A/HRC/24/38
peoples and communities of the earth, in the plurality of each of their members,
organizations and social movements, have the right to political systems of direct or
delegated participation with a revocable mandate. Regional governments and international
organizations, particularly the United Nations, must be constructed on democratic
principles. The same is true for all institutions that represent specific interests or business
sectors, such as industrial companies, estates, financial or commercial organisms, political
parties, religious institutions or trade unions, NGOs, sports or cultural groups, humanitarian
organizations.
All dictatorial or authoritarian forms of exercising political or economic power, where no
representative minorities, formal or informal, monopolize decisions without participation,
initiative or popular control, are inconsistent with the Common Good of Humanity and are
therefore prohibited. Also prohibited are public subsidies for organizations, social
movements, political parties or religious institutions that do not respect democratic
principles or that practice gender or racial discrimination.
X.
Paris Appeal for a New Democratic International Economic Order,
International Association of Democratic Lawyers, 25 May 2013
(excerpts)10
We, democratic lawyers, recognize the United Nations Charter along with the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Conventions on Human Rights constitute the
Constitution of the modern world. These important documents prohibit the threat of and use
of force, recognize the sovereign equality of states and the right of self-determination, and
guarantee that everyone has the right to a social and international order in which the rights
and freedoms in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights can be fully realized.
The United Nations Charter in its Preamble replaced the old vertical logic of power over
peoples by horizontally organizing power of the peoples based on the exercise of and
respect for self-determination and their exclusive mastery over their own affairs in equality
and universality. However, the economic management of the world has been “entrusted” by
the Bretton Woods agreements to international financial institutions, but these institutions
are based on the old vertical logic of power over the peoples that do not comply with the
principal of equality and universality. This has allowed the peoples of the world to be
diverted from their mission as States with the economic power of these institutions being
used as instruments of domination and policing in their own self-interest and the interest of
large economies.
Peoples’ power requires not only the first generation of civil and political rights but also the
second generation of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Peoples’ Power cannot be
complete without economic power.
The conclusion from the experience of decolonization necessitated the adoption of the
United Nations Resolution of 1971 proclaiming peoples’ sovereignty over their natural
resources. However, it became clear that even with such resolutions peoples remain
dependent because of the so-called “laws” of the market with its domination by industrial
and financial monopolies, continue undermine the Human Rights Covenants and raise
public debt.
We have been denouncing for decades not only the injustice and illegitimacy of the public
debt of developing countries but also its illegality and nullity.
10
http://www.iadllaw.org/
37
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