Conceptual Model of the Earth Federation

Prologue

The delegates of the 12th session of the Provisional World Parliament, meeting in Kolkata, India December 27-31, 2010, have certified this conceptual model in order to encourage the citizens of Earth to envision concretely the holistic world system founded by the Constitution for the Federation of Earth. The Preamble to the Earth Constitution rightly states that “the principle of unity in diversity is the basis for a new age when war shall be outlawed and peace prevail; when the earth’s total resources shall be equitably used for human welfare; and when basic human rights and responsibilities shall be shared by all without discrimination.” This principle of unity in diversity names the paradigm shift behind the Earth Constitution. The principle of unity in diversity epitomizes the new paradigm emerging from the scientific revolutions of the 20th century. Previously the world had been modeled as a machine characterized by universal causal determinism and composed of isolated, independent parts called atoms that, in living systems, often acted in competition with one another. This was reflected in outdated social theories such as the doctrine of capitalist competition or the dogma of survival of the fittest. The new paradigm sees the world and human society more accurately on the model of an organism in which the parts interact within a dynamic whole that transcends the sum of its individual components. On the human level this implies a social ecology of interdependence and mutual relationships among the many parts within a unity that transcends the sum of its interdependent parts. Hence, the diversity of persons, nations, cultures, ethnicities, and races in the world involves a complex multiplicity of interdependent relationships and “worlds within worlds,” all necessary to one another and inseparable at the deepest levels. Unity in diversity implies authentic global democracy, mutual respect and cooperation among all peoples, the ending of war and militarism, and universal sustainable prosperity. The unity of the whole involves the social ecological wholeness of human life on Earth itself, which is itself part of the natural unity of our planetary ecosystem. Parts and whole are both real and necessary to one another. Our common human nature, our common ability to use language, our common human characteristics and mannerisms, our common ability for love, compassion and mutual recognition, and our universal human rights and dignity express the unity of the whole. There can be no true protection and appreciation of this wonderful diversity of the parts unless this is embraced, respected, and protected through true unities. As with natural ecology, a multiplicity of scientific disciplines have demonstrated that in human civilization the one and the many are necessary and complementary to one another. The fragmentation of the system of sovereign nation-states recognizing no enforceable law above themselves and its tandem system of global capitalism in which the rich corporations, banks, and nations exploit poor people and nations worldwide has been replaced by a holistic world system under the Earth Constitution. The paradigm shift to a holistic world system established on the principle of unity in diversity has clearly predictable consequences for peace, prosperity, justice, freedom, and environmental sustainability, just as the present fragmented world system has definite consequences for each of these domains – consequences that we see all around us in the form of war, poverty, injustice, slavery, and environmental destruction. The parliament hopes that this document will aid the people of Earth to understand more deeply the terrible consequences of fragmentation and the absolute need to ratify and implement a holistic world system under the Earth Constitution within the very near future. The fragmentation of the present world disorder parallels the fragmented, linear thinking deriving largely from that outdated paradigm. The Constitution is a product of the discipline of “systems thinking” that has developed within many 20th century sciences. Systems thinking discerns wholes. It examines interrelationships and dynamic patterns, such as those that today cause the horrible consequences of the present world order in terms of militarism, poverty, and environmental destruction. Systems thinking understands that most human behavior is a product of the systems within which we live. Changing our world system from fragmentation to holism will profoundly transform human attitudes and behavior (Senge 2006; Meadows 2008). The Constitution is not only a product of a deep understanding of the holistic unity in diversity of our world system. It will require creative and insightful systems thinkers to enliven it, both before ratification and once ratified, into a dynamic system of democratic responsiveness to an ever-evolving complex set of world relationships. The dynamic, holistic structure of the Constitution itself will help foster creative systems thinking within the emerging Earth Federation. W The Constitution was created through a process of four World Constituent Assemblies composed of world citizens from around the globe. These visionary world citizens met four times in the Assemblies, and interacted continuously between meetings, from 1968 to 1991 to produce this document serving as a foundation for a decent world system premised on the paradigm of the unity in diversity of genuine democracy. The Constitution is the foundation stone for genuine world democracy based on the principle of all. All human beings everywhere are included for the first time in history. This is the only proper response to the fact that human rights are universal; human dignity is universal; the human longing for freedom, justice, equality, peace, and prosperity is universal. The Constitution also offers a founded world system for the first time in history, not one that has haphazardly evolved from earlier outdated assumptions. It creates an integrated world system in which the Earth Federation is open to an evolving future guided by the vision embodied in the Constitution of peace, prosperity, justice, freedom, and sustainability. No longer locked into antiquated self-destructive economic and political assumptions and the fragmented thinking that produced them, the people of Earth will be able to move nonviolently forward toward a decent future for everyone. These founding ideals are built into the structure of the emerging Earth Federation within an open, selfcorrecting system directed toward their actualization within an ever-changing environment. Article 19 of the Earth Constitution, gives the people of Earth the mandate and the duty to begin the process of building the Earth Federation now, of elaborating the ministries, agencies, and organs specified by the Constitution from day one. There is no need to wait for ratification. We call this pledge the “act of civil obedience” in which we leave the immoral condition of citizens of some so-called sovereign nation under the war system and commit to living according to the peaceful rule of democratic law under the emerging Earth Federation. Many members of the World Constitution and Parliament Association (WCPA) and the organizations within the Earth Federation Movement (EFM) (going all the way back to the initial signatories of the Constitution at Innsbruck, Austria, in 1977) have pledged recognition of the Constitution as the law for planet Earth and therefore have begun living the transformed world system that it represents. Within the limits of the resources available to us, we activated the World Parliament under the heading of “Provisional World Parliament” in order to distinguish before and after phases of the development of viable world law. During the 1980s we created a bench of the World Supreme Court, which put all nuclear weapons producing nations on trial for this criminal act. We have also worked to begin various ministries specified by the Constitution, and have created a number of agencies through the Provisional World Parliament (specified later in this document). We have been seeking pledges or gifts of world territory (out from under any sovereign nation and ruled under the Earth Constitution and the Provisional World Parliament). We have designed and are actively promoting a universal Earth Currency with nations and leaders around the world. And we have established the Institute on World Problems specified in Article 8.4 of the Constitution. The Institute is also a non-profit 501C3 organization in the U.S., but its mandate, mission, and authority derive directly from the Earth Constitution. The Constitution itself demands (on both moral and legal grounds) that world citizens begin living and creating the transformed world system immediately. Self-government (by the people, for the people, and of the people) will never happen unless it begins here and now. We can no longer defer to the illegitimate system of militarized, warring nationstates. We the people must begin taking democratic responsibility for the governing of our planet. Since 1982, the Provisional World Parliament has met eleven times under the authority of Article 19 of the Constitution. The Parliament, through passing some 47 provisional world legislative acts (WLAs) and a number of resolutions articulating the spirit and meaning of the emerging Earth Federation, has been elaborating the details and specific legislation necessary to enable, activate, and concretize the framework provided by the Constitution. By reading this legislation and resolutions, it is not difficult to discern the kind of world order being developed by the Parliament through its ten sessions to date, as well as the dynamic systems thinking that has significantly informed the work of the Parliament. All the many thousands of world citizens who have committed the “act of civil obedience” are bound by the world legislation enacted by the Provisional World Parliament. We are building the new world system within the rotten shell of the old system of war, poverty, injustice, slavery, and unsustainability. By reading the Resolution on Good Government and its Essential Tasks under the Earth Federation passed by the eighth session of the Parliament we can see clearly the kind of transformed world system that is being promoted by the Parliament under the authority of the Earth Constitution, and the outlines of the world that many thousands of WCPA members everywhere on Earth are living as we speak. Just as we see all around us the horrific empirical consequences of the present world order, so in the work of the Provisional World Parliament we see peace structured into law, equality structured into law, the common good structured into law, the welfare of future generations structured into law, and individual freedom structured into law. (All this material can be found on-line at www.worldproblems.net and in the three volume set entitled Emerging World Law – Key documents and Decisions of the Global Constituent Assemblies and the Provisional World Parliament, edited by Eugenia Almand and Glen T. Martin.) Fortunately, Article 17 of the Earth Constitution specifies four stages of implementation until the full force of the Federation of Earth is realized, from the building of provisional world government prior to ratification to three stages of ratification and implementation. This not only make the process of transformation of the world’s system practical and doable, it allows the flexibility and creativity needed for growth toward mature living in peace, prosperity, justice, freedom, and sustainability. We model the future by living it now. We grow from our failures as well as successes. The Constitution and the hundreds of thousands around the world within the Earth Federation Movement allow for this process of growth. The future and the present are dynamically linked in this way. The institutional assumptions structuring our present world disorder for centuries have led to a world of perpetual wars, slavery, exploitation, worldwide poverty, disease, human misery, and environmental destruction. The institutional assumptions behind genuine democracy for humankind premised on the unity in diversity of all are entirely different, and the consequences of the resulting world system will be entirely different. The kind of world we live in is not the product of some mythical, greedy, and aggressive “human nature” but rather the product of the institutions, assumptions, and systems by which we organize our social lives. Common sense, practical laws, and ratification of the Earth Constitution in the present will lead to a vastly better world for all peoples in the relatively near future, just as these have been transforming the lives and practices of hundreds of thousands of people around the world since 1977. A Peace System Historically, many thinkers from the 17th century to the present have understood the world system of militarized sovereign nation-states as inherently a war system. War is not an occasional failure of this system but an intrinsic characteristic of the fact that there is no enforceable world law over nations and individuals that can mandate demilitarization and bring to justice those who violate the peaceful democratic rule of law. In consequence, nations operate on the basis of power politics involving the implicit or explicit use of coercion to promote their variety of perceived self-interests. The result is a world of chaos, injustice, and violence that today wastes more than one trillion