 Welcome. My name is Robin Lloyd and we are honoring today the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was founded 75 years ago and and also today happens to be the Convention on Genocide that was passed by the United Nations also 75 years ago and before the Universal Declaration. It's interesting. So here we are on a day honoring these declarations and wishing they could be more effectively implemented. We could not have chosen to my mind a more important and appropriate time to look back at the origins of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 at the end of World War II. When the world at that time was desperately seeking a return to human relationships based on freedom, justice and peace. So we have to start off with a man whose life and work is committed to human rights, David Gallup. He is president of World Service Authority which was founded a number of years ago 1954. 1954 by Gary Davis. Now some of you may remember Gary Davis because he lived here in Burlington for a number of years. He died in 2013 but and he became World Citizen number one. Now due to his traumatic experience during World War II as a bomber pilot bombing German cities in the same way that other pilots are bombing Palestinian cities right now but Gary realized that it was nations and nationalism that convinces young people to fight and die in wars and so that nations cause wars. So in a dramatic gesture he gave up his nationality and thus his passport in 1945 and all he had was to protect himself with the Universal Declaration. I just like to stress some of the parts that he thought were especially relevant. You can all read your own copy there if you'd like. Yeah here we go. Article one. All human rights are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in the spirit of brotherhood. And for him as a person who lived without a passport because he had given it up in 1948 the article 13 plus 2 is the one that is most relevant to him. Everyone has the right to leave any country and enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution. No wait I jumped there. Everyone has the right to leave any country including his own and to return to his country. So to introduce David a little bit more he is the convener of the World Court of Human Rights Coalition about which you will be learning more later and he's a board member of Citizens for Global Solutions Education Fund. I think the job that he's held in the past that to my mind it right now is seems so important. He is the past secretary of the United Nations Association Task Force on restructuring the United Nations to my mind that very much needs to happen. So we have other speakers but David will give us started and then Sandy will introduce Rod Feek and then Henry will introduce Mark. Gary Davis would also say that Article 6 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is extremely important. Article 6 states everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law. Well who is everyone? All of you. All world citizens and where is everywhere? Planet Earth. So that was really what he made his life long effort as a peace activist to affirm everyone's human rights everywhere on planet earth and certainly we're way far away from from that situation from where we need to be and that's why today I'm going to be talking about the 75th anniversaries of both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the World Citizenship Movement. So good afternoon. I've handed out copies as well with Mous Sampierre who's over there in the back also recording thanks Mous. He's the social action coordinator for our World Court of Human Rights Coalition and Mark will also be talking about that in a little bit. So thank you Mous for helping me hand out the declaration. We've also handed out in addition to the declaration which I will refer to as UDHR if you hear that and wonder what that is. World Citizen Buttons and World Citizen Stickers. Those the declaration the buttons and the stickers will act as a physical manifestation of what I will be talking about over the next few minutes. So thank you Robin for organizing this panel today as well as the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. I'm also really appreciate the opportunity to be on this panel with these distinguished advocates and once again thanks again for inviting me to speak today about the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the World Citizenship Movement. Well two moments in the not so distant past helped us to realize that there is one humanity and one Earth. The first moment where was when bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War Two. These bombs confirmed that humans have the power to eradicate humanity and destroy the entire world. The second moment was when a rocket was propelled into near Earth orbit in 1946 with an attached motion picture camera. The camera captured photographs of the Earth as one unified whole. So first we had the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki next we had this camera that showed the whole Earth in its in its picture. These two moments provided competing visions of humanity's future. One view of the Earth as a fractured planet and another view of the Earth as one world. Representing two ends of an ethical spectrum they forced humanity to choose between a world of destruction and a world of inspiration. Both moments ultimately led to the development of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the modern conceptualization of world citizenship. Moments such as these helped Eleanor Roosevelt and Renee Cassant who were the drafters of the primary drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to establish universal principles to guide humanity. These would be principles that would be applicable to everyone everywhere just like I mentioned in Article 6 everyone everywhere that rights should apply to. The declaration was actually a legal response to the violence and chaos of World War Two. The drafters intended to establish a code of conduct for humanity in order to prevent a third world war. These moments also inspired World War Two veteran Gary Davis as he describes in his memoir My Country is the World to willfully withdraw from the co-partnership of citizen and national state and declare himself a world citizen. Gary was ashamed of his own direct participation as a bomber pilot 29,000 feet above the Earth bombing and dropping bombs on his fellow humans. 1948 was the year that Gary Davis gave up his exclusive allegiance to a country and also the year that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was promulgated. Specifically this December 10th so tomorrow marks the 75th anniversary of the unanimous adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and now many lawyers do consider the UDHR as customary international law that should be respected even if countries give lip service to it and they don't always respect it they're supposed to. And this year also marks the 75th anniversary of Gary Davis giving up his national citizenship in favor of world citizenship which has been followed by almost 2 million people around the world who've also claimed that world citizenship status. So yeah that's right that's one of the things we register people as world citizens and provide documents of global identification and travel as Robin mentioned affirming article 13 the right to leave any country including your own and to return to your country. So well so what can we learn from this joint celebration of the Declaration of Human Rights and Gary's declaration of human unity. At the heart of the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and at the heart of Gary Davis's claim of world citizenship is the idea that humanity, human rights and the Earth itself deserve a universal legal status, a universal identity and a universal governing system. The UDHR drafters and Gary Davis responded to World War 2 by universalizing rights and by universalizing citizenship. UDHR was revolutionary. It created a human rights dialogue so that people could engage in discussion of our universal freedoms and responsibilities. Gary Davis's renunciation of national citizenship was also a revolutionary act. He constructed a level of citizenship and this is really important that did not involve violence, war or oppression to establish a world government and world government governmental institutions such as the World Court of Human Rights that we're working on. In 1948 the framers of the UDHR envisioned the declaration as a tool to teach everyone about their human rights. They wanted a global public to demand that governments secure universal and effective recognition and observance of our rights as the preamble of the UDHR states. They wanted to create a quote unquote social and international order in which everyone could share the world peacefully and in which everyone's rights and needs would be fully met. So tomorrow's called Human Rights Day. Well, they envisioned every day as a human rights day. Both the drafters of the UDHR and Gary Davis