KYOTO'S WATER WIZARDS

The following breakdown of a BBC article points out that the agenda behind the Kyoto Treaty is to privatize the world's water and put it into the hands of wealthy elites who will control its ebb and flow and determine who drinks and who thirsts. These Kyoto adherents meet regularly at what they call WORLD WATER FORUMS after which they return to home countries and give politicians their orders. Every nation in the world is at one stage or another of losing control of its water resource.

A group opposing the Kyoto Treaty is attempting to establish a WORLD WATER PARLIAMENT, and the article lays out their goals as well. ~ Jackie Jura

Firstly, here's the plans the Kyoto Treaty is working on:

"...12,000 people met in Kyoto at the official Third World Water Forum to determine the direction of current water policies

... dominated by private corporations who favour large projects such as dams, instead of simpler technologies

... want water privatisation and "commodification" of water

... enabling creeping corporate control via privatisation

... escalating water scarcity and sparking future "water wars"

... the Iraq war was also about control of Iraq's huge water resources

... creating water-wasteful processes through water supply systems based on "heavy engineering" solutions such as dams

...international financial institutions' control water supply finance

...industry and World Bank spokesmen advocate public-private partnerships

... water services are included in the on-going World Trade Organisation negotiations, in particular the European Commission's recently leaked WTO negotiating requests to open up the water services in many developing countries to foreign private investment

... no parliamentary sovereignty over water-trade negotiations

... they're planning a Fourth World Water Forum in Montreal in 2006

Here are the goals of a group forming to oppose the water plans of the Kyoto Treaty:

Their goal is a WORLD WATER PARLIAMENT. They met in Italy at the same time the meeting in Kyoto, Japan was going on.

...The Florence meeting's 1,400 participants (70% Italians) came from pacifist, environmental, development and farmers' NGOs, as well as local authorities. They met to carry forward the Porto Alegre World Social Forum's call in January for a new democratic world water parliament and a halt to water privatisation.

...The world's water resources must become a common global good under a new international system anchored in a constitutional right to water for all

The final declaration in Florence called for:

- a guaranteed minmum of 40 litres a day to each world inhabitant by 2020, while meeting ecosystem needs

- a radical overhaul of present water-wasteful processes in all economic sectors, prioritising rehabilitation and maintenance of existing water supply systems over "heavy engineering" solutions such as dams

- public-public partnerships instead of public-private partnerships advocated by industry and the World Bank in Kyoto

- upgrading tap water quality to reduce mineral water consumption

- innovative funding mechanisms including water taxes and ethical investment funds to ensure continued local authority ownership and mangement of water supplies - under the supervision of democratic assemblies representing consumers and workers

- a critical review of international financial institutions' role in water supply finance and establishment of a World Water Solidarity Fund

- international river basin authorities

- withdrawal of water services from the on-going World Trade Organisation negotiations

- a parliamentarians' water network to promote recovery of parliamentary sovereignty over trade negotiations, in particular as regards water

- The 2006 meeting in Montreal of the fourth World Water Forum should be replaced with the inaugural World Water Parliament."

above compiled from Alternataive water future outlined. BBC News, Mar 24, 2003

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Bilderberg - an introduction

Posted by Jack Arason at 9:11 AM

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U.N. Wants to Rule New World Order

Diane Sabom

In the name of peace, the world body wants member states to subjugate their sovereignty to the organization and grant the authority to field what amounts to a standing U.N. army.

Outside the north entrance to the United Nations in New York City stands an oversized sculpture of a pistol with its barrel tied in a knot, presumably the symbol of the U.N.'s founding purpose: "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war."

But in the three days of the Millennium Summit of world leaders (Sept. 6-8), many would say that knot became metaphorically undone to point the barrel straight at the heart of national sovereignty. Attempting to untie the knot was the largest gathering of heads of state ever assembled, arriving in mini-motorcades at a United Nations heavily barricaded for their security. Royalty and civilian heads of state jostled each other, each wearing their kingdom's best as they wound their way into the great hall to speak in tandem about "global interconnectedness" and the need for "collective responsibility" in the face of threats to "our common humanity."