U.S. dollars per year on militarism while the basic needs of the majority of human beings remain unmet. The result is a collection of 192 more or less autonomous entities who deny our basic interdependence on this Earth and who utterly lack the ability to join together sufficiently to deal with global crises such as climate crisis or worldwide diminishing resources. People say war cannot be eliminated, and this is truly so under the institutional paradigm within which the world remains currently trapped. However, under the Constitution, the nations of the Earth Federation are federated under the common rule of enforceable laws and sovereignty is shared by governmental authorities from the local to the national and the world level. The most fundamental component for creating a world peace system is global democracy itself, for democracy institutionalizes processes of nonviolent change and embraces all citizens within a regime of political participation within which their voices are heard and their rights are protected. At the global level such a regime would abolish the fragmentation of militarized sovereign nation-states in lethal and secretive competition with one another while mitigating the fragmented identifications of people worldwide with their local religion, ethnicity, race, culture, or other grouping. Non-military global democracy would also eliminate the military-industrial complex in which tremendous profits are made from producing munitions and military machines and which promotes overwhelming incentives for war and perpetual violence. For this reason the World Parliament created under the Constitution is the first and foremost component of a world peace system. The House of Peoples represents all people on Earth through representatives elected from 1000 electoral districts worldwide apportioned according to population. The House of Nations represents all nations with one to three representatives (depending on population) appointed or elected by the nations themselves. And the House of Counselors (composed of 200 representatives, 10 from each of 20 magna-regions worldwide) represents the people of Earth as a whole and the common good for the entire planet. The world democracy created under the World Parliament composed of these three houses, therefore, will embrace all races, religions, and other groupings in global dialogue and decision-making. The House of Nations will embrace all nations large and small, ending imperialism and exploitation of weaker nations by powerful nations. And the House of Counselors, with experts on all aspects of our civilization from the environment to demilitarization to cultural conflicts to principles of sustainable development, will provide wisdom and expertise to the Parliament in the service of the common good of humanity and the planet. The Earth Constitution converts today’s system of fragmented individualism (of nations, corporations, and persons) to a global social contract. A global social contract means that all are included in the regime of collective empowerment. A planetary community is established on fundamental moral and practical principles thereby transforming (for many at least) self-interested individuals into responsible citizens. A truly democratic world system is an essential foundation stone for world peace. Every group and nation must feel that its voice is heard and that it may effectively participate in governing the Earth in cooperation with other world citizens throughout the Earth Federation. The establishment of an effective World Parliament alone creates the foundations for a genuine world peace system. Second, under both the Constitution and the Provisional World Parliament, many specific features of the Constitution and laws passed by the Parliament establish the concrete lineaments of a world peace system. Not only does the Earth Constitution require a demilitarized world, the Provisional World Parliament has created detailed legislation to regulate and empower the process of disarmament. The very first World Legislative Act adopted in 1982 by the Provisional World Parliament (WLA #1) enacted a world law prohibiting the design, development, sale, transport, or deployment of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons and the missiles that deliver them. The Parliament acting under the Constitution is not simply concerned with prohibiting such horrific features of our present world order. It is building the infrastructure for conversion: how to get from here to there. The World Peace Act of the Seventh Session of Parliament (WLA #13) set the parameters for a systematic and orderly conversion from the war system to a peace system. Individuals, businesses, university researchers, and government officials involved in any way in the weapons production and procurement process are systematically informed of the new world legislation and have measured grace periods within which they may desist from their illegal activities without penalty. Penalties are increased not only according to the severity of the crime (e.g., designing nuclear weapons or delivery systems, a criminal act if there ever was one) but also according to whether the criminal activity has persisted after the grace period. A number of scholars have pointed out that private terrorism is simply war by another name. It is war waged by the weak and relatively powerless as opposed to war financed and organized by nation-states (state terrorism) and their imperial military systems. The Provisional World Parliament, at its Second Session in New Delhi, India, enacted WLA #8, creating a World Commission on Terrorism. This commission is charged not only to invite cooperation from nations and NGOs in dealing with terrorism, it is also charged to address the fundamental causes of terrorism in terms of the perceptions of gross injustices, the feeling of voicelessness among marginalized peoples, and the perception that the current world political authorities are engaged in their own terrorist war against certain groups, religions, or cultures. The Parliament recognizes that we cannot create a decent world order with ever more war and violence, even if this is directed toward terrorists and their organizations. Only changing our institutional assumptions can change the world order in any meaningful ways. The peace system created by the Earth Constitution includes a multiplicity of elements working together to ensure that the system establishes enduring peace. First and foremost, we have seen, is the establishment of effective world democracy itself, in which people and nations from the entire planet participate in governing the planet and thereby institutionalizing the procedures for nonviolent and peaceful social change. Today’s sovereign nation-state system, with its militarism and national security apparatus, defeats authentic democracy in all nations. Authentic democracy can only develop in a demilitarized world recognizing universal rights, duties, freedoms, and obligations. Third, the Constitution sets up an effective and impartial World Judiciary with authority over all persons, including national leaders. This ensures peace from two directions: all national leaders can be indicted for violating the law (no more impunity as in today’s world) and a judiciary treating everyone fairly and equally under the law diminishes the feelings of resentment that now fuel much violence and war worldwide. The World Court system has eight benches designed to deal with the variety of cases that might endanger world peace. It has benches for human rights cases, for criminal cases dealing with individuals, corporations, or groups, for public cases dealing with conflict between government and corporations or other groups, and for international conflicts between nations. World peace through world law requires an effective judiciary to deal with all forms of conflict between individuals, groups, or nations. When people see impartial justice being done on a global scale, they will understand that a peace system has truly come into the world. Fourth, the Constitution creates the Earth Federation Enforcement System of the world police and world attorneys general to ensure a peaceful and nonviolent world order premised on justice and the effective enforcement of the laws against war and violence everywhere on Earth. The police will possess only weapons necessary to apprehend individuals (Article 10.1.5). All weapons of war are abolished even for the Earth Federation Government. Both Articles 2 and 10 specify that the Earth Federation will be non-military. Article 10 specifies that one of the basic functions of the enforcement system will be “conflict resolution” and states that “a basic condition for preventing outbreaks of violence, which the Enforcement System shall facilitate in every way possible, shall be to assure a fair hearing under nonviolent circumstances for any person or group having a grievance, and likewise to assure a fair opportunity for a just settlement of any grievance with due regard for the rights and welfare of all concerned.” This fundamental tenet of a peace system (institutionalized worldwide and operating as well through the World Judiciary and the World Ombudsmus) has been elaborated by the Provisional World Parliament in World Legislative Act 32 that creates a Department of Conflict Resolution within the Enforcement System in conformity with Article 10.2.8.5. This shows the transformed role of the police from protectors of ruling class property rights and oppressive national security regimes (now their chief functions within nation-states) to protector and friend of the citizens of Earth. The legislation specifies that the civil servants involved in the Department of Conflict Resolution will involve first and foremost existing groups, civic leaders, local organizations, and participation of the people in facilitating conflict resolution everywhere on Earth where people need these services. Officials will not be allowed to carry any weapons in this Department nor do any undercover work and, according to the legislation, they must be servants and facilitators of the people locally to solve and resolve their own problems. Nothing like this is found on a planetary scale in today’s militarized global war system. This is truly what a peace system for the Earth will look like. People are empowered to create peace by an Earth Federation whose mission is to serve the people of Earth through a world system founded on peace, prosperity, justice, freedom, and sustainability. The emerging Earth Federation is an integrated whole with all these basic functions integrated into a practical and effective system of democratic world government. Fifth, the Constitution creates another worldwide organization answering to the World Parliament that is a vital component of the world peace system: the World Ombudsmus. This organization, with offices everywhere within the Federation, will be devoted to protecting the human rights of the citizens of Earth (as specified in Articles 12 and 13) from violation by individuals, corporations, nations, or the World Government itself. The Earth Constitution recognizes socalled “third generation rights” of the right to peace and the right to a protected and decent environment. If people’s rights, freedoms, peaceful coexistence, and planetary environment are really protected, the causes of war will be largely eliminated. The Ombudsmus Constitutionally will have significant authority to act on behalf of the citizens of Earth to protect their many rights and freedoms identified by Articles 12 and 13. No nation or group will likely want to resort to violence when they see that their voices, dignity, and self-determination are respected and protected. Sixth, the Provisional World Parliament passed a World Education Act (WLA #26) at its eighth session in Lucknow, India in 2004. The Earth Federation government will promote high quality education everywhere and require all schools that are recipient of Earth Federation aid to include programs focusing on global issues, peace studies issues, study of the Earth Constitution, and study of the nature and responsibilities of good government within a global democracy. Education worldwide will promote peace, mutual tolerance, the founding principle of unity in diversity, and the dynamics of conflict resolution. Pedagogy will become a fundamental component in the world peace system. Education will be one central component of an integrated Earth Federation plan to empower all citizens of the Earth to think in terms of the principle of unity in diversity, of mutual respect and tolerance within the framework of effective global democracy, and an educated citizenry capable of global citizenship. The Parliament understands that peace will be the product of a global system with many components working together: from good leadership, to the content and attitude of the mass media, to the spirit and intent with which corporations operate, to the sense that people have of world citizenship, to the degree of fairness and prosperity apparent in the world, to the quality of worldwide education. Under the Earth Constitution and the Education Act of the Provisional World Parliament students will be encouraged to examine cultural forms that suppress other human beings, for example, through dress codes or other such cultural practices. Such a system cannot be entirely created a priori ahead of time. What can be provided ahead of time is a dynamic framework like the Earth Constitution that allows creativity and innovation in structuring a world peace