Something to ponder?
Who Represents World Citizens?©
Garry Davis
In politics, the nation-state insidiously controls not only the dialogue but also the electoral process. Check the platforms of the recent US candidates for president. Not one advocates a world constitution to outlaw war. Quite the contrary, both John Kerry and George W. Bush (as well as Al Gore) were for an increased military budget and the updated version of Reagan's "Star Wars," while the Pentagon wants to "master" space above our heads. Neither endorsed a government beyond the nation to deal with environmental devastation despite the overwhelming dangers the human race itself faces because of global warming, ocean pollution, ozone layer depletion, rain forests burning and species, both plant and animal, extermination. It is as if both they and the US voters live on another planet. But worse, the general public’s loyalty to this myopic political illusion blinds it to the solution of humanity’s ills taken together, i.e. world law based on human rights. Small wonder that less than 50% of the US public votes in presidential elections.
Can Bush, Blair, Chirac, Barmak, Putin, Sharon, Khatami, Chrétien, Rasmussen, Dehaene, Simitis. Oddesson, Prodi, Juncker, Kok, Jagland, Gutteres, Azhar, Erbakan, Cardosa, Memen, Klestil, Teng-hui, Mubarak, Bhavan, Abdullah, et al, resolve world problems—your problems— as heads of state? Are we humans politically represented on the level where our own problems reside? The question answers itself. Moreover all national leaders confess their impotence while sanctimoniously maintaining their own mandate as executors of exclusive law. The contradiction is blatant and transparent. They are only legally sanctioned to preserve the existence of their particular fictional states and not the state of the world in which they and their co-citizens live in reality.
Then why do we, the innocent victims of state domination, continually look to them in their never-ending meetings for solution? Are we not sheep being led to the slaughter all the while wondering who to elect as the next “butcher?” What is lacking here? In every other field but politics, individuals operate globally: the post-office, telephone and television being prime examples. Today, the Internet is coming along as a fast fourth.
The entire world so-called peace movement lacks global representation! Why are “peace” groups all talking only to themselves? What are the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates doing about eliminating war-making….about creating the conditions of peace? And the former nuclear scientists? And the former generals and admirals and Peace Corps workers? And the philosophers, poets, gurus, and sages? How is it that the arms race continues unabated while people starve? How is it that we can communicate with one another instantaneously worldwide and cannot travel without the absurdity of national passports and visas? How is it that all national leaders talk, talk, talk about human rights and yet they are violated by EVERY nation EVERY second? In short, why are most world citizens not playing hardball politics?
Let's face it, no national parliamentarian, congressperson or state head represents us, the people of the world. Because millions of us already identify ourselves as World Citizens as an inalienable right.
Well-intentioned peaceniks write of "nations" being unwilling to "relinquish" their national sovereignty. But nations do not have sovereignty. Ultimately, it is you and I—now reborn into world citizenship—who have civil sovereignty. This is the axiom of civil democracy. Nations cannot "relinquish sovereignty" because it is not theirs to begin with: sovereignty belongs to the people.
With this axiom in mind, it is necessary also to look at this word "relinquish." If sovereignty resides in the people, there can be no such thing as "relinquishing" our sovereignty. It is inherent in us by the very fact of being human. The whole connotation of the words "relinquish" or "cede" is negative and totally unsuited for expressing the immensely creative step which the people of the earth must now take, and are now starting to take, in the direction of forming a planetary government. For years, the ogre of all the world government movements has been the "red herring" of "relinquishing" our rights, "ceding our claims", "renouncing our sovereignty," all of which makes the would-be follower immediately fearful that he or she will be losing something of valuable self-interest. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. The people of the earth would lose nothing of real self-interest by a civil world government. Quite the contrary, they would gain enormous freedom from needless suffering and taxation. The only persons who would lose their usurped rights would be precisely those national leaders whom we are asked to believe in as the initiating-source of world government. Their right to destroy the earth over petty conflicts, for instance, would definitely be taken away from them. And along with them, the spies, diplomats, consular personnel, frontier guards and indeed, the army of money changers! What a boon for humanity!
