In the movie “King Richard”, the father of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams, Richard, has them put up a hand painted banner on a chain link fence around a delapidated tennis court in Compton, California. The sign reads: “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. That’s where humanity is now: by failing to plan, we are failing.
The invasion and war against Ukraine may leave humanity with athoritarianism expanded. Between the war and social forces, the climate crisis is not being addressed, with emissions actually increasing, and there is an ongoing mass extinction on Earth due to the actions of human beings.
In the year 1984 there was a hamburger fast food advertisment with a simple question: “Where’s the beef?” The tiny hamburger patty that was shown was inadequate.
Today the question is “Where’s the plan”. The post WWII implementation of enforceable human rights is inadequate. Some reports and rapporteurs have been worthwhile, but overall advancement of human rights into civil rights is a hodgepodge that for the most part is unenforceable in courts.
There are over 2 million nonprofits internationally – and over 260,000 foundations – it’s time to stop traveling in parallel and dancing on the periphery claiming that human rights are enforceable when they are not. We need a plan to collect our clout, make them truly enforceable, and achieve most of our missions.
We do not need to construct a plan from scratch. If we take the work of the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, along with subsequent Covenants and Conventions, and combine them into a single document, an International Bill of Rigths, we have a plan for humaity. That plan rests upon a set of fundamental rights for all people in all countries, enforceable in the courts of all countries.
That plan is embodied in the booklet you can read on the Unite for Rights homepage. The draft International Bill of Rights document is both in the booklet and on the homepage. Give them a read. They are not the product of any one person, certainly not me: they are what Malcolm Gladwell calls an “overstory”, prepared by many people over many years.
As you read them, use the standard to review the plan that Rousseau set forth in Social Contract (1762) “To take people as they are, and write the laws as they might be”
Do you think you have a better plan? “Where’s the plan?” Present it, it’s easy to do so right on the Unite website. Whether you wrote it on a napkin, or found it in any written piece you may have read throughout the history of humanity, any plan submitted will be evaluated.
Discussion about any plan submitted will be transparent on the Unite website. Any secular plan for humanity that is better than the one Unite for Rights proposes, which includes the draft International Bill of Rights in the booklet and the map used in these blogs, will be given an award of $1,000 Euros and a full description on the website of why the award has been given.
Every breakthrough, be it in law or physics, needs to be tested. So far, no one, including nonprofit organizations and businesses, has presented a better, secular, plan, but there may be one. Unite is open to every suggestion.
The standard is what is optimum? – not what any leaders of certain countries will accept at this moment. What can we all do to organize as an international community? – just prior to our heading out into the stars, our destiny.
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