To meet the heavy burden of this collective responsibility, they unanimously approved the so-called "Millennium Declaration." Subject to rubber-stamping by the U.N. General Assembly, this declaration purports to authorize, among other things, "the resources and tools" which the United Nations needs "for conflict prevention, peaceful resolution of disputes, peacekeeping, post-conflict peace-building and reconstruction."

From a podium centered between two great TV monitors, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan implored the 150-plus world leaders in the cavernous hall on the opening day to consider "very seriously" the report of the Panel on U.N. Peace Operations, a report known by the surname of its chairman, former Algerian foreign minister Lakhdar Brahimi. On the second day, Annan warned representatives of all 15 member states of the U.N. Security Council that the body's reputation "to make the difference between peace and war" was on the line, particularly in Africa. As if "pre-briefed," to use the words of one analyst, the Security Council quickly adopted a resolution to strengthen "the central role of the United Nations in peacekeeping," to address the root causes of conflict and, most importantly, to welcome the Brahimi report.

The Brahimi report aims to make the United Nations "a credible force for peace" by restructuring its Department of Peacekeeping Operations, elevating peacekeeping to "a core activity of the United Nations" and substantially increasing funding through the yearly budget instead of current ad hoc arrangements: "It means bigger forces, better equipped and more costly but able to be a credible deterrent." It calls for robust "rules of engagement" so that U.N. forces "do not have to cede the initiative to their attackers" and so that U.N. "troops or police who witness violence against civilians [will] be authorized to stop it."

John Bolton, a former assistant secretary of state for international organizations during the Bush administration and now a senior vice president at the American Enterprise Institute, tells Insight that it will not be "a bunch of people with blue helmets sitting at a base somewhere," but more "a quasi rapid-deployment force." Nevertheless, Bolton testified on Sept. 20 before the House International Relations subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights that "the U.N. now wants the capacity to wage small wars (small `moral' wars, of course)."

While some might call this a peacekeeping force, others might look at it and see a U.N. standing army. Brett Schaefer of the Heritage Foundation tells Insight that equipping the United Nations with combat capability is "ill-conceived. Essentially [it] allow[s] the. U.N. to pick the good guys and the bad guys. And I don't trust the U.N. to make that decision." The Brahimi report encourages U.N. member states to establish a national pool of civilian police officers ready to serve for one year and to enter into partnerships with other states to form "brigade-size standby forces ready for effective deployment." One such training facility, the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, already is operative in Ghana. Brahimi announced that contributing troops "implies a willingness to accept the risk of casualties on behalf of the mandate."

The themes of high casualties and of subjugating "state sovereignty" to the needs of "humanity" came up again on Sept. 7 across town at the Gorbachev State of the World Forum, coconvened with Canadian Gen. Romeo Dallaire -- the former commander of U.N. forces in Rwanda who tried to warn the United Nations of the then still pending massacre of some 800,000 people. Dallaire captured the summit's fundamental dilemma underpinning the summit between state sovereignty and "humanity." When BBC interviewer Tim Sebastian asked who is responsible for such international failures in Rwanda, the general fingered "every sovereign state that put self-interest before humanity." His subsequent remarks implied that a country's reluctance to accept casualties represented "self-interest."

Annan apparently long has felt national sovereignty to be a thorn in his peacekeeping side. He told The Economist nearly a year ago that traditional notions of sovereignty and the ways states define their national interests are "obstacle[s] to effective action in humanitarian crises" such as Rwanda. "A new, broader definition of national interest is needed in the new century, which would induce states to find greater unity in the pursuit of common goals and values ... the collective interest is the national interest.... Humanity, after all, is indivisible" [italics added].

In his advance summit report, We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the Twenty-first Century, Annan invoked the European Union as a model "security community," one "characterized by dependable expectations that disputes will be resolved by peaceful means." The report sets down a new concept of "a human-centered security" which cites that people are threatened less through territorial acquisition today than, for example, through internal conflict, resource depletion and wars among the poor. Thus "security," from this point of view, requires prevention. Attempting to put "legs" to that notion, Annan emphasized to the Security Council on July 20, "We must make conflict prevention the cornerstone of collective security." President Clinton, showing remarkable sync with the secretary-general, informed the Security Council on Sept. 7 that "we will be forced increasingly to define security more broadly."