system such as that shown by the Provisional World Parliament. Finally, these six elements in the world peace system set up by the Constitution are complemented and enlivened by the several other features specified in this conceptual model. If the world is converted to a prosperity system, a justice system, a freedom system, and a sustainability system, then the grounds for war and violence will have been substantially undercut. The Constitution creates a dynamic world system that includes a multiplicity of agencies and branches working together under common holistic principles directed toward these goals. As one thinker put it: “A diverse system with multiple pathways and redundancies is more stable and less vulnerable to external shock than a uniform system with little diversity” (Meadows, 2008: 3-4). All these factors deriving from the holistic paradigm of unity in diversity at the heart of the Constitution work together to create a truly new historical era for human civilization. A stable, diverse world peace system derives from the holistic structure of the Constitution itself. A Prosperity System – The New Democratic Economics The present global economic system, like the system of sovereign nation-states, has evolved out of European civilization since the Renaissance, slowly becoming the official doctrines concerning what is “natural” politically and economically. The so-called “natural” political organization of sovereign states was recognized at the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 and the so-called “natural” system of economic laws was described in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations that appeared in 1776. In both cases the imperial arrogance of Europe began the process of imposing these “natural” systems on the rest of humankind. For centuries we have seen the triumph of the nation-state system described above as a system of perpetual wars, violence, and chaos. Today, we also witness the triumph of the system of monopoly capitalism in the form of immense poverty, scarcity, and misery for at least 60% of the people on Earth simultaneous with unimaginable wealth and power for a mere 1% of the Earth’s population who own 40% of its wealth. Impartial observers have pointed out that these few use the chaos of the present system of sovereign nations to further consolidate their wealth and power. Only by democratizing the world system can we change this horrific condition and create a prosperity system for the Earth. Authentic democracy cannot function when the few control such wealth and power. This can only be transformed when government functions on behalf of the universal rights and dignity of all the people of Earth and no longer on behalf of the ruling classes of some 192 autonomous nation-states. The sovereign nation-state system integrated with monopoly capitalism leads to mayhem not only between countries but within countries. World Bank and IMF imposed economic “reforms” have led to economic disaster after disaster as “structural adjustment” destroys regional markets and opens countries up to predatory corporations and exploitative economic control from the imperial centers of capital. In The Globalization of Poverty: Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms (1999), economist Michael Chossudovsky chronicles the destruction of peoples worldwide under the onslaught of neocolonial greed run from the financial centers of capital. In many cases (such as the infamous genocide in Rwanda) massive human rights violations were the direct consequence of the destruction of the economy by predatory control from abroad. Desperate people whose economies have disintegrated are likely to turn to irrational and murderous violence. Many other studies, such as Catherine Caufield’s Masters of Illusion: The World Bank and the Poverty of Nations (1996) and Bruce Rich’s Mortgaging the Earth: The World Bank, Environmental Impoverishment, and the Crisis of Development (1994) have shown similar results. A main reason why the above mentioned series of events occurs and leads to breakdown of civil order and human rights violations is because the imperial centers of power define human rights in an entirely arbitrary and circumscribed manner. Human rights for them are limited to the traditional “political” rights. A poverty stricken society or government is supposed to respect freedom of speech and press, due process, voting procedures, etc. Starving people in the face of economic chaos caused by predatory economics from the imperial centers or the World Bank are supposed to respect one another’s political rights. The consistent policy of the U.S. has been to treat the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (that includes economic and social rights) as “merely symbolic,” having no authoritative force (Blum 2000). A major cause of the violations of political human rights today is because people worldwide are denied their economic and social rights: the right to a living wage, to healthcare, to social security, to adequate leisure time, to educational opportunities, etc. As we have seen, these are all features intrinsic to genuine democracy. When people are economically exploited and destitute, it is pointless to speak to them about respecting political rights. The Earth Constitution transforms this situation through the simple mechanism of presenting two bills of rights, Articles 12 and 13. Article 13 guarantees economic, social, and environmental rights to every citizen of the Federation creating a world where economic exploitation and chaos (due to a denial of economic and social rights) do not and cannot lead to a corresponding massive violation of political rights. The other side of this coin of human rights violations is the practice of imperial nations in training the military elites of Third World nations in what is euphemistically known as “counterinsurgency warfare.” The top secret school at Fort Benning, Georgia, in the United States (formerly known as the “School of the Americas”) is only one example of this systematic foreign policy run from the imperial centers of the world. The militaries of Third World countries are trained in warfare against their own populations, in murder, blackmail, disappearances, torture, and other means of repression (Hodge and Cooper 2004; Chomsky 1996: 29-34; Klein 2008). Human economic and political rights cannot be respected within the conceptual framework of war, for war is precisely the barbarous no-holds-barred attempt to destroy a perceived “enemy.” The real job of these military and paramilitary juntas is to protect the status quo by maintaining a “stable investment climate” for multinational corporations and their backers of the global economic status quo in the Pentagon and elsewhere. Protection of human rights is indeed “merely symbolic” under the system of sovereign nation-states, with its inherent domination of the weak by the strong and inherent system of global economic exploitation. Transforming the global paradigm to a non-military federation with an independent branch of government (the World Ombudsmus) serving to protect political, social, economic, and environmental rights worldwide will by and large solve the problem of human rights violations that has plagued the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (see Klein 2008). Article 13 of the Earth Constitution guarantees equal opportunity for employment with wages to assure human dignity, free and adequate public education for everyone, free and adequate public health services and medical care, protection of the natural environment, conservation of essential natural resources, adequate housing, nutritious food supplies, safe drinking water, and social security for all citizens to protect against accident and to assure dignity in old age. None of these elements in a universal prosperity system can be realized under the present global economic system based on private ownership of natural resources, especially land, and accumulation of wealth for the few at the expense of the many. Global prosperity can only be actualized through effective economic and political democracy on a planetary scale. Under genuine global democracy there can be no more economic imperialism of corporations or nations, no more sweatshops, no more economic exploitation, nor more externalization of costs to the environment and the public by businesses, and no more interference with planetary democracy through manipulations by the rich. As with the world peace system, a world prosperity system will be institutionalized and maintained by the World Parliament, the World Executive, the World Courts, the World Police, and the World Ombudsmus. For the first time in history, the Earth Constitution will establish the reasonable economic and political equality of all persons that are essential to effective democracy. In short, the Earth Constitution creates a democratic world commonwealth directed to the common good of humanity and future generations. As we have seen, it is non-military by law (Article 2) and democratic at every level, leaving economic and political self-determination to the nations insofar as these conform to universal human rights and world law (Article 14). Hence, the three major non-democratic sources of the deep violence of today’s world – sovereign nation-states, transnational corporations, and global banking cartels – are brought under the democratic control of the people of Earth through enforceable world law. All nations joining the Earth Federation must demilitarize in accordance with a coordinated and carefully orchestrated procedure. Under Article 17, half of the immense wealth saved by this process is then used to fund the newly formed Earth Federation, the other half kept by the nations to empower sustainable development. All transnational corporations are refranchised in the service of human welfare by the World Parliament. And global banking is mundialized – socially owned by the people of Earth – to be administered through people’s banks in localities worldwide. The Earth Federation now coordinates the international actions of demilitarized nation-states through world laws legislated by the World Parliament. Conflicts are settled through the world court system and violators are subject to arrest and prosecution by the World Attorneys General and the World Police. Similarly, transnational corporations are regulated through the democratic legislation of the World Parliament. Their charters will mandate that they operate in ways that promote the general economic and environmental welfare of humanity. Their expertise and organizational infrastructures can now be used to promote universal prosperity while protecting the environment, no longer for exploitation of the most poor and vulnerable for cheap labor and resources, and no longer externalizing costs into the environment through pollution and production exclusively for private profit. Our global monetary system today is 99% composed of privately created debt-money (Brown 2007). Because of this we live in a world of global scarcity and desperation requiring, as we have seen, massive military training for counterinsurgency warfare and massive military interventions by imperial nations designed to protect and promote the present world domination by a tiny corporate and financial elite. The Earth Constitution explicitly states that money must be created by the Federation as debt-free money addressed to the common good and planetary prosperity (Article 8.7.1.6 and 8.7.1.7). Therefore, and perhaps most importantly, the Earth Federation issues debt-free, interest-free money to promote the prosperity, free trade, and well-being of the people of Earth while protecting the planetary environment. Individuals, corporations, state and local governments may all take advantage of very low cost development loans and lines of credit that are not premised on exploitation of the debtors in the service of private profit (Article 4). In addition, primary created (dept-free) money will be judiciously spent for global infrastructure needs by the World Parliament. Money and banking are now used in the service of the common good of the people of Earth and in protection of the “ecological fabric of life” on our planet. The rich can no longer exploit poor people and nations through a system of loans and debt that has so far created such misery for the peoples and nations of Earth. Three key features of the corrupt oligarchy that now dominates the world economy are eliminated from the start. First, military Keynesianism (or militarism used to artificially pump up the economies of nations) is eliminated, since under Article 2 all militaries worldwide become illegal. The immense profitability and incentive for war based within the industrial-military complex is abolished. Second, legal corporate personhood is abolished. This legal deception has turned the once beneficial corporations of the world into monstrous, immortal super-humans, who use their billions of dollars and super-human legal rights to dominate the economy of our planet. Third, the Constitution also removes the ability of these corporate entities and the super-rich to influence politics, judges, and government officials through massive campaign contributions or other forms of monetary influence. Hence, the key steps necessary to founding a truly democratic and prosperous world order take place with the ratification of the Constitution: the hold of the industrial-military oligarchies now dominating the planet is broken along with the hold of their associates, the