violations to seek redress. The WCHR Design Team is composed of lawyers, jurists, academics, practitioners and non-profit organizations.  We are seeking additional input from the global public who is encouraged to view and comment on the Statute at www.worldcourtofhumanrights.net.  Individuals and organizations interested in providing legal, technical, and financial support can contact the WCHR Design Team by emailing info@worldservice.org.

     Phase One of the Court’s development involved drafting the Statute and raising initial awareness among the legal and judicial communities.  To complete this task, the WCHR Development Project Team Leader, sponsored by the World Service Authority, is currently attending the 15^th Annual Conference of Chief Justices of the World in Lucknow, India.

     This Team Leader will provide to each Justice in attendance a pocket-sized booklet of the World Court of Human Rights Statute as well as a professionally–prepared survey to gauge the Justices’ thought process about the Statute and the Court.  We will request that the Chief Justices of the highest courts around the world draft a resolution in support of the establishment of this new Court.  We will also recruit Justices to participate in the later phases of the Court’s development, such as promoting the importance of the Court to domestic populaces and potentially serving as Justices on the Court.

     After the Conference, the Design Team will move into Phase Two, the fundraising and promotional stage.  During this Phase, the Design Team, along with business and legal consultants, will conduct feasibility studies and sensitivity analyses, create focus groups of judges and justices, fine tune the vision of the Court, determine the services and support that the Court will provide, gather data and draft budgets, and produce a prospectus and other documentation that clarify the Court’s significance.

               

      The establishment of the World Court of Human Rights is significant because it will be the first adjudicative body that will take the fulfillment of the universal rights affirmed in the UDHR as its underlying judicial principle.

      Although there is an International Court of Justice, that body only handles disputes between nation-states.  The International Criminal Court only handles criminal matters pertaining to war crimes, crimes against the peace, and crimes against humanity.  The WCHR, however, will focus on providing individuals and groups, who are suffering from human rights abuses, a forum to have their grievances heard and remediated.

      Because respect for universal human rights requires a system of justice that transcends the nations, the drafters of the UDHR contemplated the need for global legal procedures. The UDHR’s Preamble declares “that human rights should be protected by the rule of law” and that “every individual and organ of society shall strive … to promote respect for these rights and freedoms … by progressive measures , national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance.”

      Both the UDHR and the WCHR proclaim that adherence to the rule of law is the foundation of freedom, peace, and justice for humanity. The UDHR and WCHR share other paramount goals. First, human rights are the underlying ideology of both the Declaration and the Court.  Next the UDHR and the Court declare a commitment to respect human rights unequivocally, ensuring that our rights will be maintained by the rule of law which includes adjudication of wrongs.  Third, the UDHR, as customary international law, and the Court, as a global tribunal, both describe and consider the universality and applicability of rights to everyone, everywhere.  The WCHR will create respect for law and rights at the global level.

      The WCHR will be the Supreme Court of, by and for the people of the world. Now that’s something to celebrate!

Ebola Diagnosis: Inadequacy of the Nation-State

By David Gallup

Disease knows no borders.

In an ungoverned world, Ebola and other viruses can potentially wipe out a large part of the human species. National governments cannot handle an epidemic, let alone a pandemic, because they take a parochial, short-term view of events outside their claimed frontiers. Countries respond to crises elsewhere in the world only when it is in their local interest, applying a “national security” or “public order” approach rather than what is in the best interest of humanity.

Many nation-states do not have the scientific or economic capacity to control the spread of disease within their borders. They cannot handle health crises on their own.

The World Health Organization has been successful in controlling and eradicating some diseases such as polio. United Nations member-states, however, consistently prevent this UN agency and other health organizations, such as the Centers for Disease Control, from intervening in the affairs of each country through underfunding, understaffing, and domestic control over health matters. A Washington Post front page article confirms that there has been “no coordinated global response” to the Ebola crisis (Oct. 5, A9).  A global government approach provides the needed remedy to heal the divisions that prevent us from having an effective global public health system.

The division and discrimination that national governments perpetuate lead to violations of the right to adequate health care.  Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) affirms, “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including, food, clothing, housing and medical care…”   The ability to exercise the right to health care, according to the UDHR, is dependent upon whether a society provides sufficient economic conditions and social services to the population.  People living in poverty with minimal education and limited medical resources cannot exercise this right.

The nationalistic approach to health care also dramatically impacts the right to travel (Article 13 of the UDHR).  People living in countries where the disease is out of control can be discriminated against and refused travel visas even if they do not live near the outbreak and have had no contact with the infected. Those who have the virus might need to leave their country to get proper medical care, but other countries may refuse to let them in.  Also, other countries often refuse to provide technical and financial assistance to the disease-ravaged country – assistance that could help those infected locally in the short term, and could safeguard everyone globally in the long term.