How a security threat is defined determines the basis for action by the Security Council under provisions of the U.N. charter. Brahimi's tampering with these provisions (and the redefinitions of "human security" by Annan and Clinton) worries Henry Lamb, the of Eco-logic and the president/ of Sovereignty International Inc. "I find the changes most disturbing," Lamb tells Insight. "The U.N. charter authorizes military action only by the Security Council, and then only when invited by affected member states. As decision-making authority is removed from the Security Council, ostensibly to enable a faster response effort -- and even a pre-emptive strike capability -- the real power is further consolidated into administrative [bureaucratic] hands."

Underpinning such "human security" is the new concept of "individual sovereignty," which Annan juxtaposed to "state sovereignty" in The Economist article. Annan implies that states serve individuals by protecting their rights. Unlike the rights in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, which are endowed by a Creator, however, the "rights" to which the secretary-general refers are "enshrined in the charter of the U.N. and subsequent international treaties."

Journalist Mary Jo Anderson learned firsthand that rights "enshrined in the charter of the U.N." are very vulnerable indeed. A writer for the Catholic journal Crisis who sharply has criticized the United Nations for failing to protect the human rights of religious persons, she was told by officials in the U.N. press office that "religious publications had no place at this summit." "Minus sovereignty," she tells Insight, "we all become `citizens of the world' and thus there is no longer an advocate, a defender of our rights as we understand them." Only by presenting proof of previous U.N. press accreditation did she eventually receive credentials.

To be sure, "rights" increasingly are being redefined at the United Nations in ways that many religious people believe do not protect them. Some, mostly Western U.N. delegations -- including the United States -- recently have moved to legalize prostitution, to advocate "child rights" that pit children against parents and to reinterpret as "fundamental human rights" abortion, sex education for adolescents in schools without parental consent and homosexuality. The strategy is first to label something a "human right" and then to use a "right" to trump contrary claims by sovereign nations seeking to uphold traditional morality.

The same process of "rights creation" is being applied to the issue of peacekeeping and prevention. For example, Annan spoke to a meeting of the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) on Sept. 11: "Without development we can neither prevent conflict nor build peace. Without development, people will not enjoy human rights in any meaningful sense -- which is why we have now come to understand development as being in itself one of those rights. Without development, there will not be justice in the world -- and people without rights will be unlikely to `practice tolerance and live together in peace [italics in original].'"

Heritage's Schaefer scoffs at the idea of development being a right: "All you're doing by saying everything is a right is confusing people. The right to pursue happiness doesn't mean you're going to have happiness."

Even the administrator of the UNDP, Mark Malloch Brown, has learned to say the right things despite the UNDP's notoriety as an advocate of "world governance." Brown tells Insight he gets "very, very nervous" when the right to development is viewed "in the same way as the right to political free speech or the vote." In an exclusive interview, he cautions, "To me, it is just implausible to believe that you can legislate a right to a job or to education or to health care. What you can do is legislate the right to an opportunity, but what will create the job or the opportunity for education for your children is the role of an individual in creating wealth in a society; [that is] what will pay for the job." Brown's agency, with offices in 136 countries, is according to Annan "well-placed to take the lead" in postconflict "peace building."

Broadened concepts of national interest, human security and "rights" form the backdrop against which mere peacekeeping no longer is the rule. According to Brahimi, more often peacekeeping must involve "peacemaking and peace-building." Only by peace-building can the so-called "peacekeepers" make a graceful exit from the scene. It will be the job of peacekeepers, Brahimi says, "to maintain a secure local environment for peace-building and the peace-builders' task to support the political, social and economic changes that create a secure environment that is self-sustaining."

All of this expanded peacekeeping and peace-building amounts to "international nannyism," Bolton tells Insight, borrowing a phrase from Johns Hopkins University professor Michael Mandelbaum. Nannyism likewise could describe the "shared responsibility" for managing worldwide economic and social development," which the Millennium Declaration insists the world should adopt as a value. Moreover, such responsibility, especially for economic globalization, is to be monitored: "It is our job [i.e., the U.N.'s] to ensure that globalization provides benefits not just for some but for all" and "serve[s] as the place where the cause of common humanity is articulated and advanced," says the declaration.