banking, corporate, and massive financial oligarchies, and the monetary system of the world is placed in the service of the people of Earth. The founding of world democracy under the Earth Constitution accomplishes all this from its very inception. We have seen that, during its twelve sessions to date, the Provisional World Parliament has passed some 47 World Legislative Acts designed to implement and develop the infrastructure of the Earth Federation under both the spirit and letter of the Constitution for the Federation of Earth. Many of these acts are directed toward elaborating a prosperity system for the Earth under the guidelines set forth in the Earth Constitution. These acts include the creation of a World Economic Development Organization (WLA 2), an Earth Financial Funding Corporation (WLA 7), a Provisional Office for World Revenue (WLA 17), a World Patents Act (WLA 21), a World Equity Act (WLA 22), a World Public Utilities Act (WLA 38), and an act for a World Guaranteed Annual Income (WLA 42). Together they are laying the economic foundations for a global market economy based on human rights, promotion of the common good, and a democratic world order that benefits everyone, not just the present 10 percent of humanity who today own 85 percent of all the global wealth (Brown, 2007: 271). As early as the first session of the Parliament in 1982, when WLA 2 was passed, creating the World Economic Development Organization (WEDO), the Parliament saw through the deception of debt-based money creation. Among the means of funding for WEDO is the directive to develop the financing potential and procedures of Earth Constitution to base finance on people’s potential productive capacity in both goods and services, rather than on past savings (defined under Article 8, Section 7, paragraphs 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, and 1.7). From this principle of funding under the Earth Constitution (that is, the creation of debt-free fiat money and credit based on the potential of those funded to produce goods and services) follows all the other principles of the Provisional World Parliament that are building the infrastructure for an equitable and just world order. With government-issued debt-free money, the Earth Federation will hire tens of millions of unemployed people in the Third World to restore the environment, replant the forests of the Earth, and restore the degraded agricultural lands of the Earth. This massive effort is absolutely necessary if we are to deal effectively with global warming. The Constitution creates a voluntary, nonmilitary World Service Corps (Article 4.36) that will employ many millions from poor countries and bring cash into communities worldwide, thereby revitalizing local economies. The Earth Federation will have a common currency valued the same everywhere, ending speculation in currencies and the domination of “hard” over “soft” currencies. It will institute the principle of “equal pay for equal work,” without gender or other discrimination, ending the exporting of production to low-wage areas of the world in order to maximize the rate of exploitation and profit. It will encourage in numerous ways worker investment and cooperative management in the firms within which they often spend their working lives. It will distribute the work burden among the working population more equitably and empower people at the grass roots level worldwide through such democratic innovations as microloans, infrastructure development, education, and healthcare. The first premise of the Equity Act (WLA #22) of the Eighth Session of the Provisional World Parliament was to end the geometric differences in buying power between nations by equalizing wages done for equally productive work. The Act also set a standard for the Earth Currency, the universal currency of the Earth Federation that will not be subject to manipulation and speculation as is the present chaos of national currencies. The currency is valued in terms of the dual criteria of a basket of universal and necessary commodities and one hour of productive work. The introduction of the Earth Currency so defined will alone transform the global economic system in the direction of stability, equity, and justice. The Manifesto of the Earth Federation explains at some length the various economic measures that can easily transform the present system of domination and exploitation into one of universal prosperity. There is no mystery about how wealth is created through a combination of land (natural resources), capital, and productive labor (J.W. Smith 2010). The real question is why two thirds of the world remains in poverty when we know so much about wealth creation. The simple economic and social measures enacted to date by the Provisional World Parliament are the foundation of a world system of universal prosperity. Together, they simply place economics on the foundation of planetary democracy. The Parliament also passed WLA #18, creating a Provisional Office of World Revenue to handle financial matters of the Emerging Earth Federation until the first operative stage of world government is activated. In order to end the unjust and exploitative use of patents and intellectual property rights that now allows First World corporations to control the wealthproducing process and the most advanced technologies in their own interest worldwide, the Parliament passed WLA #21, the World Patents Act, activating an office that supervises world patents and, with small changes in the current system (as explained in the Manifesto), will promote technology transfer and use of creative, innovative ideas for development throughout the world. WLA #23, the Global Accounting & Auditing Standards Act, will standardize accounting worldwide according to current internationally accepted standards and help prevent corporate theft, manipulating of books, hoarding in off-shore bank accounts, and other practices that currently bedevil the world’s economy and interfere with the development of general prosperity. Again, we see that changing the assumptions from the current ones of fragmentation and division to those based on the principle of unity in diversity can dramatically alter the deleterious consequences of current institutional arrangements. In short, the economic principles explicit within the Earth Constitution and used by the Provisional World Parliament provide a genuine “New Deal” for the people of Earth. The tens of millions hired to restore the environment will have money to exchange in their local economies. In conjunction with interest-free loans or grants for building infrastructure, sanitation systems, education, healthcare, and many private and public sustainable new enterprises, local economies will “take off” in that dynamic circulation of money within communities that economists speak of as economic health. Once the militarized nation-state is removed (today pouring more than one trillion U.S. dollars per year down the toilet of militarism) along with gigantic corporate and banking institutions dedicated to extracting private profit from localities into foreign banks of the rich, economic well-being will not be difficult to achieve. The Constitution guarantees everyone on Earth a living wage entirely sufficient to live with dignity and freedom (under Article 13). It ensures sanitation systems, essential resources, and educational systems for everyone. It provides every person on Earth with free health care, free education, and ample insurance in case of accident or old age. Provisional world legislation enacted by the Provisional World Parliament under the authority of Article 19 of the Constitution provides every person over age 18 with a guaranteed annual income sufficient to eliminate extreme poverty and starvation from the Earth (WLA 42). Free quality education is essential to economic health, and such worldwide education will essentially stop the brain drain in which talented and educated persons from poor countries move to first-world jobs and salaries. Reasonable laws will also regulate intellectual property rights (IPRs) thereby disseminating inexpensive technological innovations equitably throughout the world, activating sustainable and efficient economies everywhere (see the Manifesto of the Earth Federation). These many elements work together as part of an integrated prosperity system under the Earth Constitution: money creation, banking, intellectual property rights, education, technology transfer, a World Service Corps, equal pay for equal work, a global living wage, and protection of economic and social rights all working together to undergird a genuine prosperity system for the Earth. The world order can be fairly easily transformed into one of planetary peace with justice and prosperity. The present world system of scarcity and domination is a result of the principle inherent in money created as public debt to private financial elites and on a global system of maximizing private profit at the expense of the common good of the people of Earth and our planetary environment. Perhaps the most fundamental secret lies in “democratic money”: money issued debt-free in the name of the productive capacity of the citizens of Earth to produce goods and services. These principles cannot work, we have seen, unless we take this “all” seriously and universalize democracy to every person on Earth. This universalization process is the fundamental imperative of our time. Yet there is a concomitant aspect of our moral obligation today that requires us to abjure violence, war, and military service altogether and create a world order premised on substantive justice and fairness for all peoples. As an integrated whole, the world peace system and the world prosperity system created by the Constitution will necessarily also be a world justice system. A Justice System Since the time of Aristotle, thinkers have distinguished two dimensions of justice: distributive justice that considers how the resources of society can best be distributed, taking into consideration both the common good of society and the principle that equal rewards should follow equal accomplishments, and corrective justice in which society sets up a system of trials, judgments, and punishments for those who break the laws or to settle civil disputes. Historically the concept of justice has also been developed as the moral idea of fairness: the idea of treating individuals or peoples fairly or equitably. The Earth Constitution and the Provisional World Parliament have extensively developed all these aspects of justice. The same integrated set of governmental branches integral to the peace system and the prosperity system work to operate the justice system under the Constitution. With the help of many departments gathering data on world economic and social conditions, the World Parliament of some 1500 lawmakers representing all peoples, nations, and the common good of humanity studies the needs of the people of Earth and makes laws directed toward peace, universal prosperity, justice, freedom, and sustainability. All persons as individuals are held responsible to these laws. The World Police and Attorneys General identify, indict, and apprehend suspects accused of violating world laws. We have seen that the police have only such weapons that are necessary to apprehend individuals. The requirement that police protect innocent bystanders is also emphasized, as is the humane and dignified treatment of those who are arrested and held for a fair and impartial trial (Article 12.13 and 12.14). The professional and highly qualified world judiciary within the Earth Federation Civil Service framework conducts impartial trials of those accused, and the World Ombudsmus carefully watches to see that human rights are protected throughout the process. Under this system of correctional justice, no longer will the law and punishment be directed primarily toward the poor, with the overwhelming majority of those incarcerated coming from poor and disadvantaged background and subject to the kinds of laws and profiling that in effect punish the poor for being poor. Developing the spirit and intent of the Constitution with regard to correctional justice, the Provisional World Parliament has articulated the kinds of laws and corresponding punishments that will be fundamental to the justice system of the Earth Federation. It has worked out a system of seven classes of felonies, with corresponding punishments for conviction depending on the seriousness of the offense. (The World Penal Code is elaborated in detail in WLA # 19.) Those apprehended and tried under the Earth Federation will no longer be the poor but all persons who violate the laws regarding peace, general prosperity, justice, freedom, and sustainability. For example, the very first world legislative act passed by the Parliament at its first session in 1982 in Brighton, England, prohibits all weapons of mass destruction and criminalizes involvement with such weapons. Under provisional world law, design, research, or testing such weapons is a class six felony, buying them a class six felony, selling a class five felony, transport, deployment, or installing a class one felony, and production, manufacture, or fabricating a class one felony. Similarly the World Peace Act (WLA #13) passed in 2003 at the Sixth Session of the Parliament in Bangkok, Thailand, proscribes in greater detail activities related to WMDs or prohibited military activity such as finance, brokerage, lending, design of components, military software programming, impeding enforcement against proscribed