WSSD: PEACE CRUCIAL TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

http://www.ceasefire.org.za/news_article.asp?articleid=9

Date published: 5/27/2002
Peace And Development Platform Document
The need for an integrated, people-centred approach to sustainable development that builds peace and transforms situations of violence and injustice.
Draft Discussion Paper
Peace and Development Platform
South Africa May 25th 2002
Development, Peace and Justice
Security
There will never be genuine, lasting security in the world while inequality and injustice are so universally evident. The goals of poverty eradication and protecting our environment must be intrinsically linked with the promotion of peace and security. The tragedy of September 11 and the events that followed have demonstrated that every individual’s personal security is at risk, and that no one can afford to ignore the suffering and frustration of others; this realization should fortify our resolve to achieve sustainable development not distract us from it.
Militarisation
Rethinking the notion of ‘security’ is the key to understanding the links between demilitarisation, environmental protection and sustainable development. This rethinking of security involves confronting a powerful paradox. The paradox is that the military, including its intelligence agencies —the institutions meant to ‘protect’ and ‘defend’ us,—in reality often represent the biggest threat to our security. While this is especially true of countries under military occupation it is clearest in the growing body of evidence on the disastrous environmental impact of military activity, including research, development, production of weaponry, testing manoeuvres, the presence of military bases and the disposal of toxic wastes, as well as the direct impact of armed conflict.
The Arms Trade
A combination of the easy availability of small arms and other weapons of war and increasing clashes between, and within, traditional and contemporary power groups, has led to countless killings, rapes and other acts of aggression and domination. Often these clashes are over the control of scarce or lucrative resources like oil, diamonds, land and water.
Civilians and Refugees
Largely it has been civilians, women and children in particular, who have suffered directly from the violence. The displacement of millions of people fleeing from violence has created pockets of humanity living in conditions which neither themselves nor the surrounding environment can sustain. In addition social norms and values are breaking down and creating conditions ripe for further violence.
Social Justice
Improving the conditions for social justice is fundamental to the promotion of peace and security throughout the world. However current development approaches often exacerbate existing tensions, create new reasons for violence and undermine conflict resolution mechanisms that are already in place. Approaches based on short term goals that are mechanistic and driven by indicators that fail to take people into account can only lead to increased violence and a breakdown of the very development they seek to achieve.
Local Needs and Local Knowledge
The dominance of an unsustainable and northern-oriented development paradigm has further undermined local cultures and ignored the needs of local contexts. Sustainable development understood holistically must represent a multi-disciplinary initiative that places people at the centre and includes addressing environmental, political, military, economic and sociocultural systems and structures as well as relationships between people and groups and the behaviours and attitudes of these people.
Out of Control
Polarisation
Economic Globalisation has brought increased polarisation within and between countries. Unaccountable transnational conglomerates are becoming increasingly powerful. The military and economic weapons at their disposal and the destruction of environments and communities that form part of their expansion and isolation programme are further reducing the power of individuals and their legitimate representatives.
Elitism
Elite groups are able to set their own agendas using violence and oppression to further their interests. The impact of market deregulation has reduced the state’s role in the economy and state power is increasingly weakened by unaccountable corporate power. In the process, justice, equity, rights, democracy and the environment continue to be undermined. The divide between rich and poor becomes ever wider and the exclusion and disaffection of people ever stronger.
Unilateralism
A decade of corporate globalisation has led to major disillusionment and discontentment. Values have been eroded and livelihoods have been destroyed. Small farmers and businesses are going bankrupt everywhere. Even the promise of economic growth has not been delivered. Unilateral trade agreements disguised as trade liberalization and strangling debt repayments have increased poverty levels and directed resources away from human needs.
Bankruptcy
The nonsustainability and bankruptcy of the ruling world order is fully evident. The need for alternatives has never been stronger. Justice, peace and sustainability are indivisible, without a sustainable and just sharing of the earths resources there is no justice, and without justice there can be no peace.
What can be done now?
We commit ourselves, and call on all citizens and governments, to join us in working towards a vision of sustainable peace in which divergent views and interests coexist in a manner that reinforces a common good and builds a world of justice and peace where basic needs are met and human rights and dignity are respected.
Engage in dialogue
We commit ourselves, and call on all citizens and governments to ensure that:
This summit initiates multi-stakeholder dialogues at all levels on finding holistic and integrated solutions to the current crisis.
There is a collective acknowledgement of the uselessness of destruction and violence and a profound shift in direction in the struggle to find solutions to the crisis in which we find ourselves.
These solutions are people centred and build on that which already exists.