knew that if the rights of all human beings were to be upheld, those rights would have to be codified, written down for all to see, all to learn and all to implement. As UDHR's preamble states, if humans are not to be compelled to have recourse as a last resort to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, then human rights should be protected by the rule of law. In the halls of the UN, however, the squabbling of the nation states continued throughout the autumn of 1948. The Russians and several Soviet bloc countries were threatening to vote against the declaration, as they had already done on previous occasions when the declaration came up for a vote. If you saw the documentary that's based on this book, the documentary called The World is My Country, you can go to theworldismicountry.com if you want to learn more. This documentary about Gary Davis, you learned that he was instrumental in the unanimous signing of the declaration. By December of 1948, and Robin alluded to this, Gary was world-renowned for camping out on the steps of the United Nations when it was holding its General Assembly sessions at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, and for interrupting a session to demand the creation of a world parliament and a world government. On December 9, 1948, so today, actually 75 years ago, not only is it the anniversary of the Genocide Convention, which is really the first human rights convention that was unanimously recognized the day before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That day, though, this day, 75 years ago, Gary Davis spoke before a crowd of 20,000 war-wear Europeans at the Velodrome d'Hiver Stadium in Paris. Calling for a world government, Gary said, we can no longer permit ourselves to be led by statesmen who use us as pawns in the game of national interests. We wish to be led by those who represent us directly, we, the individuals of the human community. This rousing speech made headlines throughout Europe and impacted the representatives of the states, considering whether to accept or reject the declaration. The next day, instead of voting against the UDHR, eight countries abstained. This meant that 48 countries unanimously adopted the UDHR. Now, every member of the United Nations, when becoming members, must agree to abide by the declaration. It takes moments, like Gary Davis' bold acts of civil resistance, to build momentum. What does the UDHR and World Citizenship tell us as world citizens about how to build a peaceful and just world? Where do we go from here? It's time to rise up. We need to spark like Mahatma Gandhi, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and Gary Davis. We need to know that we can be the spark of world peace and we need to teach others how to find their spark. Just as Gary Davis created a movement in 1948 that inspired the global public, searching for hope, unity and peace, we need to do the same. As global warming, perpetual wars, and neo-nationalism threaten the existence of our rights and our human identity, now is the time to organize a new world citizenship movement for global change. We need a movement that engages both incremental change through law and institutions, as well as movements of mass resistance. We need to stage an uprising devised a political theater and activism like Gary Davis would have done. We need to interrupt the UN and the nation state system once again, as Gary did in 1948. Through coordinated disruption, sacrifice, and nonviolent escalation, we need to show that our world model resolves and transcends the anomalies of the nation state paradigm. We need to unite universal rights and world citizenship into a movement that people will flock to. Here are a few examples of how we can ignite this movement, both through incremental change and through immediate action. As a first example of incremental change, World Service Authority, where I have worked for the last 30, almost 32 years, along with its partner sponsors, Citizens for Global Solutions and the Young World Federalists, are launching World Citizen Clubs on university and high school campuses. There's a few cards back on the table if you know of any young people who want to start a World Citizen Club on their campus. We are building momentum simultaneously by educating the minds and inspiring the hearts of youth around the world. World Citizen Clubs are helping young adults to start thinking and acting as World Citizens, claiming the status for themselves, and providing an example for others. Engaging youth will help us to create the moments that lead to momentum in the universal rights and world citizenship movements. We can find other examples of how to build momentum through nonviolent action and civil resistance in books such as This is an Uprising, Beautiful Trouble, Systems Thinking for Social Change, and Young Revolutionary, a Teen's Guide to Activism. As another example of incremental change, Mark Ottinger will be talking about the creation of a World Court of Human Rights, an institution to advance the global rule of law. This incremental change can move humanity toward world peace and justice. As a first example of immediate action to ignite the universal rights and world citizenship movement, I propose that we get several groups of hundred people together at various border points around the world, all presenting their world passports as their only identification. We can engage immigrant and refugee rights groups, environmental justice and peace activists, all to join in this act of civil resistance. We will then amass attempt to cross frontiers. We will alert the media ahead of time, as well as live stream the action from our cell phones. We can hand out copies of the universal declaration of human rights to people at the border so that people can learn their rights. Gary Davis said if you don't know your rights, you can't exercise them. So it's so important that people learn about the universal declaration of what it states about our rights and our responsibilities to each other as humans and as world citizens. At these frontier posts, we can expose the inhumanity of militarization and borders that separate humans from humans, perpetuating the divisions that lead to violence and war. We can shine a light on the injustices that refugees, stateless and undocumented people, millions of our fellow humans fleeing persecution around the world face on a day-to-day basis. Some of us may get arrested, some of us may be threatened by border guards, but all will be on camera for the world to see. As another example of immediate action, Wafiq Fawor will be talking about what we can do to promote equity and safety of our fellow humans facing violence and oppression. He will discuss the link between justice and human rights. This 75th anniversary of the UDHR and of modern world citizenship teaches us that we can imagine change, we can organize change, and we can be the change we want to see in the world. By coordinating the principles of the UDHR and world citizenship, we can advance both our institutions and our identity based on unity rather than separation based on our common needs rather than our cultural differences. We can move from the current approach which is a divide and conquer approach to a paradigm of unite and prosper. The unity that we gain through world citizenship and the universalization of human rights will not supplant the nation's system or threaten local identity. The way to protect the local is to acknowledge the global. By achieving justice and peace at the world level, we can assure that local cultures are preserved rather than destroyed by violence. After World War II, the drafters of the UDHR and Gary Davis were compelled to imagine a world in which human beings could live together in harmony. To take that image of peace and portray it in the world writ large, they had to make and be the change they wanted to see. The drafters had to affirm the universality of our rights and Gary had to affirm the universality of our human identity. Like the creators of the Declaration of Human Rights and Gary Davis, we must be the drafters and the actors of our own destiny. We must be the change we want to see in the world. Thank you. Yes, so now Sandy will introduce Rafiq, but we really want to have a conversation and have your questions and so does anyone have an urgent question for David or can you hold it and we will have a general conversation later? It seems no one's no one's feeling urgent. Okay, so here's Sandy. My name is Sandy Baird. I'm an attorney in town. I've been that for many, many years and I've had the great privilege to work with Rafiq Fawor on the whole question on many different questions about equity and justice, but lately we have been concentrating together on the war against the Palestinians in Gaza. So I'm introducing him Rafiq Fawor as a refugee. He was a refugee, grew up in a refugee camp in Lebanon. He is a refugee from Palestine. He came to the United States in 1979. He is a spokesperson for the Vermonters for Justice in Palestine and he at this moment to me is a real hero because he's always had the courage particularly now to speak out for the rights of the Palestinian people to live in the most human right of all and that is to live in peace. So here we have Rafiq Fawor. Thank you Sandy. Thank you Robin. Salamu Alaikum. My name is Rafiq Fawor. I'm a member of Vermonter for Justice in Palestine. The first thing when I got invited to this occasion which is the birthday of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights I was asking myself why would I be here? What is the reason? Why? Because let's look at the declaration and its history. It came from white people that they experienced two great wars. Among countries they consider themselves civilized or the civilized war and after thousands and thousands and millions get killed on those two wars have been inflicted by those countries they come with just declaration so if I look at it where they signed it in Paris in 1948 when France was still occupying Algiers at the time. How hypocrite? How hypocrite? 