military-related activities, disrupting communications, designing machine viruses, conscription, bids for war damage, etc. The act provides for permits to be issued to de-mine, decontaminate, disassemble, or convert to peaceful uses military hardware or munitions plants. WLA #15, Statute of the World Court of Human Rights, assigns procedures and penalties for the violation of human rights as does WLA #20 establishing the protocols for an Earth Federation World Court Bench for Criminal Cases. From these examples it should be clear that those indicted, tried, and convicted will be the real criminals of the world for the first time in human history. No longer will the poor be targeted, but the violators of peace, human rights, and the integrity of our environment. The justice system will operate under a truly new paradigm, protecting the rights of those accused who must be apprehended with a minimum use of force. Those accused may include heads of nations, CEOs of multinational corporations, bankers illegally manipulating the monetary system, military generals, or wealthy and powerful persons. All individuals will be equally subject to the law and the laws prohibit many of the criminal activities that are today accepted as normal under the fragmented paradigm of nation-state sovereignty and monopoly capitalism. The rich and powerful will be for the first time in history equally subject to the law and the system of correctional justice along with everyone else. The system of distributive justice under the Earth Constitution and Provisional World Parliament is equally transformative of the present disastrous world order. We have seen that Article 13 of the Earth Constitution guarantees equal opportunity for employment with wages sufficient to assure human dignity, free and adequate public education for everyone, free and adequate public health services and medical care, protection of the natural environment, conservation of essential natural resources, adequate housing, nutritious food supplies and safe drinking water, and social security for all citizens to protect against accident and assure dignity in old age. Distributive justice first and foremost recognizes universal human dignity and the right of every person to the livable income necessary to be free from extreme misery and deprivation. Following the Earth Constitution, the Global Equity Act mandates the World Parliament to set a living wage for the world that assures this human dignity. Based on this living wage (entirely sufficient for a good life), the act specifies the maximum wage (inclusive of investment income) as four times the living wage. (This would make those at the higher levels very well off indeed. Our planet is very rich in resources, and there is no legitimate reason why everyone cannot be well off.) As Mahatma Gandhi predicts: no more will “the few ride on the backs of the millions.” Profits for businesses beyond what is required for overhead, wages, materials, and production must be either donated to any public or private non-profit organizations or poured back into the business in a sustainable manner. Again following the Constitution (which specifies “better distribution of the workload of humanity”) the act requires Parliament to regularly recalculate what constitutes full time work with a view to a just work week for all persons. It specifies that people receive “equal pay for equal work,” taking into account individual merit, seniority, and special talents. As we have seen, global banking is socially owned under the Earth Federation, establishing a system that makes funding available to all who have a creative, sustainable, and productive project. The resulting market system will produce not only near universal prosperity, as described above, but will produce genuine economic justice for the first time in history. Creative new ways to reward innovation, hard work, and special talents will be implemented by the World Parliament and communities worldwide to replace the destructive notion that the only incentives people require involve evermore riches even beyond what normal persons could reasonably use for a life of comfort and luxury. People will look to advancement, public awards, community appreciation, and other forms of recognition rather than simply monetary gain. These and similar principles of distributive justice will create a decent world order for the majority of persons on the Earth. The system of correctional justice will complement the system of distributive justice. The vast majority of people will see for themselves that things are truly fair and just in the moral sense. It should be clear that the justice system also requires the peace system and the prosperity system as we have described them. This equitable system of justice will also empower the freedom system which depends on, and derives from, a just world framework. A Freedom System Freedom, the protection of individual human rights premised on the autonomy and dignity of the individual person, is a multi-dimensional concept that lies at the very heart of democracy. We have seen the many ways in which the several branches of the Earth Federation government work together to ensure peace, prosperity, and justice. The same is true of freedom. The Earth Federation system as a whole ensures and undergirds freedom through dozens of features working together. Article 12 of the Earth Constitution specifies 18 items articulating a series of political rights and freedoms. It even includes seven items that begin with the word “freedom” – “freedom of thought and conscience, speech, press, writing, etc.; freedom of assembly, association, etc.; freedom to vote and campaign; freedom of religion or no religion; freedom for political beliefs or no political beliefs; and freedom for investigation, research, and reporting. Article 13 also includes five items that begin with the words “free” or “freedom” – freedom of choice in work or profession; free public education and equal opportunities; free public health services and medical care; freedom of self-determination for dissenters or minorities; freedom for change of residence anywhere on Earth. The Earth Constitution addresses multiple dimensions of human freedom (see Martin 2010). Article 12 calls all the rights that it specifies “inalienable” and states that “it shall be mandatory for the World Parliament, the World Executive, and all organs and agencies of the World Government to honor, implement, and enforce these rights. All persons whose rights have been violated “have full recourse through the World Ombudsmus, the Enforcement System, and the World Courts.” Ultimately, however, freedom is most fundamentally assured through the establishment of a global community under the Earth Constitution dedicated to human development and the actualization of human potential. No longer will people be enslaved to multinational corporations, banking cartels, or national security state domination. These impediments will be brought into line by the global founded community of rights and responsibilities deriving from legislation empowering individuals from the ground up. Aware that the greatest danger to freedom historically has been government itself, especially the Executive Branch of government in control of police and military, the framers of the Constitution separated the police from the Executive branch, as we have seen, and abolished the military altogether. The Executive Branch of the Earth Federation that administers the day to day operations of many government agencies is run by a presidium of five persons, one from each continental division of the planet. The Executive has no power to declare a state of emergency and suspend the Constitution, and it has no power to refuse to spend the budget allocated to it by the World Parliament (Article 6.6). The World Police and Attorneys General, we have seen, are a separate agency responsible directly to Parliament (representing the people of Earth). The police possess only weapons necessary to apprehend individuals and, like all government officials, can be removed for cause. The World Ombudsmus, is an independent agency of government responsible to the World Parliament that can investigate and indict the police for violations of human rights. The Constitution provides a comprehensive system of checks and balances directed toward protecting freedom and democracy. Article 13 of the Earth Constitution presents an additional 19 items articulating a series of human rights that are often referred to as “second generation rights” and “third generation rights.” The rights elaborated in Article 12 constitute the traditional political freedoms deriving from the 18th century democratic revolutions: freedom of speech, assembly, press, religion, etc. The conception of second generation rights developed through the early 20th century and were famously expressed, for example, in the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. These include the rights to decent wages, healthcare, social security, education, etc. They are predicated on the understanding that a supportive social framework is a necessary foundation for personal freedom and dignity. These are elaborated in Article 13 of the Earth Constitution. However, the Constitution understands that even these are insufficient for true freedom. The positive fullness of freedom can only be realized on Earth when people are also guaranteed the “third generation” rights to world peace and protection of the global environment. The Constitution takes freedom to a higher level than any previous historical form. We have seen that the founding principle of the Earth Constitution is unity in diversity, a principle that the Federation will promote throughout the government as well as in media, education, and law. The second “broad function” of the Earth Federation specified in Article 1 of the Constitution states that it must “protect universal human rights, including life, liberty, security, democracy, and equal opportunities in life.” The entire system of the Constitution is built around this and the other five broad functions specified in Article 1, the first of which (Article 1.1) is world peace, the second of which (1.2) is freedom and the protection of human rights, and the fifth of which is “to protect the environment and the ecological fabric of life.” The Constitution is specifically designed to enhance human flourishing and freedom throughout its many dimensions. Major impediments to human freedom and flourishing endemic to the present world chaos are removed and prevented from recurring by the integrated functions of the Earth Federation under the Constitution. For example, there will be no more national security state, world militarism, authoritarian regimes, rogue militarized terror groups, corporate violations of the dignity of employees, extremes of poverty and deprivation, lack of literacy and education, or lack of adequate health care. Scholars sometimes speak of the defense of first generation political rights as “negative freedom” – the removal of impediments to individual self-determination. However, the Constitution will also enhance the “positive freedom” of actualization within an empowering community premised on unity in diversity. The supporting matrix of a community of rights and responsibilities, premised as well on second and third generation rights, provides the framework for the creative actualization of our individual and collective human potential. The protection of “life, security, and equal opportunities” on Earth, institutionalized through a global community of freedom (as specified in Article 1) will vastly empower the people of Earth. Freedom will no longer merely be a “freedom from” but will become the positive fullness of “freedom for.” The Earth Constitution establishes a dynamic and powerful freedom system. A Sustainability System Environmental destruction (like war, poverty, injustice, and denial of freedom) is a direct consequence of our present global political and economic system. If companies have to consider the bottom line in a competitive situation where they must make a certain margin of profit or go out of business, then the incentive to externalize costs into the air, water, and soil to the detriment of the planetary ecosystem and future generations is tremendous. Genuine sustainability can only be achieved when the common good and the welfare of future generations are factored into the economic equation. Sustainability means that the resources taken from the Earth are either replaced fully (for example, lumber can be replaced though replanting forests) or used sparingly until ways can be found to substitute artificial resources for essential natural resources (Daly 1996). The Earth Constitution contains dozens of references to “the environment” and the “ecology” of our planet, indicating that a major premise of the Earth Federation will be environmental sustainability. The Constitution mundializes those natural resources that are vital to the well being of humanity and that are limited in quantity or non-renewable (Article 4). Hence, they are taken out of the hands of giant corporate monopolies who today exploit them for the private profit of a few at the expense of most of humanity and future generations. The Provisional World Parliament has taken steps to enable this Constitutional mandate, for example, by passing the Water Act at its Eight Session. Multinational corporations have bought up water rights in India and elsewhere and used their “right to private property” to blackmail ordinary citizens who need