CITIZENS TREATY OF
FAIRNESS, EQUITY AND ETHICS
[FORMERLY THE ANTI-FREE TRADE CITIZEN'S TREATY FOR CORPORATE AND STATE COMPLIANCE] Recognizing the Interdependence of Peace, Environmental Protection and Human Rights and Social Justice

Proposed General Assembly Resolution to be circulated to governments by their citizens

Through more than 50 years of concerted effort, the member states of the United Nations have created public trust international obligations, commitments and expectations in which they have undertaken the following:

1. to Promote and fully guarantee respect for human rights including labour rights, health rights, and social justice;
2. to Enable socially equitable and environmentally sound employment;
3. to Achieve a state of peace, justice and security;
4. to Create a global structure that respects the rule of law; and
5. to Ensure the preservation and protection of the environment.

Concerned that trade organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI) undermine the work of over 50 years in creating obligations, commitments and expectations with respect to the matters set out above;

Dismayed by the continued global urgency resulting from the failure of member states of the United Nations to discharge their obligations arising from conventions, treaties and covenants, to act on commitments made in conference action plans, and to fulfill expectations arising from general assembly resolutions.

Recalling the expectations created through resolutions of the General Assembly, commitments made in Conference Action plans, and obligations incurred through Conventions:
- to guarantee "the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family"
- to "prevent the scourge of war",
- to recognize "Peoples' right to peace",
- to "eliminate production of weapons of mass destruction",
- to ensure that "the use of scientific technology should be in peace and for the benefits of humanity",
- to "reduce the military budget and transfer the savings into promoting social programs particularly in developing countries",
- to "ensure social justice and the equitable distribution of resources",
- to respect "the right to work for equal pay for work of equal value",
- to "ensure the rights of future generations", and
- to "respect the inherent worth of nature beyond human purpose";

Noting that December 10, 1998 is the 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and that there must be no discrimination on the following grounds:

Race, tribe, or culture, colour, ethnicity, national ethnic or social origin, nationality, place of birth, nature of residence (refugee or immigrant, migrant worker) status, colour, gender, gender identify, sex, sexual orientation, gender identy, marital status, form of family, disability, age, language, religion or conviction, political or other opinion, or , class, economic position, or other status

Recalling the commitment made by all the member states of the United Nations in the Platform of Action at the UN Conference on Women: Equality, Development and Peace (Beijing, 1995) and in the Habitat II Agenda, "to ensure that corporations including transnational corporations comply with national codes, social security laws, and international law, including international environmental law";

WE CALL UPON THE MEMBER STATES OF THE UNITED NATIONS TO UNDERTAKE THE FOLLOWING:

1. To discharge obligations, act on commitments, and fulfill expectations arising from Public Trust international agreements and thus:
(a) to sign and ratify those existing international conventions, treaties, and covenants that have not yet been signed and ratified,
(b) to enact the domestic legislation necessary to implement them and to fulfill the legitimate expectations created by General Assembly resolutions and declarations, and
(c) to act upon commitments arising from conference action plans;

2. To establish mandatory international standards and regulations (MINS), based on international principles and on the highest and strongest regulations from member states, harmonizing standards and regulations continually upwards with respect to:
a. Promoting and fully guaranteeing respect for human rights including labour rights, health rights and social justice;
b. Enabling socially equitable and environmentally sound employment;
c. Achieving a state of peace, justice and security;
d. Creating a global structure that respects the rule of law; and
e. Ensuring the preservation and protection of the environment.

3. To demand compensation and reparations from corporations, and from administrations that have permitted corporations to, or assisted them in, degrading the environment, violating fundamental human rights, causing harm to human health, especially where those actions occurred:
(a) in developed and developing countries, or
(b) on the lands of indigenous peoples or in the communities of marginalized citizens in either developing or developed countries;

4. To revoke the licences and charters of corporations, including transnational corporations, if those corporations have persistently:
(a) violated human rights or denied social justice,
(b) caused environmental degradation, or harm to human health,
(c) disregarded labour rights, or
(d) contributed to conflict and war, or if they fail to pay compensation for past non-compliance with international agreements;