The word we should use instead is "delegate". People can delegate their decision-making functions, their functional sovereignty, to others to perform and exercise, i.e., to forming governments. Up to this point in history people have seen fit to delegate their sovereignty to the level of national governments. But now, it is necessary that the people not "relinquish" their sovereignty, but reassert and extend it to the level of functional human unity as a legal and political institution.
World government, then, need not occur only when nations begin to "relinquish" their national sovereignty." It begins when citizens wake up to the fact that they are by every right world citizens, that they have the right to set up their own political machinery on the world level, and when they then take that step can actually begin to set a world government into action.
We must be clear that the formation of a world government need not in any way depend on the actions or "recognition" of national governments.
In essence, we must stop being a slave to the mentality of nationalism and the word "nation." We must stop falling into the mind-set that affirms old world order relationships even as it seeks to transcend them.
Who then represents us, the sovereign world citizens?
The question is as self-evident as the answer. We, the human beings concerned, are not represented in our entirety, as members of the human race, because we have not yet democratically chosen our own world citizen representatives! And why is that?
BECAUSE NO WORLD CITIZEN CANDIDATES HAVE YET DECLARED THEMSELVES AS AVAILABLE!
Governments start by individuals claiming de facto citizenship. Ref., the United States of America. That is precisely what my candidacy for World President, declared in 1983, is all about. It may seem quixotic to some. But already we are citizens of our own world government. (See http://worldgovernment.org.) The office of World President of our government would be largely ceremonial and symbolic. Once established, with follow-up subsidiary instruments: a world parliament, world judiciary, world executive, etc., it follows that positive law has finally allied with the perennial truths of unity and universality taught by humanity’s sages from time immemorial. In other words, a vote for World President is not only a vote for a person, not even a vote only for an political office, but a vote for a set of truths or conceptual values such as justice, freedom, benevolence, cooperation, and the gamut of social and economic rights as expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The specific mandate for global government as well as global elections is already provided by Article 21(3) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
"The will of the people shall be the base of the authority of government; this will
shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and
equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures."
This is a global sanction and mandate for declared and registered World Citizens to elect declared and registered World Citizens.
It may come as very exciting news that such a global enterprise is now actually afoot, and that the beginnings of such a government, though embryonic, are now at hand in the issuance of a number of world documents, including so far a world citizen card, a world birth certificate, and a world passport already recognized by many Third World nations.*
Taking its initial lead from such documents as the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Optional Protocol to the latter Covenant, and other basic doctrines of international law, and having adopted the neutral international language Esperanto as its future official language, this legitimate government, whose administrative branch is known as the World Service Authority (District III for the USA) bids well to become the most significant civil world democratic movement of this new century.
The missing link to complete the instrumentation of world representation will soon become available: an Internet site, sponsored by the World Service Authority, the "city hall" of the World Government of World Citizens. Declared candidates for world public office will be able to signify their availability to the world citizen constituency: http://www.worldcandidates.org. mandated by aforementioned human rights article. (In construction).
The site will not only provide a place for candidates to expose their program, experience, educational qualifications, etc., but also the actual ballots for both World President and World Parliamentarian for the registered World Citizen can be downloaded. A link to the World Government site will access on-line individual registration, the fee paid by a recognized credit card.
. The Internet is already being utilized for local and national electoral processes, three US states permitting registration of citizens directly on their state websites. Every nation and every candidate for national political office must have a website these days of electronic politicking. Indeed, the World Government site has already had a World Referendum operating since 1995, its five questions dealing with global subjects never asked by national pollsters. Ref.: http://www.world-government.org/referendum.
Numerous world constitutions written since 1945 will be reproduced on the above-mentioned site along with references to fundamental human rights in both national
constitutions and international covenants. A section on historical references to world citizenship and a world state will lend substance and credibility to the concept throughout humankind's evolution to a peaceful world. A library of excerpts from rare books dealing with the subject of world law will be accessible. An index of individual advocates throughout history to the present will complete the site.
If this millennium has any historical mission it is evidently to eliminate the scourge of war from the human community. Otherwise, as Einstein has warned us, war will eliminate us in toto.
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Published by
World Government House
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(802) 864-6818; Fax: (802) 862-3744
Email: worldlaw@globalnetisp.net
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