1948 when the United Nation of its early birth they created Israel which is how much you're going to look at it from whatever part is just a creation of the same white civilized war a colony to divide all the region over there to cantoons and put regimes still ruling that cantoons working on American and western satellites to protect Israel and to protect the interests of the West. So what is it the declaration? It's a good literature good poem maybe but in effect has nothing to do on our life and in here I would have liked black people, brown people, Indians, migrants and others people who have been otherized by this white civilized war who get affected by this you show us that how civilized you are by telling us about your declaration but in effect nobody invoked any article which is you go from one to the end what Israel is doing only on the last 64 days. Genocide, ethnically cleansing, killing the children in particular, attacking hospitals no water, no medicine, no food and a lot of people they think well it's war it happens this war is not happening only by the IDF the Israeli forces this war happening by the United States and the European countries who by the 8th of October were moving to the Mediterranean to protect that colony to protect that occupation to protect that apartheid so in short if it is actual 75th birthday and you have a cake and candles somebody looks like me talks with my accent has no piece on it you will not get me any piece of that cake because you never invoked any articles but I hear it from the peace and justice movement over southern they have interest of Palestine we've been calling them for years you want to talk about the human rights declaration I love it go to your city council go to your city council don't talk above us but white people always they look at people like me talking from above as if they know something we don't know as a matter of fact all the language of this declaration you confide it hundreds of years on cultural and civilization existed before the West worked up from its dark ages I'm a Muslim and I know my faith read my faith it talks better than this language this is a new congratulation I'm happy for you but at the same time hypocrisy that you have this declaration and you don't invoke it it's harmful it's harmful it's bullshit either you walk the walk or don't bring this as if you are good people why because we feel more than ever as Palestinian Arab and Muslim here locally and overseas we're under attack I know you feel sad and sorry and mourning we don't want to hear that we wanted you to come when Gaza for 17 years was under siege when its 90 percent of water is undrinkable but you supported Israel because they are white like you and civilized the IQ we don't want it thank you okay our next speaker is is Henry who's going to introduce the last speaker so mark Ottinger is a lawyer and he's been working since 2013 I'm trying to build the world court for human rights and it's a third pillar with the you know national criminal court and the international court for justice and we don't necessarily have to talk about this now we have a lot of discussion to come but I'm interested to hear about the gaps in the ICC and the ICJ and for instance the US has a law that says that we have the right to invade the international criminal court if they prosecute US citizens and so I think that it's a difficult question as to how to build a system that works when violence is or coercion is a part of the institution that we have so mark thank you thank you I appreciate that and happy almost human rights day everyone thank you for taking time out of your weekend to come hear us speak today I'm a lawyer I'm a local lawyer I'm a trial lawyer international lawyer but working with these folks on trying to optimize human rights outcomes globally is something that I'm very passionate about I've been involved with it for approximately 10 years although I've been practicing here in Burlington part-time in Montpelier for over 40 years and I I'm also been very much involved in I would say private international law in other words international transactions cross-border transactions but also in public international law and that's what I'd like to talk about today public international law for example being treaties conventions between and among nation states and if there is to be a world court of human rights it would be a product of a treaty between and among a certain number of the world's 193 nation states they're all at the united nation so 193 of them the UN is essentially where treaties and conventions are incubated if you will they are debated they are adopted or not on a country by country basis and they usually stipulate that it takes a certain minimum number of nation states to sign on to a treaty before it goes into effect you know we've got a world of 193 countries many of the major treaties and I'm going to touch upon a couple of them have been adopted by the vast majority of the 193 nation states but what I would say is that public international law to the extent that it's a product of treaties is basically like a spider web some treaties are like there's a us canadian fishing treaty okay that's the thing that actually has been adjudicated by the international court of justice you know where exactly is the boundary between canadian fishing rights and us fishing rights more treaties are multilateral so things for example like the we'll talk about the history a little bit but the civil and political rights treaty which is probably was the first major treaty that was adopted after the 1948 passage by the united nations of the universal declaration now you all heard that the declaration was passed in 1948 you've also also heard that the day or yeah the day before today 75 years ago today the genocide convention was adopted now keep the historical zeitgeist in mind we're talking about 1948 you know still with the second world war very fresh in people's minds and also the first world war kind of fresh in people's minds from an intergenerational standpoint and it was for that purpose that the un flawed though it may be was originally brought into brought into the world if you will and it was with that in mind that the universal declaration was passed 75 years ago tomorrow to some extent the fact that the genocide convention was passed even before the u d h r is indicative of the of the times it might have been indicative of sort of us getting ahead of ourselves a little bit because the first mention of a world court of human rights was actually back in 1947 the year before the universal declaration was passed and it's interesting because in my travels talking about these issues we actually had one of our presenters bring us the documents from 1947 and it was the australian delegation that said we should as we discuss a universal declaration of human rights we should in anticipation of its passage we should have a universe or world court of human rights and it was decided at that time that that the cart was getting a little bit before the horse but ultimately that to me was kind of the first time that a world court of human rights was discussed now in the meantime we know that there's been the international criminal court that came into existence there's the international court of justice one of the questions I get asked a lot is how are they different one of the ways in which they are different is that the international criminal court is a criminal court okay its raison d'etre is to prosecute criminals the types of crimes that it has within its subject matter jurisdiction are genocide crimes against humanity war crimes plenty of that work to go around but the reality is that their product is the prosecution of one or more individuals that are behind the whole thing so they might end up success what does success look like to them and what that looks like is somebody goes to jail you know a despot a leader an autocrat goes to jail for a long period of time that's a very important sort of function that above