In a clip that was edited out prior to delivering his summit talk but still was distributed to the press, Clinton, in effect, corroborated a willingness to assume the nanny role in "build[ing] social and economic institutions ... to keep alive the hope for peace." As if taking a page from Brahimi, he further emphasized in speeches to both the summit and to the Security Council the need to recognize "the iron link between deprivation and war" in order to prevent conflict. According to the report and We the Peoples, the sources of conflicts include poverty, distribution, discrimination, corruption, a failure of governance, the contest for power, competition for scarce resources and issues of ethnicity, religion or gross violation of human rights. Stated another way, any of these "root causes" of conflict could constitute a threat to international peace that requires peacekeeping intervention.

Bolton reminded the House subcommittee that such peace-building used to be called "nation-building" and that as run by the Clinton administration in Somalia ended in disaster. In one view, the concept of "indivisible humanity" is a threat to export Somalias around the world -- an undertaking that might turn Lyndon Johnson's Great Society into a global-society give-away, create hot spots in Africa and elsewhere and introduce "regovernance" and/or reconstruction in an effort to prevent conflict and to build peace. Global experts from the United Nations would be redesigning economies, training civilian police, strengthening legal and penal systems, rehabilitating degraded environments, ensuring "food security" and deepening the processes of democratization and civil society. Democracy would be imposed by authoritarian fiat.

During his summit talk, Clinton gave a vote of confidence to Annan's proposals to have the United Nations rule the world: "When leaders seize [the] chance for peace, we must help them. [T]he U.N. did not have the tools to finish the job [in Sierra Leone and West Timor]. We must provide those tools -- with peacekeepers that can be rapidly deployed with the right training and equipment, missions well-defined and well-led, with the necessary civilian police." Comparing Clinton's statement to the administration's "wavering" policy on peacekeeping in general, Chantal de Jonge Oudraat of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace glossed it for Insight as "sufficiently vague" so as to be hard to tell whether it meant the United States would send troops or train them for other countries. To Oudraat, "progress" would require actual troop engagement to send a strong signal to opponents of peace, and that means the United States would have to pay the bill: "The U.N. is a useless, weak organization without the support of the U.S. None of this, none of this [the Brahimi objectives] can become a reality without the United States."

COPYRIGHT 2000 News World Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group

United Nations Millennium Declaration




General Assembly resolution 55/2 of 8 September 2000

The General Assembly

Adopts the following Declaration:

United Nations Millenium Declaration

I. Values and principles

1. We, heads of State and Government, have gathered at United Nations Headquarters in New York from 6 to 8 September 2000, at the dawn of a new millennium, to reaffirm our faith in the Organization and its Charter as indispensable foundations of a more peaceful, prosperous and just world.

2. We recognize that, in addition to our separate responsibilities to our individual societies, we have a collective responsibility to uphold the principles of human dignity, equality and equity at the global level. As leaders we have a duty therefore to all the world's people, especially the most vulnerable and, in particular, the children of the world, to whom the future belongs.

3. We reaffirm our commitment to the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, which have proved timeless and universal. Indeed, their relevance and capacity to inspire have increased, as nations and peoples have become increasingly interconnected and interdependent.

4. We are determined to establish a just and lasting peace all over the world in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter. We rededicate ourselves to support all efforts to uphold the sovereign equality of all States, respect for their territorial integrity and political independence, resolution of disputes by peaceful means and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, the right to self-determination of peoples which remain under colonial domination and foreign occupation, non-interference in the internal affairs of States, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, respect for the equal rights of all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion and international cooperation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural or humanitarian character.

5. We believe that the central challenge we face today is to ensure that globalization becomes a positive force for all the world's people. For while globalization offers great opportunities, at present its benefits are very unevenly shared, while its costs are unevenly distributed. We recognize that developing countries and countries with economies in transition face special difficulties in responding to this central challenge. Thus, only through broad and sustained efforts to create a shared future, based upon our common humanity in all its diversity, can globalization be made fully inclusive and equitable. These efforts must include policies and measures, at the global level, which correspond to the needs of developing countries and economies in transition and are formulated and implemented with their effective participation.

