All people in the world have been entitled to all human rights under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights since 1948. This has been affirmed in the UN Social Covenant and the UN Civil Covenant. The rich countries, together with the rich elites in the poor countries, have so far prevented serious steps to implement this decision. This deprives the poor of their rights, the poor in rich countries and even more the poor in poor countries. This injustice also creates problems for humanity as a whole. It is not a sustainable basis for peace, not in individual countries and not for the world as a whole. Tensions arise from it. They lead to military armament and to the waste of public resources that could be used for the implementation of human rights worldwide. One example: Every 10 seconds, a child under the age of 5 still dies worldwide as a result of hunger. At the same time, rich countries in particular spend two trillion dollars a year on military purposes. The children of the politicians who decide this are not affected by this dying.
The Brand (or North-South) Commission had already pointed out this moral contradiction in the 70s and 80s. Since then, the world economy has grown strongly, but children are still starving. And this is just one sign of the lack of opportunities for many people on our planet: it reverberates as insecurity on all of us.
We want to start networking people from the global South and global North to support each other in asserting human rights in our respective countries and in their external relations.
Today, foreign language skills, the Internet and migrants who can build bridges give us more opportunities to do this than we humans have ever had before.
We want to build on the work of the Brandt Commission and make its concern a concern for the whole of society.
If you want to help build this network, we invite you to our first webinar on Thursday, May 20, at 8.15 p.m. Central European Time.
You can join us with this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/3216854044
We will publish the program later. Please contact us if you have something to share in a short contribution to the project.
You can also register for the North-South networking team here: https://www.internationale-friedensfabrik-wanfried.org/group/nord-sud-vernetzungs-team/discussion#preventScrollToTop
For the IFFW: Wolfgang Lieberknecht
Join us in building a network for North-South justice as a basis for peace: Launch webinar, 5/20.