the national level body judicial body can can perform but it's not doing any good for the people that are getting bombed in Gaza it's not doing any good for the people that are getting bombed in Ukraine but there are very clearly understood principles of public international law that even the law of war I mean that sounds like kind of a funny contradiction of terms an ironic contradiction of terms how can war be based in law and the answer is well when you hear accusations for example of bombing of hospitals or bombing of you know child care centers issues like that of course that's a violation of international human human law principles it's a violation of the law of war and what the world court of human rights would be would be a very organized specialized subject matter court that would address in real time the suffering of really large-scale human rights violations so not an international criminal court that would look to prosecute people for something that happened a year ago or five years ago or 50 years ago what about the international court of justice wonderful court and it adjudicates disputes between and among nation states but it doesn't really have a mechanism for you or me to go there and I don't mean you or me individuals but you or me for example in a class context let's say I am a you know somebody who is a member of the class that are being subjected to violations of their human rights like the the situation in China now the Uighurs or the situation in the Central African Republic I mean you can they're countless ones around the world and if you take a look at about halfway through my handout you will see that what we've been doing over the last 10 years is trying to put together a driver's manual if you will a statute for the for this proposed world court of human rights one of the things that you would have to ask yourself if there were to be such a court is what law would be applied and if you found the index there's two pages of index if you go to the next page the substantive law to be applied you start getting a sense of what public international law is composed of it's composed of conventions and declarations like the universal declaration of human rights but this court would be specialized in the sense of human rights conventions human rights custom David was saying that you know the universal declaration of human rights is not a treaty and therefore it's not enforceable in any particular country but it is the subject of debate it's the subject of fact finding and in cases around the world that that adjudicate and that consider human rights issues and in that fashion it becomes part of that network or part of that spider web of conventions and treaties and customary international law and it becomes part of this growing law that looks in a lot of ways like like world law but we know that you instinctively you know intrinsically can't have world law because you don't have a world government now that's a yet another thing that we can spend a long time talking about you know and and when gary davis asked me to go to Lucknow India for the world chief justice meeting in 2013 which is the first of my three trips there as as i spent about a year two years putting together this draft with members of you know academia members of international judicial bodies judicial systems people gary was on his deathbed at that time robin mentioned that he died in 2013 it was actually july 24th i think um he asked me it was he was clear minded to the very end and he asked me very late in his life probably within the last week or maybe two weeks of his life if i would consider going to india to meet with the chief justices he had been at these annual meetings cities called luck now it's up in up uh utar pradesh um a state in india by the way that has over 200 million people one state um but that's where the chief justices meet had done so for about the last 20 years and so gary asked me to go there he asked me to essentially pick up the torch if you will and i said that you know i have somewhat limited bandwidth but i've always been a judicial systems person so i agreed to go there to see if the chief justices were really excited about a world court of human rights and if so i was willing because i was kind of changing jobs i was willing to really put some work into it so i went there uh they were very enthusiastic they were you know remembered gary with great fondness and so i made them commit to me that they would assist in the design process if i were to sort of lead that process so over the next 12 months or so we designed the statute that their blue books back there um those little blue books the first half is history of the project the second half is the statute as it currently exists that statute which took a full year to put together i went back to the next annual meeting and um essentially demonstrated it showed it off to the chief justices who adopted in their annual post meeting or meeting concluding um announcement the declaration they also they universally uh unanimously approved this statute as a wonderful design for a world court of human rights and they said and of course we need a world court of human rights and i would challenge you to find anybody out there that says we don't need such a thing what i've been up against for the last 10 years is this question about is the world ready you know because intrinsically trying to do something treaty-based like this involves initially the executive branch and intrinsically as a function of public international law the executive branch can be forgiven i suppose for being reluctant to enter into a treaty that would cause it to be held accountable for its own human rights violations but you know that's kind of an intrinsic part of of treaties of treaty making and you know we keep making progress and if you look back 75 years really to the birth of the modern treaty era you see that um you see that we've come a long way i mean the extent to which you know if you count the nodes or whatever of nation states adopting treaties and so on and so forth it's grown substantially over time and i would say that you know if you combine um if you combine the ubiquity of of information that we have these days i mean this is really what's changed and if you look at the first world war the second world war in some statistical ways people would say the malthusians perhaps would say there's less violence in our world than there was per capita back then and that's a good thing there's still far far far too much violence but now it gets it basically it's on the front cover of the newspaper there's an archaic idea it's on your phone instantly no matter where it's happening around the world in real time the bad news is the sort of media storm we live with them in that respect and all we are exposed to and kids are exposed to the good news is it makes us accountable it makes us aware of what's going on and i would submit to you that all of those of us who have worked on this world court of human rights would say that having a freestanding human rights court that can analyze these massive scale human rights violations in real time and tell us all what does public international law say about this what are the countries required as a matter of public international law to do that's the task we've tried to take on so um there's obviously a lot more in this this handout that we could cover um that's a brief history of of our efforts with respect to the um the world court of human rights i'd be happy after my remarks are done if you guys have lots of questions and if you're not we'll we'll pull up something else thank you good so um i think we've gotten a variety of of positions and points of view on on the universal declaration and i want to hear what you all have to think about it and sandi's going to come up and moderate this with me uh and uh so please um raise your hands i have a question hopefully is that okay i think what uh there's a direct contradiction i think between what wafiq said and what mark said the superpowers of the world or as wafiq described them the white european powers will never join any international court that's been proven in the current international criminal court the people with the most power the people with the most and and that probably has the worst criminal record have said they will not join the criminal court that is basically the united states they have subjected in a lot of ways other especially third world countries have subjected themselves to the jurisdiction of the international court it is clear that the white powers mainly the united states will never submit to that jurisdiction so we might hope for a court in the way that mark describes but we must understand as wafiq said that the un and that the declaration of human rights came from white european powers who have probably violated more human rights in this century than any other international power anyway yes and the the structure of the united nations which was formed at that time giving the security council and the five countries who