5. To reduce the global military budgets by at least 50% and use the savings:

(a) to guarantee:
- the right to safe and adequate food, which has been not genetically altered or irradiated, or grown with pesticides
- the right to safe and affordable shelter,
- the right to universal health care,
- the right to safe drinking water,
- the right to a safe environment,
- the right to education, and
- the right to peace;

(b) to fund socially equitable and environmentally sound work; and

(c) to fund education and research free from corporate direction and control;

6. To increase funding for United Nations agencies and for international, national and regional educational institutions so that their missions will not be undermined by corporate direction or control. All funding to the United Nations should be conditional and dedicated to the furthering of international public trust law, not vested interest economic agreements such as GATT, WTO, MAI etc. Given the security council is controlled by the nuclear armed states, the security council should be disbanded, and rotational councils should be selected from the membership of the general assembly.

7. To develop criteria for partnership with the United Nations so as to ensure the exclusion of corporations and to ensure that all partners have in no way in any of their activities violated human rights, including labour rights caused environmental degradation, contributed to war and conflict, or failed to promote socially equitable and environmentally sound employment;

8. To distinguish "civil society" from the "market" - as business activity conducted for profit and civil society as those elements of society that serve to guarantee human rights, foster justice, protect and conserve the environment, prevent war and conflict, and provide for socially equitable and environmentally sound employment -

9. To prevent the transfer to other states of substances and activities that cause environmental degradation or that are harmful to human health, as agreed in the Rio Declaration, UNCED, 1992;

This prohibition must cover activities such as those related to:
(a) production, importation or exportation of toxic, hazardous, or atomic substances and wastes,
(b) production or consumption of ozone-depleting substances,
(c) extraction of resources by environmentally unsound methods,
(d) production or distribution of genetically-engineered food substances and genetically modified organisms,
(e) production or distribution of genetically engineered crop/pesticide systems,
(f) production of greenhouse gas emissions;
(g) production of products emanating from old growth forests

10. To act upon the commitments made at recent United Nations Conferences to move away from the overconsumptive model of development, to reduce the ecological footprint, to move away from car-dependency, and to reject the economic dogma that maximum economic growth will resolve the urgency of the global situation;

11. To prohibit all trade zones that have the effect of circumventing obligations and commitments intended to guarantee human rights, including social justice and labour rights, or to protect, preserve and conserve the environment.

12. To work for the unconditional forgiveness of all developing nations debt arising from loans made prior to 1990 and for the termination of all structural adjustment programs (saps) which seek to ensure repayment of such debt at the expense of ordinary people, including programs which seek:

(a) the indiscriminate privatization of state-owned enterprises,
(b) the indiscriminate reduction of government expenditures,
(c) the indiscriminate liberalization of trade regimes,
(d) the indiscriminate opening of states to increased foreign investment, especially where this entails the attraction of foreign capital by deregulating markets and offering low wages, high interest rates, and little or no environmental protection,
(e) the indiscriminate encouragement of producing of goods for export at the expense of traditional crops, products and services which serve the needs of domestic peoples, or
(f) to force a developing nation to adopt a policy of creating or exacerbating an imbalance between imports and exports;

13. To ensure that no state relaxes environmental, health, human rights or labour standards in order to attract industry, and that no corporation allows a branch or subsidiary to engage in:
(a) practices that are unacceptable in the controlling corporation's state of origin,
(b) activities that are banned or restricted in the controlling corporation's state of origin, or
(c) manufacturing or transferring substances that are banned or restricted in the controlling corporation's state of origin.

14. To ensure that no state shall justify trade with a country that violates human rights, including labour rights on the grounds that such trade will lead to a betterment of human rights, except where contined trade is conditional on eliminating human rights abuses.

15. To establish an International Court of Compliance where citizens can bring evidence of state and corporate non-compliance with all states' overriding obligations and commitments to:
(a) protect and advance human rights, including health rights, and labour rights and social justice,
(b) protect and conserve the environment,
(c) prevent war and conflict, and
(d) enable socially equitable and environmentally sound employment

Contacts:
Joan Russow (Ph.D.) 1230 St. Patrick St. Victoria, B.C. V8S 4Y4
Tel/FAX (250) 598-0071, e-mail jrussow@coastnet.com
Caspar Davis (L.L.B) e-mail prana@coastnet.com