water (see Shiva, Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit, 2002). In his book When Corporations Rule the World (1995), former Harvard Business School faculty member, David Korten, chronicles the devastation of our natural resources as well as the environment by multinational corporations based in the imperial centers of capital. Natural resources are essential for human well-being and need to be carefully conserved for the well-being of all the Earth’s citizens as well as future generations. The Provisional World Parliament created the World Oceans and Seabeds Authority to supervise the vast riches of the oceans for the welfare of humanity, oceans now being exploited by predatory nation-states, and private corporations without any democratic governmental supervision. With the vast power placed in human hands by engines, electricity, and specialized machines, the ecosystems of the Earth began to be destroyed at a rate far beyond the ability of nature to heal and repair damages caused by human interference. The technological revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries continued into the electronic and digital revolutions of the 20th and 21st centuries placing such power in human hands that human activity in its present forms may well destroy the lifesupport systems of the entire planet and collapse the fabric of life to the point where higher forms of life can no longer survive upon the Earth. The forests of the world, for example, provide the planetary ecosystem with much of the oxygen that supports all aerobic forms of life. They bind carbon dioxide that is exhaled by most living creatures and produced by all forms of combustion. They moderate the climate, provide habitats for most of the vast bio-diversity of the Earth, and draw fresh water from the ocean coasts into the interior of continents. Yet the forests of the Earth are disappearing at the rate of an area one half the size of California each year. In addition to forests, agricultural soils of the Earth are rapidly disappearing. Unsustainable agricultural practices are rapidly depleting topsoils of the planet to the point where vast areas have become unsuitable for agriculture and have been converted to grazing lands. Yet overgrazing worldwide is turning even these areas on every continent into desert wasteland, places that cannot be used to support most life. Runoff from the use of pesticides is poisoning water supplies and ecosystems. Billions of tons of topsoil are lost each year to erosion because of these unsustainable agricultural practices. Regarding fresh water, the over-pumping of aquifers and overuse of water is dropping water tables worldwide, causing water crises and shortages in many areas of the world. The cities of the world, in addition, are becoming poisoners of the planet’s fresh air supplies. Hundreds of millions of gasoline and internal combustion engines and other sources of air pollution spew pollutants into the air. Yet the atmosphere of the Earth is necessary to support all higher forms of life and is at the heart of the ecosystem of our planet. These cities also produce immense amounts of polluted water, garbage, and trash wastes that are filling and poisoning countrysides, rivers, and oceans worldwide. At the same time, the human population continues to grow at the rate of 80 million new persons per year, every person of whom requires basic resources, fresh water, clean air, and agricultural and forest resources to support them throughout their life-spans, and every one of whom produces waste materials that are returned to the environment (Caldicott 1992; Renner 1996; Daly 1996; Speth 2004). The principle of Gaia, the idea that the entire Earth (as it has evolved over its 4.6 billion year existence) forms an encompassing ecosystem, is only slowly becoming understood by large numbers of people. This awareness grows as planetary phenomena signaling the alteration of the entire global ecosystem become widely known. Phenomena such as global warming, melting of the polar ice caps, depletion of the ozone layer, collapsing of entire ocean fisheries, rapid extinction of species on a daily basis, increased planetary disasters and superstorms, and possible inversions of global ocean currents and weather patterns are well understood (Lovelock 1991). Thoughtful human beings today have understood that human life is inseparable from the web of life on Earth. They have understood that we must alter our economic, social, and political practices rapidly to bring human civilization into harmony with the planetary web of life that sustains us. They understand that all development must be sustainable, that it must support human life in the present in ways that do not diminish the life-prospects of future generations. Today, virtually all societies and all nations are living at the expense of future generations, both of humans and other species (Caldicott 1992; Daly 1996; Speth 2004). Actualization of our life-prospects diminishes their life-prospects. At the current rate of destruction, it is even possible that we will reduce their life-prospects to zero. The Earth Constitution and the work of the Provisional World Parliament have been dedicated to addressing these horrific consequences of the present world disorder. This premise of our global, democratically conceived, well-being is behind the Parliament’s passage of the World Hydrogen Energy Authority (WLA #10) to spearhead research and conversion to renewable clean energy for the world, the Hydrocarbon Resource Act (WLA #16) to conserve, regulate on behalf of a clean environment, and utilize democratically the world’s remaining hydrocarbon resources, and the Water Act (WLA #30) that recognizes clean water as a right of all persons and takes steps to protect the Earth’s diminishing water resources, restore sources of fresh water to the Earth, and democratically apportion these resources to all persons on Earth. Recognizing not only that the global environment is threatened but that it is already seriously damaged (as the Manifesto of the Earth Federation demonstrates at length), the Provisional World Parliament at its Second Session adopted WLA #6 creating the Emergency Earth Rescue Administration (EERA). The task of the EERA is to spearhead the gigantic task of restoring the environment of the Earth once the first operative stage of world government under the Constitution has been activated. Millions of trees will need to be planted, major initiatives will be needed to restore diminished agricultural lands, and emergency efforts will be required to reclaim sources and conditions for fresh water for the peoples of Earth. The Parliament also passed WLA #9 creating, within the World Administration of the Constitution, a Global Ministry on the Environment to facilitate conversion to sustainability and staff the EERA. Such momentous tasks, absolutely necessary for a decent future for the Earth, can never be accomplished by the fragmented system of nation-states or the U.N. The U.N., which is a mere confederation of sovereign nation-states, has held three global conferences on the destruction of our planetary environment: in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992, Johannesburg, South Africa in 2002, and Copenhagen, Denmark in 2009. There is common agreement that these were all complete failures to deal with our environmental crises. The Provisional World Parliament has created a network of practical, pragmatic, and immediately necessary laws and agencies to deal with the immense problems of global environmental restoration and conversion to sustainability. As we have seen, the very first article of the Earth Constitution specifies that the fifth broad function of the Earth Federation will be “to protect the environment and the ecological fabric of life from all sources of damage, and to control technological innovations whose effects transcend national boundaries, for the purpose of keeping Earth a safe, healthy and happy home for humanity.” Both the Constitution and the Parliament are dedicated to creating a world system adequate to this task. The Constitution explicitly requires the government of the Earth Federation to protect the ecological fabric of life on Earth, that is, to respect the Gaia principle with all its ramifications. Not only does the Constitution make this a primary mandate of the Earth Federation, but in its second bill of rights (Article 13) makes respect for the Gaia principle a right of the people of Earth themselves and a “directive principle for the world government” to actualize this right. Article 13, numbers 9, 10, and 11 read as follows. People have a right to “protection of the natural environment which is the common heritage of humanity against pollution, ecological disruption or damage which could imperil life or lower the quality of life” (9). “Conservation of those natural resources of Earth which are limited so that present and future generations may continue to enjoy life on planet Earth” (10), and “assurance for everyone of adequate housing, of adequate and nutritious food supplies, of safe and adequate water supplies, of pure air with protection of oxygen supplies and the ozone layer, and, in general, for the continuance of an environment which can sustain healthy living for all” (11). Clearly, here again, the Constitution explicitly recognizes the need for human economic, political, and social institutions to conform to the Gaia principle (which is the principle of sustainability) protecting the whole of the planetary environment for future generations. The key to a sustainable civilization is not only to promote education concerning the principles of natural ecology. This effort alone is insufficient and will ultimately fail unless the anti-ecological institutions of the modern world, described above, are also transformed according to the scientific principles of natural ecology. For this to happen, the entire human community must be joined together through the dynamic of genuine unity in diversity that constitutes a complementary principle of social ecology in human life uniting all people under non-military democratic world government. Only thus can the Gaia principle become a guiding principle for all human political, economic, and social processes. These principles of social ecology are inseparable from the principles of natural ecology. It is necessary to do for humanity what the natural Gaia principle does for nature. The Constitution for the Federation of the Earth joins the two together to create a truly ecological and sustainable world order. Conclusion The Constitution and its elaboration through the work of the Provisional World Parliament provide the necessary conditions for a peaceful, prosperous, and sustainable world system. Throughout our model, however, we have assumed the creative input of human beings with integrity, vision, and creative energy who must enliven the system outlined by the Constitution and the Parliament. The Earth Federation needs Parliamentarians, Judges, Administrators, Police, and Ombudsmen of who are capable of cooperatively working as part of an open ended, democratic learning community informed by the dynamics of systems thinking. We need dedicated people who are willing to begin living from this moment forward according to the ethical and legal principles embodied in the Earth Constitution. Such persons will serve as the sufficient condition for actualizing the unity in diversity of this world system. Such persons in our present historical situation must also serve as the sufficient condition for the ratification and implementation of the Constitution. The necessary features of a holistic world system can be described in print. The sufficient conditions for its actualization depend on the love, aspirations, conscience, and intelligence of actual human beings. Within the Earth Federation Movement today, citizens all around the world are actualizing this vision and living according to the Earth Constitution, no longer according to the illegitimate and immoral system of warring nation-states. Study of the Constitution for the Federation of Earth repays the student richly. For a model of a future world order emerges that not only transforms the fragmented and outdated paradigms of the present world disorder but shows itself to be entirely practical and imminently possible under the guidelines provided by Articles 17 and 19. The conceptual model created here by the Provisional World Parliament at its 12th session in Kolkata, India in 2010 presents only the highlights of the integrated planetary system initiated by the Earth Constitution and the Provisional World Parliament. We hope that the parameters of this model that we have sketched in this document may inspire people to ever more intensive study of the Earth Constitution and modeling of the transformed world system that it engenders. As people begin to understand the vision, there is tremendous urgency that they also act on that vision with creativity, integrity, and energy. The Constitution must be ratified in a founding ratification convention according to the Protocols already developed by the Provisional World Parliament. It converts the presently failed world system to peace, prosperity, justice, freedom, and sustainability. It replaces the U.N. Charter with real democratic government keeping the valuable agencies of the U.N. as ministries of the Earth Federation. Nothing less than the fate of humanity and our precious planet Earth are at stake. We invite your participation. We invite you to a life of “civil obedience.