6. We consider certain fundamental values to be essential to international relations in the twenty-first century. These include:

· Freedom. Men and women have the right to live their lives and raise their children in dignity, free from hunger and from the fear of violence, oppression or injustice. Democratic and participatory governance based on the will of the people best assures these rights.

· Equality. No individual and no nation must be denied the opportunity to benefit from development. The equal rights and opportunities of women and men must be assured.

· Solidarity. Global challenges must be managed in a way that distributes the costs and burdens fairly in accordance with basic principles of equity and social justice. Those who suffer or who benefit least deserve help from those who benefit most.

· Tolerance. Human beings must respect one other, in all their diversity of belief, culture and language. Differences within and between societies should be neither feared nor repressed, but cherished as a precious asset of humanity. A culture of peace and dialogue among all civilizations should be actively promoted.

· Respect for nature. Prudence must be shown in the management of all living species and natural resources, in accordance with the precepts of sustainable development. Only in this way can the immeasurable riches provided to us by nature be preserved and passed on to our descendants. The current unsustainable patterns of production and consumption must be changed in the interest of our future welfare and that of our descendants.

· Shared responsibility. Responsibility for managing worldwide economic and social development, as well as threats to international peace and security, must be shared among the nations of the world and should be exercised multilaterally. As the most universal and most representative organization in the world, the United Nations must play the central role.

7. In order to translate these shared values into actions, we have identified key objectives to which we assign special significance.

II. Peace, security and disarmament

8. We will spare no effort to free our peoples from the scourge of war, whether within or between States, which has claimed more than 5 million lives in the past decade. We will also seek to eliminate the dangers posed by weapons of mass destruction.

9. We resolve therefore:

· To strengthen respect for the rule of law in international as in national affairs and, in particular, to ensure compliance by Member States with the decisions of the International Court of Justice, in compliance with the Charter of the United Nations, in cases to which they are parties.

· To make the United Nations more effective in maintaining peace and security by giving it the resources and tools it needs for conflict prevention, peaceful resolution of disputes, peacekeeping, post-conflict peace-building and reconstruction. In this context, we take note of the report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations and request the General Assembly to consider its recommendations expeditiously.

· To strengthen cooperation between the United Nations and regional organizations, in accordance with the provisions of Chapter VIII of the Charter.

· To ensure the implementation, by States Parties, of treaties in areas such as arms control and disarmament and of international humanitarian law and human rights law, and call upon all States to consider signing and ratifying the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

· To take concerted action against international terrorism, and to accede as soon as possible to all the relevant international conventions.

· To redouble our efforts to implement our commitment to counter the world drug problem.

· To intensify our efforts to fight transnational crime in all its dimensions, including trafficking as well as smuggling in human beings and money laundering.

· To minimize the adverse effects of United Nations economic sanctions on innocent populations, to subject such sanctions regimes to regular reviews and to eliminate the adverse effects of sanctions on third parties.

· To strive for the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons, and to keep all options open for achieving this aim, including the possibility of convening an international conference to identify ways of eliminating nuclear dangers.

· To take concerted action to end illicit traffic in small arms and light weapons, especially by making arms transfers more transparent and supporting regional disarmament measures, taking account of all the recommendations of the forthcoming United Nations Conference on Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons.

· To call on all States to consider acceding to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-personnel Mines and on Their Destruction, as well as the amended mines protocol to the Convention on conventional weapons.

10. We urge Member States to observe the Olympic Truce, individually and collectively, now and in the future, and to support the International Olympic Committee in its efforts to promote peace and human understanding through sport and the Olympic Ideal.

III. Development and poverty eradication

11. We will spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a billion of them are currently subjected. We are committed to making the right to development a reality for everyone and to freeing the entire human race from want.

12. We resolve therefore to create an environment - at the national and global levels alike - which is conducive to development and to the elimination of poverty.

13. Success in meeting these objectives depends, inter alia , on good governance within each country. It also depends on good governance at the international level and on transparency in the financial, monetary and trading systems. We are committed to an open, equitable, rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory multilateral trading and financial system.