People need to receive help no matter where they live.  Helping all humans, regardless of their nationality, is the only way to protect humanity as a whole and each of us individually.

Nationalism is a disease run rampant. It prevents us from achieving a sustainable, healthy and peaceful world. Albert Einstein said, “Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.”

If we humans cannot devise a system to govern our interactions, whether in global health or politics, then we are doomed to destroy each other and the earth.  It is a matter of priorities.  When we fund the next stealth bomber, arm insurgents, prepare for and wage wars, no funding remains to build hospitals and to strengthen the economic, social and health infrastructure.

Disease is universal.

Science is universal.

Rights are universal.

Helping our fellow humans throughout the world is not universal – but it should be.

A Dangerous Fiction

by David Gallup

Recent events in Crimea demonstrate the dangerous fiction of the nation-state, that one day a part of the planet “belongs” to one country and, on the next day, as troops and weapons are brandished, to another.  Virtually overnight Crimea passed from Ukraine to Russia.

Whether it was the instability of the Ukrainian government, the flexing of Russian military might, or a Crimean desire to align with Russia that precipitated a change in political allegiance, the biological status of the people inhabiting that land did not change.  They remain human beings which means their highest citizenship did not change either, that of world citizenship.

When people unite at the national level, no matter what country they identify with, the resulting separation and exclusivity can easily lead to violent conflict.  A “we” versus “they” dichotomy reigns. Is it possible to maintain our tribal or nationally patriotic distinctions while simultaneously maintaining the exclusive power to destroy each other and the planet? There’s nothing wrong with maintaining our lower level allegiances as long as we recognize our highest level allegiance to each other, to humanity.

Nationalism, when the power and tools to wage war are outlawed, does not inevitably lead to armed conflict.  On its positive side, nationalism may affirm the unique cultural, linguistic, religious, socio-economic, historical and institutional differences that make our world interesting.  A few nation-states have even legally affirmed their desire for peaceful human interaction such as Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution and Article 12 of the Costa Rican Constitution which outlaw war and dissolve the national military.

As communities around the world continue to divide themselves into smaller and smaller units, the necessity to unify at a higher level in order to affirm our universal human rights and to implement a global legal framework becomes greater and greater.

With a common allegiance to global democratic institutions, to protecting humanity as a whole, and to safeguarding the earth, world citizenship links us all together for the good of the one and the many.

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, physicist Joseph Rotblat said, “We need to convey the message that safeguarding our common property, humankind, will require developing in each of us a new loyalty: a loyalty to mankind. It calls for the nurturing of a feeling of belonging to the human race. We have to become world citizens.”  Along with Rotblat, Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, in their joint statement, appealed to human beings as human beings, “Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”

Affirm your humanity by registering as a World Citizen. www.worldservice.org/reg.html

New Year’s 2014 Message:

by David Gallup

“As a Citizen of World Government, I affirm my awareness of my inherent responsibilities and rights as a legitimate member of the total world community of all men, women, and children, and will endeavor to fulfill and practice these whenever and wherever the opportunity presents itself.”

 –from the World Citizen Affirmation

World Citizenship means not only recognizing our universal rights, but also recognizing our universal responsibilities to each other and to the earth.

World citizens endeavor to make our communities and our world a better place to live. We call upon all world citizens to self-organize for the benefit of each other and the earth. We can take action to enhance our own lives and those of everyone around us. This process is about creating an independent and self-reliant knowledge-based system of world citizen interaction. Each of us has special knowledge and skills that we can share.

At WSA’s World Citizen Yahoo Group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WorldCitizen), at its Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/pages/World-Service-Authority/149086282356) or through other social media, world citizens can reach out to each other to lend a hand.

Fulfilling our responsibilities may mean writing a letter on behalf of another person who has been refugeed by war. It may mean contacting a government ministry to expose a violation of someone’s right to residence or work. It may mean providing clothing or shelter to someone in need whether in your neighborhood or around the world.

Using social media or in person, we can provide assistance to each other outside of the national monetary system. By minimizing the use of national payment systems, we can chip away at the flow of money and taxes that go to waging wars. 

We can barter and exchange ideas, skills, services, and knowledge. For example, a carpenter could help a teacher with some home repairs, and the teacher could teach the carpenter a new language. Or we can share or give away items that can still be used by others. We can help each other with assistance that we need whether it is architectural, linguistic, scientific, mathematical, legal, artistic, mechanical, technological, etc.

The World Citizen Credo affirms that “As a global person, a World Citizen relates directly to humankind and to all fellow humans spontaneously, generously and openly. Mutual trust is basic to his/her lifestyle.” By sharing skills and knowledge, we relate to each other “generously and openly,” and we establish trust by working together.

As we start this new year, let us make our world better for everyone by reaching out to our fellow humans and organizing as world citizens. Let us each ask, “How can I help you as your neighbor and fellow world citizen?”