were the victors of world war two the veto power i think is what has really squashed justice for decades real justice around the world the number of vetoes that the united states has made is is quite appalling so we don't want to keep talking but yes can i can i answer oh yeah now the problem is that is that is that that's not picked up by but go ahead working uh you hear me right now the results of world war two or what you call a great power uh the the great war here and everybody celebrating world war two that is the end of all wars because anybody outside of the western world didn't care about the others so the results like oh it is over but if you look at it the results of world war two let's say in the region of the middle east where my grandfather used to do business all over the middle east no countries existed and this is for your uh comment about passport and this he never carried id never carried passports he will go as far as iran he will go to belgromage as suede arabia he got killed in 1948 at the hand of the hagana uh israel hagana a jewish uh terrorist organization then wasn't israel existed to take his land and wealth because it's an absentee law they created okay so and you can see it india bachistan 1948 too so they divided all the country we are not part of this great solution of world war two you know as a matter of fact you know it's the worst thing happened to us is world war two which is we are not part of it but the results we are paying for it until now and you don't want to discuss it for the human rights every western country they take this declaration and they bring it to us anytime they want they brought it in ukraine just recently they were talking about it but in palestine they are blind to it and they never talk about it everything will be on the garbage for them on this declaration as long as united states and european interest on the top everything goes away there is an american interest what's the american interest and there is shipping oil money and i don't think that the united states is the only major power that i have to do thank you yes right i simply want to say i want to quote for which latin american country she was um she was murdered as so many international fighters for the uh for the earth have been murdered at any rate she said i am responsible for the words that i speak but i am not responsible for how you interpret my words um so i i just think that's important for us to remember for as we discuss all difficult issues and today as we discuss the war on palestinians which our country is supporting so heavily could i just mention something in response to your comments and then i'm sorry we'll call on you but i'll remind you all two of the first world war the wars against i would say between the nation states of europe i don't think most americans took into the consequences of those wars in the third world on that i think is what wafiq is talking about both wars in my view were wars about real estate and it was the real estate of the third world that the german alliance and the uk us alliance were talking about as they divided the world and it went right and so of course to me the victors of the war were essentially one part one alliance of the white european world and that was the case in both wars it seems to me the japanese as you recall were defeated okay okay yeah you this young man yeah you were so do you mind if i direct the question at you so um wafiq touched on on oil he ended kind of his last intervention with with oil and one of the things about and and i agree with a lot a lot of what you're saying um but i would disagree that it's simply like nationalism that creates wars like in this case the conflicts in the middle east like i would say it's impossible to talk about them without talking about something like oil so i'm thinking of you know my question is like within this human rights paradigm like how does it account for economic issues first of all i'm a cisgender man so you've heard enough of of people that look like me for the past couple hundred years so i'd rather hear more from wafiq actually but i would say uh that economic rights are part of our universal rights and certainly as sandi was just mentioning it's not just about nationalism it's about property whether that's real property like land or whether it's the oil that's below that land that causes people to fight i mean i've been working at an organization that uh that's also was founded 75 years ago pretty much uh that helps was it's trying to help us to move beyond this paradigm of just the nation state we're not trying to get rid of nation states i think palestine needs to be its own country it needs to have its own government palestinian people have a right to self-determination whether that's to uh have their resources whatever it is oil or whatever be able to have access to that just like anybody else it's we're living in a completely inequitable world but having for example the quote-unquote two-state solution which i still think there needs to be is not enough we need a one world solution meaning so say palestine gets its own full fledged government is you know a full member of the united nations then there of course they will have to get a military just like every other country and so it doesn't end the fighting it doesn't end the violence and i think uh where do we go from here i think part of what mark was trying to say was that and i don't think i didn't hear mark say it i wish i had um that one of the first cases that could go to the world court of human rights would be the case of the palestinian genocide these are people who are being killed this is a violation of of this genocide convention that today is celebrating so to speak it's 75th anniversary i mean i'm a paul i'm angered as a human being that we're living in a world that allows this to happen to uh to people to to palestinians but to palestinians as human beings i mean uh but to everybody i mean there's so much violence there's so that's based upon uh extracting oil or the next big wars might be over water because where are people getting in what feek mentioned that about the lack of of adequate drinking water this it's it angers me but you know you've heard enough from me once again i feel like you know we do need to rise up we need to take action and i and i really want to join what feek in in saying you know doesn't matter that i support you but i do support you right but how can we sort of transcend transcend this and and resolve it though and i just coming from this this universal rights which which is ridiculous i mean i i i did allude to it when i said we're celebrating the declaration but it but it is just a declaration even though it might be quote unquote customary international law as what feek said it's hypocritical you know who cares if palestinian people are dying if any human beings dying whether it's in yemen whether it's in syria whether it's in ethiopia whether it's in Haiti wherever people are dying that is murder gary davis would say killing is murder wherever it's happening and we need to find solutions to the killing that's going on among humans and yes the declaration may be just a good start okay but it's definitely not enough thank you and so i'd like to um ask what what rafi to um reply to that and and the question i'm interested in is the two state solution is that really viable now a human human rights and equal rights stops when you allow governments and entities describe my people as human animals or beasts so even the declaration doesn't work this way your media and the institution government local and federal they bring the story of the jewish victims as they have faces they have names they have favorite colors the kids they have teddy bear look at the palestinians they are numbers no names they are not humans so when you marginalize people over and over that they are not people and this has happened to our jewish siblings during world war two when hitler called them vermin's everybody was silent including your government here fdr rejected the jews coming to new york harbor and send them back so it's not to solve the jewish problem but the white west those civilized people when they accept marginalizing people like us when you look 24-7 to a genocide in your own eyes you know genocide and you stay silent about it and they marginalize us that israel hamas war they marginalized millions of palestinians to a group of people the palestinian people all of them are struggled all of them are struggling now you know whatever we are if we are in refugee camps or inside west bank there is no hamas in west bank over 300 people died on the last 63 days where they are to cry that israel committing suicide where they are to cry when you're breaking the doors and taking our children and women out how about the prisoners the palestinian prisoners who came out to the camera immediately and they said we get raped we get the broken bones they are broken completely where is a human rights where is this outcry about it but in your tv screen some people