14. We are concerned about the obstacles developing countries face in mobilizing the resources needed to finance their sustained development. We will therefore make every effort to ensure the success of the High-level International and Intergovernmental Event on Financing for Development, to be held in 2001.

15. We also undertake to address the special needs of the least developed countries. In this context, we welcome the Third United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries to be held in May 2001 and will endeavour to ensure its success. We call on the industrialized countries:

· To adopt, preferably by the time of that Conference, a policy of duty- and quota-free access for essentially all exports from the least developed countries;

· To implement the enhanced programme of debt relief for the heavily indebted poor countries without further delay and to agree to cancel all official bilateral debts of those countries in return for their making demonstrable commitments to poverty reduction; and

· To grant more generous development assistance, especially to countries that are genuinely making an effort to apply their resources to poverty reduction.

16. We are also determined to deal comprehensively and effectively with the debt problems of low- and middle-income developing countries, through various national and international measures designed to make their debt sustainable in the long term.

17. We also resolve to address the special needs of small island developing States, by implementing the Barbados Programme of Action and the outcome of the twenty-second special session of the General Assembly rapidly and in full. We urge the international community to ensure that, in the development of a vulnerability index, the special needs of small island developing States are taken into account.

18. We recognize the special needs and problems of the landlocked developing countries, and urge both bilateral and multilateral donors to increase financial and technical assistance to this group of countries to meet their special development needs and to help them overcome the impediments of geography by improving their transit transport systems.

19. We resolve further:

· To halve, by the year 2015, the proportion of the world's people whose income is less than one dollar a day and the proportion of people who suffer from hunger and, by the same date, to halve the proportion of people who are unable to reach or to afford safe drinking water.

· To ensure that, by the same date, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling and that girls and boys will have equal access to all levels of education.

· By the same date, to have reduced maternal mortality by three quarters, and under-five child mortality by two thirds, of their current rates.

· To have, by then, halted, and begun to reverse, the spread of HIV/AIDS, the scourge of malaria and other major diseases that afflict humanity.

· To provide special assistance to children orphaned by HIV/AIDS.

· By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers as proposed in the "Cities Without Slums" initiative.

20. We also resolve:

· To promote gender equality and the empowerment of women as effective ways to combat poverty, hunger and disease and to stimulate development that is truly sustainable.

· To develop and implement strategies that give young people everywhere a real chance to find decent and productive work.

· To encourage the pharmaceutical industry to make essential drugs more widely available and affordable by all who need them in developing countries.

· To develop strong partnerships with the private sector and with civil society organizations in pursuit of development and poverty eradication.

· To ensure that the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communication technologies, in conformity with recommendations contained in the ECOSOC 2000 Ministerial Declaration, are available to all.

IV. Protecting our common environment

21. We must spare no effort to free all of humanity, and above all our children and grandchildren, from the threat of living on a planet irredeemably spoilt by human activities, and whose resources would no longer be sufficient for their needs.

22. We reaffirm our support for the principles of sustainable development, including those set out in Agenda 21, agreed upon at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development.

23. We resolve therefore to adopt in all our environmental actions a new ethic of conservation and stewardship and, as first steps, we resolve:

· To make every effort to ensure the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol, preferably by the tenth anniversary of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 2002, and to embark on the required reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases.

· To intensify our collective efforts for the management, conservation and sustainable development of all types of forests.

· To press for the full implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention to Combat Desertification in those Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, particularly in Africa.

· To stop the unsustainable exploitation of water resources by developing water management strategies at the regional, national and local levels, which promote both equitable access and adequate supplies.

· To intensify cooperation to reduce the number and effects of natural and man-made disasters.

· To ensure free access to information on the human genome sequence.

V. Human rights, democracy and good governance

24. We will spare no effort to promote democracy and strengthen the rule of law, as well as respect for all internationally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the right to development.

25. We resolve therefore:

· To respect fully and uphold the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

· To strive for the full protection and promotion in all our countries of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights for all.

· To strengthen the capacity of all our countries to implement the principles and practices of democracy and respect for human rights, including minority rights.