The Preamble to the Earth Constitution is an important statement in itself. In a mere 246 words, this Preamble crystallizes our situation in the modern world and lays out the justification for a nonviolent world revolution through world law. The Preamble lays out the “ideals” that are embodied in the Earth Constitution in a practical and entirely realizable way. It is a summary statement of why a new era is absolutely necessary and why the Constitution must be immediately ratified. Let us examine it clause by clause.

Realizing that Humanity today has come to a turning point in history and that we are on the threshold of an new world order which promises to usher in an era of peace, prosperity, justice and harmony….

The Preamble embodies the clear awareness that a new world order is entirely possible simply by eliminating the impediments to civilization that are today creating a nightmare for the peoples of Earth – the so-called system of “sovereign” nation-states and the system of global monopoly capitalism.

              We have reached the point in human history, with our huge repository of scientific knowledge and advanced technology, where we face a very realistic choice between utopia and dystopia, between creating a decent world order for all persons and other living creatures or using science and technology to create a totalitarian society of worldwide surveillance, manipulation, and oppression of the majority for the benefit of a few. The latter course will also mean the continued destruction of our planetary biosphere and the likely demise of even the oppressors. At present we are denying our utopian possibility and laying the foundations for dystopia.

There are many signs in poetry, literature, philosophy, and science that ours is a “threshold” age. The first photos of the Earth from space from the early spaceships of the 1960s immediately began to transform human consciousness. From these recent beginnings, this new consciousness has spread rapidly throughout the planet that we are one species living on this tiny, beautiful spaceship of a planet. Today, those photos of the planet from space are everywhere. We are truly on the threshold of an age when the entire planet will unite to solve our common problems and global crises.

Aware of the interdependence of people, nations and all life….

This is the very principle denied by the nation-state system and the fragmented institutions of the modern world that have dominated the Earth from the Renaissance to the twenty-first century. The system of autonomous nation-states, recognizing no enforceable law above themselves and recognizing only voluntary “treaties” as their guide for international conduct, is the antithesis of this principle of interdependence. Yet this principle has been demonstrated by every modern science, from biology to physics to ecology to sociology (Harris 2000). This is the foundational statement for a new paradigm: from hierarchical, militarized fragmentation and mutual destruction to worldwide democratic interdependence and cooperation.

The photos of the Earth from space help make this interdependence clear. No artificial political boundaries appear, only a tiny blue-green home to millions of species and nearly seven billion human beings who are only one of these species. Economic and cultural “globalization” has transformed the world in a very short time. Yet our antiquated system of “sovereign” nation-states fractures our world into autonomous units and defeats the globalization of that which is the greatest legacy of modernity: democracy itself. Without global democracy and the worldwide rule of enforceable law, our interdependence and the other aspects of globalization become destructive and dangerous.

Aware that man’s abuse of science and technology has brought Humanity to the brink of disaster through the production of horrendous weaponry of mass destruction and to the brink of ecological and social catastrophe….

The largest scientific effort in history and throughout the twentieth century has been directed toward the creation of ever more hideous means of destroying people and property, as well as ever-more invasive means of invasion of privacy and spying on helpless populations. Not only “weapons of mass destruction,” but automated, computerized, and mechanized weapons systems of every sort have created a nightmare for the people of Earth. We have witnessed killer pilotless airplane drones, stealth bombers, cruise missiles, laser-guided depleted uranium munitions, and the on-going militarization of space. These same vast resources, more than a trillion U.S. dollars per year throughout the last decades of the twentieth century, could have been used to prevent the ecological catastrophe of global warming now engulfing the Earth, a catastrophe that includes vast extinctions of species, desertification of much of the Earth’s agricultural land, the flooding of the coastlines of the planet, and ever more devastating super-storms and weather disruptions.

Those who wrote the Earth Constitution and those now working for its ratification are directly aware of this insanity and the need to end it now. Weapons of mass destruction carried by intercontinental missiles can circle the globe in twenty minutes, bringing holocaust to entire nations in seconds. The United States is now working on placing such weapons in space. Science and technology, which could be our greatest benefit for creating a decent world order for everyone, including a healthy environment, instead are used to bring us ever closer to the brink of destruction.

Aware that the traditional concept of security through military defense is a total illusion both for the present and for the future….

This truth is only now beginning to sink into the peoples of Earth even though it has been self-evident to thoughtful persons since the development of nuclear weapons at the close of World War Two. The intellectual and moral leaders who expressed this truth at that time, and called for the creation of democratic world government, were ignored. This group included such eminent scientists and intellectuals as Mortimer Adler, Albert Camus, Norman Cousins, Walter Cronkite, Garry Davis, William O. Douglas, Albert Einstein, Robert Muller, and U-Thant (see Tetalman and Belitsos, 2005). Today we reap the whirlwind, the consequences of our arrogant ignorance and refusal to listen as terrorist attacks occur daily worldwide, as superpowers invade and destroy other nations at will, and as global poverty and environmental destruction grow out of control.

Aware of the misery and conflicts caused by ever increasing disparity between rich and poor….

Decade after decade the statistics on this disparity have gotten worse. The world-system of global monopoly capitalism controlled by the imperial nation-states inevitably leads to this result. The promise of “development” through World Bank and IMF loans is now more and more seen for the lie that it truly is (Martin 2005a, chap. 13). It only makes sense that if the vast scientific research and resources of humanity are focused on war and destruction there cannot be the kind of sustainable, equitable development required to end poverty and protect the environment. It only makes sense that if vast banking, corporate, and nation-state monopolies control trade in the interests of their own profits and ascendency, that this disparity will endlessly grow.

Yet the vast propaganda resources of the dominant media and the imperial governments have managed to successfully perpetuate this lie throughout the twentieth century. It is time we based our world order on gigantic truth, not lies. Those who ratify the Constitution know that poverty is not a requirement of the human condition but a social and moral blight that can be readily eliminated if there is a democratic world government really concerned for the common good.

Conscious of our obligation to posterity to save Humanity from imminent and total annihilation….

The ease with which chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction can be created, the growing collapse of the planetary environment, the growing despair of the more than twenty percent of humanity engulfed in lethal “absolute” poverty, the exploding world population, the continuing militarism and deployment of nuclear weapons are dystopian features of the current world system of which all thoughtful persons cannot help be conscious. To honestly face the continuing and impending disasters of the twenty-first century is not alarmism or extremism. It is plain, practical common sense. Unless we act now, there can be no decent future for the Earth or for our children.

Conscious that Humanity is One despite the existence of diverse nations, races, creeds, ideologies and cultures and that the principle of unity in diversity is the basis for a new age when war shall be outlawed and peace prevail; when the earth’s total resources shall be equitably used for human welfare; and when basic human rights and responsibilities shall be shared by all without discrimination….

Once again the Preamble expresses the principle of unity in diversity that is at the heart of all viable democracy and is the basic truth of nature, the universe, and society expressed by every contemporary science. Absolute, sovereign nation-states and monopoly capitalism are both systems of fragmentation and division that deny the truth of this principle. The only viable unity on Earth is that of all the world’s people, for sovereignty resides with the people of Earth and nowhere else. By embracing this unity, we make possible the real commitment to diversity, for only the collective democratic force of the whole can protect the freedom and individuality of all the diverse parts. We will see this principle embodied over and over in the Earth Constitution as we examine it below.

In the “new age” ushered in by the Earth Constitution, “war shall be outlawed and peace prevail.”  The peace that will prevail is not simply the absence of war, which scholars refer to as “negative peace.” For the Constitution, as its Preamble implies, ushers in a paradigm shift for the peoples of Earth: a new set of assumptions and new way of looking at our human and planetary situation.  This includes the foundational understanding of “unity in diversity” described above. Deriving from this shift to unity in diversity, the concept of peace mentioned here includes what scholars have termed “positive peace,” a peace established so that war is ended altogether and the relations among nations and peoples becomes one of justice, fairness, mutual respect, and affirmation of the value of diversity within the unity of the human project.

This concept of positive peace can be understood in detail through study of the Earth Constitution itself. One understands that the many departments, agencies, and democratic procedures of the Earth Federation government will work together synergistically to promote social, cultural, economic, and political harmony among the peoples of Earth.  The enabling legislation passed at various sessions of the Provisional World Parliament bears this out as well. 

The World Supreme Court system will establish a worldwide regime of fairness and administration of justice. The World Administration will establish a worldwide educational system teaching unity in diversity, democratic decision making, and universal values education (World Legislative Act # 26). The World Police will establish Conflict Resolution programs in every part of the globe, transforming the current image of the police as representatives of the ruling class into an understanding of the police as the true servants of the people and of peace (WLA # 32).

Finally, the World Ombudsmus, which is tasked to protect human rights worldwide, will include a Truth and Reconciliation Bureau that will offer to establish Truth and Reconciliation Commissions anywhere on Earth where people feel these are needed (WLA # 59).   Between the fair administration of justice, the global education for peace and harmony, the planetary conflict resolution programs, and the widespread truth and reconciliation commissions, we begin to understand the meaning of the positive peace established under the Earth Federation government. It will truly be a peace in which “the earth’s total resources shall be equitably used for human welfare; and when basic human rights and responsibilities shall be shared by all without discrimination.”

Conscious of the inescapable reality that the greatest hope for the survival of life on earth is the establishment of a democratic world government; We, citizens of the world, hereby resolve to establish a world federation to be governed in accordance with this constitution for the Federation of Earth.

It is “we citizens of the world” who are responsible for the future, not the illegitimate, fragmented power centers called nation-states, not the greedy, heedless multinational corporations, and not the systems of global banking enslaving humanity with crushing national and international debt. The possibility of a redeemed future lies only with “we citizens of the world,” and only we can ratify and legitimate the Earth Constitution. This action represents both our right and our duty.

The Preamble ends with the affirmation of the most fundamental truth of our epoch: there is no future for the Earth, even for survival on Earth, without democratic world government. It begins with we the people because it represents all peoples, all nations, all cultures, religions, ethnicities, races, and languages. The Constitution for the Federation of Earth represents the concrete, practical key to our survival and future. It establishes a truly new world system, yet one based on the most obvious common sense. It establishes a new paradigm of global harmony and shared responsibility.

2. Article 1: Broad Functions of the Earth Federation

Article I of the Constitution for the Federation of Earth lists the six most basic primary functions of the Federation. Let us examine them in turn: (1) “To prevent war, secure disarmament, and resolve territorial and other disputes which endanger peace and human rights.” No longer could the “cycle of violence” exist where rebellions because of the structural violence of extreme poverty meet with repression from third-world governments financed and supported by first-world governments or with “interventions” by first world military to prevent progressive social change from occurring. Nation-states, like the world government itself, would be disarmed by law, and the process of changing the structural violence of poverty would be open to non-violent methods of conflict resolution such as the courts, demonstrations, social organizing, creative and just economic policies, and so on.

              “The World Government for the Federation of the Earth shall be non-military” says Article 2.2. This is not an incidental feature of the Earth Constitution but its very essence. War is an immoral and irrational activity. Its nature is to command soldiers in blind obedience to orders secretly formulated above them to kill some other group designated as the “enemy” or to destroy their life-support systems. The framers of the Constitution understood that if there is ever to be peace in the world then all law must be enforced by civilian police who are themselves required to obey the law. They understood that the law can and must apply only to individuals, not to groups or collective entities designated as “enemies.”