deserve sympathy the others are just others because the west always other eyes us we are something else less than a human so this declaration is nothing to talk about to stay solution is that always was from the river to the sea we call it we want one secular democratic state where jews christians muslim live together like we lived before state of israel have been created as a jewish ethnic state where jews are supremacy and the rest are others again they learned it from you here but i would argue that that was always the solution i'm sorry i guess i'm gonna be aware that oh dear that amnesty international put out a 200 plus report on the human rights violations calling israel the government as an apartheid state and the intent was for that document and all that is in the document to go before the criminal court how long was something like that actually take to make take action for the criminal court are you on well first of all i don't know who exactly the target is if the target isn't nyahu i'd have to see some details my point is i don't understand people's fascination with criminal prosecution my belief is that when you have hundreds of thousands of millions of people you know getting bombed and struggling i mean they're the ones that need the help they need it now because as wafiq says they have nowhere to go and if you if you start with the proposition that you know you say we're not human and therefore human rights don't pertain to us i think that's an interesting turn of phrase but i'm what i would say to you is because some people don't see you know people of color as as um as human that is exactly why we need a world court of human rights and if you basically say no one's going to join it well first of all i would say history tells us that's not true certainly the big five you know we could talk about oh the ones that have the veto power in the united nations they're never going to give that up and i would agree with that um and that's why for example the world court of human rights is envisioned to be incubated in the united nations but then not to live within it because we want to be free from the political sort of machinations of the united nations of a place for example where you know the the us would basically veto the idea of a ceasefire that still continues to puzzle me i want a place where everybody can go and be heard in an efficient and timely manner and so i think that the fascination of the of the icc the international criminal court with trying decades after the fact of prosecuted individuals is misguided with all due respect um you know and does netanyahu deserve to be published punished as a war criminal perhaps so i am totally content agnostic i'm a judicial systems person i don't really care who wins or loses i want a forum that is fair and open and is correlated with protecting in a large scale the rights of the people in this planet and that's what we're trying to do charlotte no no i think i called on charlotte but then you're next sir yeah and i apologize i got in here a little late so well i think i did not hear your whole presentation um my position is that we have to recognize the role of oil companies in this conflict going way way back um the i i found out about it because my father was uh america's first master spy in the middle east he was killed after he made a top secret mission to saudi arabia and it was determined the root of the trans arabian pipeline which was going to take saudi oil to a terminal point on the eastern Mediterranean and the two i won't go online i promise and the two terminal points were either hypha palestine or lebanon and if you see i have a 10 maps that show the role of oil companies in every single one of these conflicts and the endless wars ukraine and now gaza um it's criminal and if we look at their role then uh we may be able to take away the idea of arab versus jews sunnis versus shiites and so look at the oil companies who own them who's profiting the reason you don't know the whole entire oil story is because it's continually censored and it's censored because oil is the is the fuel of the military once they once they find a new fuel you will find uh less probably less conflict in the middle east if you want i'm sorry for for being self promoting here but my book is follow the pipelines uncovering the mystery of a lost spy that's my father and the deadly politics of the great game for oil it's all there and uh let's let's unite with the climate activists for heaven's sakes okay i i think i'm sorry i haven't called on you don't think and and the young yeah i'm finding it very hypocritical is a massacre genocide is going on in phallistine and united nation is celebrating 75th anniversary one of the basic problem is in as you call white world or civilized world that you did not understand what the humans are i'm not considered to be human bound people black people chinese they're not human so they decide to celebrate human right 75th anniversary considering there's a genocide is going on people are celebrating christmas lightning and all the thing there's no shame fireworks are going on cricket and football baseball matches are going nobody's putting the black band or one minute silent or something so first of all you have to define in the world which is we're living uh who is who who's human who's did the whole foundation is wrong as long as you cannot build a house on a marshland or or somewhere it will sink as long as you have got 200 and 300 prisons what you call the countries and everybody is better than everybody else supposed to be and two literally robbers russia and united states they are selling the arms so they're keeping the arms conflict all over you can't have the human rights or declaration of the independent or anything it's a hypocrisy that's simple as that i'm sorry okay down down here robert um thank you all for speaking um and i've learned things i didn't know about gary davis and and some of the heroic acts on the steps and um i come from a tradition i think war resistors league is my tradition they're a hundred years old wilf is the tradition of some people here but i i also want to thank wafiq for continuing to try to keep us awake um and i want to respond to an earlier comment about um um in the un having veto power well we were just hearing something about the oil interests and companies and um being a war resistors league person i know every year they put out a pie chart so the united americans pay in their taxes approximately one half of their federal taxes for war for weapons um uh speaking about uh russia russia has approximately 36 bases in the in the world the united states has 800 so when we talk about veto power when we talk about fairness you know the the context is about power um the context is about who has it and who will wield it i've been horrified to see how it's been wielded um but that's genocide you know that's displacement that's oppression it's hard to see when you live a privileged life but i just also want to say that another statistic that's interesting is that japan of the countries with the most us bases in the world japan has the most these are our bases on the soil of japan of 120 germany has 119 so you know white yellow red power we have the power and um so in the context of that you know we should have high ideals we need them so i support that i just i just wanted to give that perspective great and i want to let everyone know there's an action uh component to this event we're inviting everyone at the end to join us walking up church street we'll be carrying this sign we will have a drum and uh we will hand out the universal declaration just to let people know about this day any other um more comments yeah thank you my name is ian stokes this so the declaration of human rights is really the child of the united nations but at the same time the child the united nations is sort of the child of the league of nations which was unsuccessful in halting the second world war so i as i understand it correct me if i'm wrong the united nations was sort of the second attempt at preventing wars and and establishing and then establishing human rights but we've we've heard a lot of frustration with and we're aware of a lot of frustration with the united nations not being able to deliver the um general council doesn't have um legal authority not enforceable the um uh the um security council is subject to the power of of veto the uh international criminal criminal course perhaps has had success it's the international court of justice as i understand it um has been marked by decisions which have not been enforced so so i'm coming to this issue of the frustration with the united nations well it has peacekeeping forces but they seem to be just sort of reinforcing a status quo if indeed they're established well my question then i'd like to pose the question which i think has been implicit in a lot of this discussion is what should change in the united nations so that important issues notably the universal declaration of human rights can become enforceable well