· To combat all forms of violence against women and to implement the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

· To take measures to ensure respect for and protection of the human rights of migrants, migrant workers and their families, to eliminate the increasing acts of racism and xenophobia in many societies and to promote greater harmony and tolerance in all societies.

· To work collectively for more inclusive political processes, allowing genuine participation by all citizens in all our countries.

· To ensure the freedom of the media to perform their essential role and the right of the public to have access to information.

VI. Protecting the vulnerable

26. We will spare no effort to ensure that children and all civilian populations that suffer disproportionately the consequences of natural disasters, genocide, armed conflicts and other humanitarian emergencies are given every assistance and protection so that they can resume normal life as soon as possible.

We resolve therefore:

· To expand and strengthen the protection of civilians in complex emergencies, in conformity with international humanitarian law.

· To strengthen international cooperation, including burden sharing in, and the coordination of humanitarian assistance to, countries hosting refugees and to help all refugees and displaced persons to return voluntarily to their s, in safety and dignity and to be smoothly reintegrated into their societies.

· To encourage the ratification and full implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its optional protocols on the involvement of children in armed conflict and on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography.

VII. Meeting the special needs of Africa

27. We will support the consolidation of democracy in Africa and assist Africans in their struggle for lasting peace, poverty eradication and sustainable development, thereby bringing Africa into the mainstream of the world economy.

28. We resolve therefore:

· To give full support to the political and institutional structures of emerging democracies in Africa.

· To encourage and sustain regional and subregional mechanisms for preventing conflict and promoting political stability, and to ensure a reliable flow of resources for peacekeeping operations on the continent.

· To take special measures to address the challenges of poverty eradication and sustainable development in Africa, including debt cancellation, improved market access, enhanced Official Development Assistance and increased flows of Foreign Direct Investment, as well as transfers of technology.

· To help Africa build up its capacity to tackle the spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and other infectious diseases.

VIII. Strengthening the United Nations

29. We will spare no effort to make the United Nations a more effective instrument for pursuing all of these priorities: the fight for development for all the peoples of the world, the fight against poverty, ignorance and disease; the fight against injustice; the fight against violence, terror and crime; and the fight against the degradation and destruction of our common .

30. We resolve therefore:

· To reaffirm the central position of the General Assembly as the chief deliberative, policy-making and representative organ of the United Nations, and to enable it to play that role effectively.

· To intensify our efforts to achieve a comprehensive reform of the Security Council in all its aspects.

· To strengthen further the Economic and Social Council, building on its recent achievements, to help it fulfil the role ascribed to it in the Charter.

· To strengthen the International Court of Justice, in order to ensure justice and the rule of law in international affairs.

· To encourage regular consultations and coordination among the principal organs of the United Nations in pursuit of their functions.

· To ensure that the Organization is provided on a timely and predictable basis with the resources it needs to carry out its mandates.

· To urge the Secretariat to make the best use of those resources, in accordance with clear rules and procedures agreed by the General Assembly, in the interests of all Member States, by adopting the best management practices and technologies available and by concentrating on those tasks that reflect the agreed priorities of Member States.

· To promote adherence to the Convention on the Safety of United Nations and Associated Personnel.

· To ensure greater policy coherence and better cooperation between the United Nations, its agencies, the Bretton Woods Institutions and the World Trade Organization, as well as other multilateral bodies, with a view to achieving a fully coordinated approach to the problems of peace and development.

· To strengthen further cooperation between the United Nations and national parliaments through their world organization, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, in various fields, including peace and security, economic and social development, international law and human rights and democracy and gender issues.

· To give greater opportunities to the private sector, non-governmental organizations and civil society, in general, to contribute to the realization of the Organization's goals and programmes.

31. We request the General Assembly to review on a regular basis the progress made in implementing the provisions of this Declaration, and ask the Secretary-General to issue periodic reports for consideration by the General Assembly and as a basis for further action.

32. We solemnly reaffirm, on this historic occasion, that the United Nations is the indispensable common house of the entire human family, through which we will seek to realize our universal aspirations for peace, cooperation and development. We therefore pledge our unstinting support for these common objectives and our determination to achieve them.