Change our thinking
We commit ourselves, and call on all citizens and governments to:
Break free from a preoccupation with economic and material prosperity,
illustrated by patterns of overproduction and overconsumption.
Centre our interpretation of success on a holistic calculation of economic, social, political, and spiritual fulfilment.
Build and strengthen sustainable links
We commit ourselves, and call on all citizens and governments to:
Strengthen and support the process of organising civil society groups and global solidarity networks at all levels.
Further connect and integrate existing networks so as to develop solutions to the crisis in which we find ourselves.
Ensure that these networks become sustainable civil movements that can build connections and relationships with current decision makers at all levels in order to influence the changes proposed below.
Transform the United Nations
We commit ourselves, and call on all citizens and governments to ensure that:
The General Assembly becomes a global parliament with elected representatives. This global system should be buttressed by regional parliaments.
Abolish the United Nations Security Council
We commit ourselves, and call on all citizens and governments to ensure that:
The structurally undemocratic United Nations Security Council is abolished and that all nations meet as equals within a reformed General Assembly.
Involve Civil Society
We commit ourselves, and call on all citizens and governments to:
Establish a global people’s council that will function as a consultative body to the General Assembly, mandated to advise and inform the General Assembly on themes for deliberation and call its attention to potential threats.
Redirect Military Spending
We commit ourselves, and call on all citizens and governments to:
Prioritise the conversion and reallocation of military resources to alleviate poverty and environmental degradation.
Utilise these resources to remove landmines, unexploded ordinances and other remnants of war.
Allocate part of these resources to alleviate the conditions of millions of refugees and displaced people.
Suspend the Arms Trade
We commit ourselves, and call on all citizens and governments to:
Work towards a moratorium on the import and manufacture of arms and in the interim legislate and implement rigorous controls on arms transfers.
Ensure effective gun control legislation as well as its effective implementation.
Recover and destroy illegal arms and arms left over after cessation of hostilities.
Enforce Nuclear disarmament
We commit ourselves, and call on all citizens and governments to: Promote and enforce the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) with the full backing of the restructured United Nations.
Control the use and production of chemical weapons and other weapons of mass destruction
We commit ourselves, and call on all citizens and governments to:
Strengthen the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and work actively to counter interference and ensure participation from all nations.
Transform the World Trade Organization (WTO)
We commit ourselves, and call on all citizens and governments to: Take effective measures to enable the full and equal participation of all Members of the WTO.
Transform the WTO’s trade rules and dispute settlement procedures towards the needs of sustainable development and in support of its mandate.
Make Financial Institutions accountable to the UN
We commit ourselves, and call on all citizens and governments to ensure that:
The voting systems in the World Bank and the IMF give equal power to all nations.
There is an end to IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programmes.
These institutions are accountable to a restructured United Nations.
Cancel the debt
Most pressing of all we commit ourselves, and call on all citizens and governments, to:
Cancel global debt.
Enforce accountability for trans-national corporations
We commit ourselves, and call on all citizens and governments to:
Champion and ratify the UN Code of Conduct on Transnationals.
Scrutinise Trans-national corporations for deficiencies in accountability, transparency and regulation, as well as violations of human rights and inordinate influence over national governments.
The Way Forward
Make the Links
An approach to sustainable development aimed at transforming situations of conflict and injustice needs to acknowledge and understand the links between different interests and develop strategies to take action at all levels. It needs to counteract the sense of helplessness and isolation of people acting at the local level in recognition that the root causes of violence and injustice they are faced with more often than not arise out of global and regional interests.
Transform our lives
Humanity is charged with the task of not merely achieving a “passive peace”-the absence of war-but of transforming on a fundamental level those social structures that threaten human dignity. Efforts to enhance international cooperation and the fabric of international law are, of course, necessary, but even more vital are the creative efforts of individuals to develop a multi-layered and richly patterned culture of peace, for it is on this foundation that a new global society can be built.
Recognise women
Especially important is the role that women play. Throughout the long history of humanity, women have suffered the most whenever society has been wracked by war, violence, oppression, abuse of human rights, disease and famine. But it has been women, in spite of this, who have persevered in turning society in the direction of good, in the direction of hope, and in the direction of peace.
Build alternatives
Alternative solutions to the negative effects of globalisation need to be found. An increasing number have begun to emerge. The alternatives of today are found in the local projects of communities and groups who have formed a variety of socio-economic organisations or movements. They originate from the grassroots, yet their ideology is part of a much larger political process of social transformation.
Towards justice and sustainable peace
It is this civil society movement, inspired by a belief in the need to place human values at the heart of the struggle for change, that must lead the processes that will bring about development that ensures justice and sustainable peace.