Bill, here's the vision Gore has for America's future...Anyone electing Gore will be voting for the relinquishment of American liberty and freedom.
i-p-o.org
_________________________________________________________
The following 12 points are a summary of the many demands and proposals being made across the world for better international governance. As an urgent first step we call on you to set in motion a rigorous process to hold all agencies of global governance to account and democratize international decision-making according to the principles set out in this letter.
Strengthen democratic accountability and participation in international decision-making:
1. Give the UN General Assembly powers to scrutinize the work of UN agencies and other agencies of global governance; create a UN Parliamentary Assembly and an annual Forum of Civil Society; open international institutions to increased participation by civil society and elected representatives from member countries; bring the WTO into the UN system and strengthen the co-operation between all international groupings under the UN system.
2. Create within the UN system an accountable, equitable and effective mechanism to monitor, supervise and regulate transnational corporations and financial institutions; and require transnational companies to adhere to an international code of conduct covering agreed principles concerning human rights, the environment and core labor standards.
3. Give UN institutions an additional and independent source of revenue such as taxation of foreign exchange transactions, aircraft and shipping fuels, arms sales and licensing use of the global commons.
Maintain international peace and security:
4. Reform the UN Security Council to open all decision-making to public scrutiny; phase out the single country veto and permanent membership; establish equitable representation from each region of the world; set up a high Ievel early warning system; and provide effective authority to mediate and intervene in disputes at an early stage, within national boundaries where necessary.
5. Establish a permanent, directly recruited UN Rapid Reaction Force to hold the peace in a crisis, police gross violations of human rights and support multilateral defense against aggression and genocide;
6. Make the UN register of arms mandatory; ratify and implement the Landmine Ban Treaty; outlaw all weapons of mass destruction; initiate programs to control the arms trade, convert the arms industry to peaceful production and cut military spending world wide; strengthen accountability to the UN of all international military action; and reduce the size of national armies as part of a multilateral global security system.
Uphold fundamental human rights:
7. Strengthen world citizenship based on compliance with and respect for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and all international instruments on Human Rights, including the six core treaties on economic, social and cultural rights; civil and political rights; racial discrimination; discrimination against women, children's rights, torture, and the Conventions on genocide, refugees and labor standards.
Strengthen justice under international law:
8. Ratify the Statute of the International Criminal Court; accept compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court and the UN Human Rights Committee; increase the Courts' powers of enforcement; open the ICJ to individual petition and protect the judicial independence of the ICC.
Promote social progress and better standards of life:
9. Establish a strong UN institution for Economic and Environmental security to promote international prosperity, protect the global commons and secure reasonable development.
10. Establish an International Environmental Court to enforce international treaties on the environment and protect the global commons.
11. Declare climate change to be an essential global security interest and establish a high-level international urgent action team to assist the UN Conference of the Parties on Climate Change to set a scientifically based glob ceiling on greenhouse gas emissions, to allocate national shares of permissible emissions based on convergence to equal per capita rights, and to work with governments, companies, international agencies and NGOs to cut emissions of greenhouse gases to a sustainable level.
12. Make poverty reduction a global priority: secure universal access to safe drinking water, health care, housing, education, family planning, gender equality, sustainable development and economic opportunities, and strengthen the capacity of development agencies to eliminate malnutrition, preventable diseases and absolute poverty through conservation and equitable sharing of global resources. Cancel the unpayable debts of the poorest nations and institute measures to prevent severe debt burdens from ever building up again. |
