Three workshops are planned for the conference on the European Network for Peace and Human Rights in Brussels, 31 January to 1 February 2002. Some twenty different themes are suggested under the workshop framework. My hope is that apart from the specific agenda we can also give ourselves time to dream some dreams.
It may be that after 11 September we have indeed come to a dividing point in international politics. We can either accept a world of economic globalism and injustice, dominated by the remaining superpower with its uncontested military might. Or we can move towards a world of social justice in which genuine security is understood to be available only through internationalism, interdependence, co-operation, democracy and the rule of law.
It was in the hope of pursuing the latter vision that most citizens in most countries supported with enthusiasm the signing of the UN Charter on 26 June 1945. The preamble to that Charter, which starts with the ringing call for an end to the scourge of war, is still one of the most visionary documents of human history. With it a partnership, but a little later, came the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
The time has come for a re-statement of that vision, and such a re-statement could well begin in Europe. We have much to be ashamed of in the history of Europe. Colonialism, slavery, unrestrained capitalism, world wars, and the weapons of mass destruction are major items on a long list of which we cannot be proud.
But also from Europe have come a long line of people and organisations who hoped and planned for a more humane world, free from war, peaceful as well as prosperous, in which different states and peoples would work together for the good of all. I think of Erasmus and Comenius, of Tzar Nicholas II and Bertha von Suttner, of Pope Benedict XV and of Barbara Wood, of Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman, and so many others. To that list I would certainly add the name of the historian Edward Thompson, whose passionate eloquence in word and print did so much to inspire the great END citizens' movement of the 1980's. He gave us a powerful vision - that of an undivided Europe of democracy and peace.
At the moment we seem to be clear enough about what we are against, but not so clear about what we are for. We are amongst other things against Star Wars/Missile Defence, the bombing of Afghanistan, corporate capitalism, the arms trade, torture, nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, Nato, the politics of oil, and the injustice done for half a century to the Palestinians.
We are of course for a just, nonviolent world in general. But how are we to build the machinery and the consciousness which can make such an alternative possible? At the moment there are at least four groupings of non-governmental organisations. Some are for disarmament, some are for development, some for the protection of the environment, and some for human rights. Yet often enough these groups work separately and sometimes in competition, both for status and for funding. The failing fortunes of the United Nations Associations of the world mirror the diminishing respect for the United Nations itself, which remains silent about the abuse of its charter when the remaining superpower decides to go to war. In short, we have many organisations working for many causes, with much good will, but too often with seemingly separate agendas and no common strategy.
Yet there is a common vision. The non-governmental organisations, which were so effective at the great international meetings of Rio, Beijing, Copenhagen, Seattle, and Genoa, do have positive hope for a different kind of world. Yet despite these activists, the idea that we, six billion, are brothers and sisters sharing in global citizenship, has not yet become common thinking. Most people still live in the different boxes of separate so-called sovereign states. "Country comes first" is as true for the Olympics and football as it is for war and economics.
Yet we in Europe have seen positive signs of change. There are achievements of which we can be proud. It is a miracle that at Strasbourg, thanks to the Council of Europe, we have a Court of Human Rights which is in the whole honoured by the signatory countries. Out of the great Hague Peace Conference of 1899 came the seeds of the International Court of Justice, now a working and effective organ of the United Nations. Through the economic, political and social interconnections which have developed through what is now the European Union, war between their member states - especially Germany and France - is now impossible.
But how do we define these changes? Not long ago I came across a statement from the Hungarian humanists. "Humanity may have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go. That is why we continue our fight for real democracy, de-centralisation, and a deep-rooted change in the relationship between work and capital. We are fighting for free health care and education for all... against all forms of violence and discrimination, for a Europe of human rights not a Europe of money, banks and American bases... We are not struggling for a uniform world, but a world diverse in cultures, customs, religions and beliefs. We want another globalisation... where the primary value is the human being."
Amen to all that. I hope that out of our Brussels meeting will come a new conviction that we in Europe have a major responsibility to try to make global citizenship a priority beyond that of loyalty to any individual state. We must help to produce a vision of human beings able to live together as trustees both for each other and for our planet. Our individual programmes as members of non-governmental organisations with specific aims should be seen as ways of working in partnership towards the whole. We are co-operators not competitors.
The preamble to the UN Charter needs to be re-read and publicised. The UN has to be reformed and re-structured. Its funding has to be assured. Its basis can no longer be that of absolute state sovereignty. The jurisdiction of its courts and hopefully the new criminal court must be mandatory. Its organs must be democratically based and its information and educational services made vastly more effective. International financial organs like the IMF and the World Bank must be made subject to UN direction. Access for non-governmental organisations made much more open. It is a long shopping list.
None of this will happen unless, in all the organs of civil society - trade unions, faith communities, colleges, schools and universities, government and non-governmental institutions - are imbued with the conviction that a just world order is possible and that security does not depend upon military power. That will involve considerable sacrifices from those of us who for too long have shared disproportionately in the world's wealth.
Since most of our school children, let alone their parents, have never seen the UN Charter, and have almost no knowledge of international institutions, we clearly have a long way to go. At Brussels we can perhaps discuss some of the practical steps which we have yet to take.