World Federalist Association
Policy and Resolutions Committee
WFA Minutes, Oct. 1991

SAFEGUARDING HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE RIGHTS OF PEOPLES

" We call upon the U.N. Security Council to authorize UN sponsored peacemaking actions to protect peoples attacked and victimized by a country's own military, as in Iraq in 1991, in order to help eliminate abuses and safeguard the rights of individuals and peoples referred to in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Furthermore, the World Federalist Association advocates the following measures:

1) revisions in the UN Charter, as suggested by the foreign ministers of Italy, Germany, Canada and the Soviet Union in 1991, to confirm the U.N.'s right to intervene in international affairs of states for humanitarian ends and the protection of human rights; (see corresponding article)

2) the creation of a UN High Commissioner for Human Rights or other appropriate bodies to investigate any complaint of violation(s) of the rights of individuals and peoples;

3) the establishment of an International Criminal Court, as referenced by the U.S. Congress in 1990, empowered to try, inter alia, any national leaders, like Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Pol Pot et al., who order or condone violation(s) of human rights;

4) the establishment of regional and other transnational federations, starting with the currently evolving European Federation, with their own regional courts of human rights, modeled after the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, such as the Inter- American Court of Human rights;

5) ratification by the United States and other countries of the UN Covenant on Civil And Political Rights adopted by the General Assembly in 1966 (already ratified by some 80 countries); and

6) further restructuring of the United Nations into a democratic world federation to help assure that the human rights of all members of the human family and world community are respected."