i'll just say my brief what my view is is that i don't think it's reformable honestly i do not think the un is uh is redeemable because of the security council the security council is made up of the victors of world war two um and those again were the white european nations with russia which is not really a white european nation in the first place um and and there is there's supposed to be is consensus as long as you only have those victors that are in the security council there's always going to be one that's going to veto anything that is against their interests i would guess and so i think that at this point either you get rid of the security council which is doubtful or you accept the notion that the un is powerless which i think it is it is it is more selective like what you are living justice justice is selective for the united nation we saw it on bosnia and war when they allowed the united nation forces after they gave a green light to the serbian to put shardy muslims and bosnia united nation forces allowed the bosnia the the serbian forces they didn't send them to the international court you know but they allowed them to go and but we see it in labanon where 1701 united nation resolution where israel every day is on the air up there on labanon scaring people bumping whoever going over labanon to bump syria etc but we see the invoice on the last week in labanon to not let the resistance in labanon get involved on the in the war reminding them of 1701 and no arming and etc and how about the the the israeli air force in top of us and you hear it it's another thing because justice is selective for you justice is selective for united nation you created to serve you we are others otherization is part of the western civilization if you like it or not to solve the problem you have to go to to the root of the problem you have to think of yourself how much you're going to say united states is not the only one you know i agree with that 100 percent but when it comes to the question of palestine united states is not the only one united states benefiting from colonialist israel and its existence that's why your force is over there i'm not going to jump as a palestinians i'm dying now and say how about the china and the minority there how about this how about that this is our opponents always why you pick on israel because they are killers they are poacher they are committing genocide and america is part of this crime that's why we bring america to the question because it's your weapons your taxes your policy your diplomatic cover that's why we talk about it here now we cannot talk about china who are actually bringing the declaration of a human rights we cannot talk about russia because they are bringing the declaration of human rights i talk about united states because they are applying do it doesn't exist so number one wafiq we want to give you through the world court of human rights a venue um to go to we want to give you that that that context but i'd like to speak structurally about the un you know my father happens to have spent 35 years working for the united nations united nations industrial development organization the food and agriculture agency unicef you know to basically say that the united nations is unreformable and worthless and antithetical to okay but i mean let's let's speak for some of the good things that the un does indeed do and that doesn't mean because it has weaknesses including the structural weakness of the five major member vetoers i mean nobody likes to give up power right i think we should fight to have that veto power taken away but i don't have really good i don't have a high degree of confidence that we can do that but again we can provide a world court of human rights where the united states behavior with the respect to israel with respect to um anything in the world can be basically brought to the table to help level this this field so um just because it's not perfect doesn't mean it it's it's worthless and i think we need to make it better i wanted to speak to what wafiq said about the othering because i think that is the absolute core of what's going on and we those of us who grew up in this country in this regime grew up being taught othering and the only way we're going to solve this worldwide problem is when individuals stop othering other individuals and we may think oh i don't do that i'm above that we need to look deeper into ourselves and see where we're othering that we're not even aware of because it's so structurally in us that we don't see it and the courts can do what they will but on an individual level we have to really look at ourselves and our othering and figure that one out and work on it back there and part of the genocide that's happening now is the hospitals are being bombed to smithereens so i'm wondering since we have these hospital ships weren't we sending them to gaza and um there wouldn't be any hamas fighters on board them or weapons that not under the united states control people could be filtered out when they got to the ship we have warships in the area to protect them so my question is why isn't this happen anybody have an answer i mean i would quickly answer is because i believe the united states supports the war by supporting israel that's what i think but how about other people's thoughts yes sorry yes evils of capitalism and um the the money issue and um how it's producing the weapons around you know the united states we have lockheed martin we have raytheon here um and i've heard was there a meeting in davos of the billionaires in the world and i'm thinking you know how are we going to create equality in this world and have human rights for every individual and every baby that's born into this world in the in the future so that they have what article 25 says everyone should have a right to housing food shelter you know we need i think to bring about equality economic equality somehow does anybody remember davos i've asked many people since then about it is it an annual meeting of the billionaires is that where they create the need for weapons or something i just like to bring up uh what i think of is the one of the good guys who resigned recently from the united nations his name is craig mont bicar and um he was very eloquent that there is a power structure that is separate from any idea of equality and and uh democracy in the united nations and it's mainly the power structure that we've been talking about here but he went on to say that there are so many people working at the united nations at different levels um adjudicating other issues of human rights and dealing with food and health issues and and you know when you watch um democracy now or bbc news it's that the united nations schools in in uh palestine there seem to be a number of schools and and food uh serving um places so the united nations has been incredibly involved with uh with palestine doing what it can to um sort of me on a lower level to help the people there so i mean we need to keep the united nations i mean we need to change it or whatever but not to denigrate the folks who are doing all the good work there any other comments yes yeah one fake i'm wondering is there a um could you have you ever done a rewrite of the declaration of human rights or have is there a rewrite of it out there that is uh speaks to what you you the way you think it should really say we we we've been talking about this documents for years we're bringing it up educating the public where are we on this document we have uh legal institution locally palestine legal are the most with the support of jvp jewish voice for peace are bringing uh elements uh of it and how it can be as an example for the palestinian struggling under occupations or in the refugee camps always for robin comments i am a graduate for tenth grade from united nation schools i am palestinian refugee we know that un rwa honor have been created at the beginning of united nation for the refugee is the first refugee organization existed but this united nation who created the state of israel or of them are palestinian origin you know the the schools got bumped in gaza where the refugees are over there you know and israel going over there and taking prisoners from them the clinics a lot of my family members works as doctors and nurses on those clinics i know that i know that but it is not much to change us to to be administered under ngo or united nation and to make our story as a charity question when national liberation movement is in our blood don't differentiate other between the palestinian people and the palestinian resistance it's when and all they are members of our families too we are not separate it's one question we're going to solve it don't make us a charity question we reject that we don't need your charity we need liberation we are palestinians we have a homeland we lost it in worldwide conspiracy and we want it back and we want to regain it and we deserve it like anybody else asking for liberty and for independence don't you fought the english for your independence what's