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
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