good for you good for me too so i still i didn't understand your answer to my question about a rewrite of this human rights declaration is there something that is written that people can say well that's different no no implementation we need version well i mean you need the the beacon the rewrite it seems i mean no i didn't talk about rewrite if i take each article which is you can read it again and again and put what israel doing to the palestinian israel did everything against each article one by one and nobody said israel is doing that always they protected israel and on top of that it's right to defend itself no no no no occupiers has no right to defend itself apartheid regime has no right could you say white african has a right to defend themselves against the people who fought against it no no they are occupiers they are thieves they are genocidal first of all let's not forget where the united nations is located it's on law it's on land donated by john d rockefeller let us not forget who was the major push behind the um getting israel um to be created by the un it was nelson rockefeller nelson rockefeller was the person who organized a latin american contingency in the san francisco con con conference that was creating the the un and uh so that is has to be taken into consideration who are the rockefellers what what what is what is the resource they control okay so that's number one uh quick um and the question is why and again i ask you to look at maps look at the eastern Mediterranean when i was there as a journalist in the in the 70s i heard that lebanon was the gateway to the middle east but later on i learned what oil companies think it's the gateway to middle east oil so if you follow the pipelines they go from iraq to eastern Mediterranean and they go from uh that branched off into two parts anyway it's all there what are they trying to do now and this explains the end game i believe the end game is to create an energy corridor all along the eastern Mediterranean and uh to siphon and and control the natural gas and oil off the coast of Gaza and israel and send it up through up the eastern Mediterranean to europe which is now freaking out because they don't have enough oil and natural gas because of the war in ukraine it's all related and one last thing on the two state solution yeah i'm with you arfiq and and i i believe that um i i'm sorry in the 70s when i was in lebanon it was being discussed and there was opposition right then to the two state solution and here's the reason why israel would never allow it to have its own military its own security that's why um people felt that it wouldn't work so there there are complexities here obviously i'm in favor of of trying to reform the un but it's a difficult task because oil companies are extremely powerful as we all know there were more lobbyists at the recent cop conference they're they're exerting huge pressure on the biden administration they're very powerful but the climate activists are going after them and that's why we've got to start allying with them because they're on to it okay gentlemen yeah i just wanted to make some parallels um with the universal declaration of human rights it reminds me of um the um united states being founded by rich white men um not ignoring the white trash and and um the genocide of the native people and the enslavement of the black people and horrible treatment of women so that's a one parallel i want to make another one is um um the assassinations in the 60s of the kennedy brothers and um malchimax and martin the king and i'm connecting that with what happened to rebein in 94 in in israel and then um 9 11 2001 at the very least i think it was a setup and it was allowed to happen here and i think the same thing happened on october seventh this year in israel and um i was raised jewish in southern ontario 30 months from buffalo new york and went to hebra school had a bar mitzvah knew all my grandparents her yiddish all the time and then i went to israel 50 years ago this month with my parents and my brother and one of my grandmothers and we went all over the west bank right near the golan my brother and dad and i flew down the sign and we walked across the suez it's the only time i ever set foot in africa in my life we were shelling nearby this was two months after the young kippur war ended and that opened my eyes i was like this is bullshit and i met relatives of mine that had come from russia a long time ago and who come recently i mean i never saw them again they were distant relatives but um i just thought this was ridiculous and then gradually over time i've come to realize that the two-state solution is bullshit as well and the religious you know having a religious state a jewish state is bullshit and if you're it doesn't mean that you're against zionism the urn anti-semite but my religion now is like rocks and trees and water and mountains and trees you know that's it i mean i just can't subscribe to all this and then the crazies are on all sides and i'm really i also think you know i think that you know the right the people that are crazy and the christians that are crazy and the muslims that are really extreme and the jews that are really extreme it's that's a real problem and i don't know how we get to a better place i mean ireland and northern ireland at least stop the violence but they're still divided and there needs to be some truth and reconciliation and some apologies here i think thank you and robin i'm carol and smiles from sx junction and i want to thank robin loyd for years and years ago you housed our first asylum seeking family through our chitenden asylum seekers assistance network and i'll never forget that anyway i just wanted to read a little bit of a document from amnesty international and and ai usa just a couple of the paragraphs and it's i know it's kind of generic and i'll talk and how you're going to do it but amnesty international and ai usa is calling on president joe biden to demand the lifting of restrictions on delivery of urgent humanitarian aid including fuel i'm sorry and i'm having cognitive delays in my late 70s so i'm sorry but at least i laugh so anyway demand the lifting of restricted restrictions on delivery of urgent humanitarian aid including fuel food and medical supplies to the gaza strip and sufficient quantities to meet the desire needs of the civilian population and urge the israeli government to immediately restore gaza supply of electricity water fuel and food and rescind the unlawful evacuation order demand the immediate suspension of the direct and indirect supply sale or transfer to the israeli government of all weapons munitions and other military and security equipment and make clear that the u.s. will not tolerate the purpose the purpose that was an intensive need special educator my whole life i need an ip okay so um no perpetuation sorry of of war crimes or crimes against humanity with weapons it has provided to the israeli government we ask that the u.s. government commit to implementing the administration's own policies regarding human rights and civilian harm reduction we call and call on the israeli government to lift the unlawful 16-year blockade on gaza and dismantle its system of apartheid imposed over palestinians and to support the international criminal court and urgently expediting ongoing investigation into evidence of war crimes and other crimes under international law um and i've been learning a lot here so thank you i've been learning a she's she's our wonderful now share of our amnesty international champlain valley amnesty international group um but i want to learn more about how to get involved with the world um international court um information that you've been sharing i i think i know it's also overwhelming in a way how do you do it but um thank you all for what you're sharing and you're all valued um thank you the saint okay any final so any any more comments or it wouldn't be terrible to start to pack up in the next few minutes because another group is coming in here and we have this elaborate setup to uh to pack away but i would i would say in conclusion there was a really brilliant poem i don't know if anybody reads katlyn johnstone um on anti war dot com and also on maybe anita you know where did you see her to that poem and the poem is saying that there's not much we can do about the current situation in gaza but at least we can see it for what it is and please this was an attempt to kind of open people's eyes to at least as american citizens see what our government is doing in gaza in and against gaza against the palestinian people let's just see it as clearly as we can and try to act against it it's really should be on our conscience this is being done in our name thank you yes well thank you everyone and those who will be able to help us walk up and down with the mini copies of the universal declaration that we have there in this poster we'll meet at at the front door in five minutes uh we're getting the uh drum is going to accompany us any anything else no we're all done