              For this reason, Article 10, Section 1, number 1 states that:

The enforcement of world law and world legislation shall apply directly to individuals, and individuals shall be held responsible for compliance with world law and world legislation regardless of whether the individuals are acting in their own capacity or as agents or officials of governments at any level or of the institutions of governments, or as agents or officials of corporations, organizations, associations or groups of any kind.

A central moral and legal principle at the heart of good democratic government lies here. The corruption of today’s corporate capitalism and militarized nation-states rests on the abdication of individual responsibility for criminal actions: destroying other persons and their life support systems under military orders is a criminal activity. Exploiting the poor or damaging the environment in the service of the private accumulation of wealth under orders from one’s employer is a criminal activity. Enslaving people and groups into monetary debt in the service of private banking monopolies is a criminal activity. The world order can only be transformed into a decent one for all persons, that is, into a truly democratic, peaceful global order, if all military organization is abolished and every individual is held personally responsible for his or her actions.

 This is the fundamental principle of all morality as well: personal responsibility for one’s actions. We should be morally and legally responsible for how we treat other people and nature whether on the job, in the market place, or at home. And the very first premise of creating personal responsibility for the people of Earth must be the abolition of all military service which trains people to kill and destroy in blind obedience, thereby fostering the antithesis of moral and legal personal responsibility.

(2) The second primary function of the federation will be “To protect universal human rights, including life, liberty, security, democracy, and equal opportunities in life.” Again, the very foundations of the world federal government would allow the progressive transformation of institutionalized violence and exploitation, protecting the security of those who militate for change, and allowing them to legally base their claim for just economic and social institutions on the right to equal opportunities in life. The idea of equal opportunity today is a bold-faced lie under the capitalist, debt-driven monopoly system in which nearly 60% of humanity live in structural systems of deprivation that radically constrict their life prospects (without sanitation, clean water, health-care, adequate housing, education, financial resources, or employment possibilities).

(3) “To obtain for all people on Earth the conditions required for equitable economic and social development and for diminishing social differences.” The Constitution specifies its affirmation of cultural diversity and local autonomy in other places (for example, Article 13.16), but here we see concern to diminish the “social differences” of the present system of wealth and power versus the poor and exploited. The mandate of the world government, stated repeatedly in the Constitution, is “equal opportunity for useful employment for everyone, with wages or remuneration sufficient to assure human dignity” (Article 13.1), in other words, to end the extremes of poverty and wealth worldwide as we know them. When today a mere 225 persons have a combined wealth of the bottom 3.5 billion people on Earth, then corruption has reached its apex. These criminal systems must be abolished and transformed into genuine democracy for all the Earth’s citizens.

The remaining three “broad functions” of the Federation would again work in favor of the socialist struggle for a fully realized human community:

(4) To regulate world trade, (5) To protect the environment and the ecological fabric of life from all damage, (6) To devise and implement solutions to all problems which are beyond the capability of national governments, or which are now or may become of global or international concern or consequence.

World trade would no longer easily interfere with the rights of every person to a life of dignity with a home, security, health-care, and opportunity (Article 13, numbers 4-7 and 11-13). The exploitation of the poor by multinational corporations would be brought to a rapid end with the regulation of world trade, and the destruction of the global environment though multinational exploitation of resources would be quickly ended (and can only be quickly ended) through the power of the Earth Federation. Local, sustainable systems of production and consumption would be developed, limiting “world trade” to those commodities and resources necessary for equitable, sustainable development everywhere on Earth.

For the first time, a consistent set of worldwide laws regarding the environment would be enacted, enforced by the world police armed only with weapons sufficient to apprehend individuals. (“World Police shall be armed only with weapons appropriate for the apprehension of individuals responsible for the violation of world law” (Article 10.3.5).) No longer would the poor nations have to sacrifice their environmental standards to attract rapacious corporations to their resources. International debt will be assumed by the Federation and rapidly paid off in Earth Currency and under terms determined by the Federation. A government concerned with global prosperity within the framework of environmental sustainability would be initiated for the first time in history.

These articles also give the world government the means to raise capital to be used for the global common good through taxes, fees, and other ways of generating federal income. The present system of capitalism, unregulated by enforceable world laws, cannot with any effectiveness create investment capital capable of promoting the common good, whether within nations or globally. For competition (which is directed to private advantage) will always force private investment capital in the direction of a high enough rate of return to (1) stay in business and (2) make a profit for the private benefit of the wealthy investors. The pressure of the market also mandates (3) continual growth, for as technology and competitors evolve and the rate of return drops, without a continual eye to growth businesses will tend to fail.

Sustainable development is not likely under this system, for the incentive is to neglect, for example, the impact of production on the environment or communities in order to maximize growth and protect the rate of profit (Daly 1996). World government, on the other hand, will be free of this irrational and destructive pressure now compromising corporations and territorial nation-states. It will be able to invest directly in the common good (the good that makes possible the survival and flourishing of all the parts of the whole) (Martin 2005b).

On the planetary level, the common good has taken on a deeper meaning than within nation-states where it rarely has the seriousness of survival itself. Many global problems, including global wealth and poverty, global militarism and lawlessness, and global environmental preservation, are “beyond the capacity of national governments” to address. The World Constitution provides the only viable hope for humanity to move in the direction of non-military democratic world of justice, peace, sustainability, and prosperity.

3. The World Parliament

The Sovereignty and democratic authority of the people of Earth is invested in the World Parliament that has the responsibility for protecting the Constitution and governing the Earth Federation. The Earth Federation creates a parliamentary system in which ultimate law-making authority lies with the World Parliament. The judiciary, executive branch, police, and other functions of government fall under the authority of the World Parliament. In a pacified and just world order, there will be no need for an executive branch to control vast, unaccountable power (as in the United States) in case of war or other emergency. Under the Constitution, the Parliament consists of three houses: the House of Nations, the House of Peoples, and the House of Counselors.

The House of Nations represents all the nations of the Earth. Every nation will have one, two, or three representatives in the House of Nations, depending on population. The largest nations, therefore, will have three representatives, while even the smallest will have one. This concession to the size of nations in terms of population is, of course, appropriate if this house of Parliament is to be truly representative of the nations of Earth. As is often pointed out, this feature of the Earth Constitution makes the House of Nations similar in function to the Senate in the system of the United States, where each state in the U.S. federal structure has its own direct representatives in the legislature.

Steps have been taken by the Provisional World Parliament to make this more equitable as regards the huge nations of the Earth such as China, India, and the USA. Because of the size of the House of Nations (perhaps three hundred representatives) whether or not new nations are formed that have a vote and a voice in Parliament will not be a major issue. The tendency will be to want to have a many voices represented as possible, since it is precisely a voice and mechanism for having one’s needs and interests represented that undercuts the perceived need for violent or subversive attitudes towards other nations or the Earth Federation.

The Parliament may well welcome new nations into the community of nations: the Palestinians, for example, and the Kurds. Protecting national “sovereign” territory, and oppressing dissenting groups within nation-states, will no longer be considered necessary for the preservation of the “motherland.” Nation-state-hood will no longer be raised to the level of a mythical god-like idol, to be worshiped and preserved at all costs, as it often is under the current world system. The new attitude toward nationhood under the Constitution can and must also apply to the present collection of nation-states. The present demand that they be preserved at all costs will no longer appear compelling.

At the literal level, the Earth Constitution appears to take the existing set of nation-states as the states that would populate the House of Nations, allotting three representatives to the nations with over 100,000,000 population, etc. However, the Provisional World Parliament has recognized that the democratic spirit of the Constitution intimates that the three giant federations that comprise much of the territory and population of Earth would skew the democratic intent behind the House of Nations and the World Parliament. The Provisional World Parliament is working on formulating official recommendations that the House of Nations be conceived so as to treat the cantons of China, the Pradesh of India, and the states within the United States as separate nations, each having its own representative(s) within the House of Nations.

This would increase the democratic equality of the peoples who live within these three giant federations, since the size of their populations would actually require many more than three representatives each in the House of Nations. Under this understanding of the democratic intent of the Constitution, the United States, for example, would have approximately 50 representatives in the House of Nations, rather than three. The Pradesh of India, several of which have populations over 100,000,000, would each have three representatives in the House. This would be the same for China, and perhaps elsewhere.

The second house in the tri-cameral World Parliament is the House of Peoples. One representative will be directly elected by the people from each of 1000 electoral districts worldwide. The electoral districts will be apportioned by population and will conform as far as feasible to existing national boundaries. The people of the Earth in their vast diversity will be directly represented in the World Parliament through 1000 representatives in the House of Peoples.

Like the other houses of Parliament, this house may meet separately or in joint session with the other houses. The Constitution defines the parameters and responsibilities of each of the Houses as separate houses and as part of the combined World Parliament. This system of direct representation of the people in districts apportioned by population is often compared with the House of Representatives within the U.S. internal governance system.

As the population of the Earth continues to explode uncontrollably, the number of persons represented by each of the 1000 representatives in the House of Peoples increases. As the population of the Earth approaches seven billion in this year of 2009, there is, of course, great cause for concern among thoughtful people. Economists and thinkers concerning ecological sustainability such as Herman E. Daly (1996) estimate a sustainable population for the Earth at perhaps 2-3 billion persons. At the time the Constitution was being written the Earth had about 3.5 billion population. Today, that figure has nearly doubled.

The Constitution was written to prevent such uncontrollable disasters. However, as time passes and the Earth sinks ever farther into environmental disaster, military disaster, population disaster, and the disaster of poverty, disease, and misery, the task before the initial World Parliament and government of the Earth Federation becomes ever-more immense and formidable. The more time that passes before ratification, the more immense the crises faced by the Earth Federation government, and, at the same time, the more it becomes clear that this is our only viable option.

The same is true of population in relation to the 1000 representatives in the House of Peoples. At a seven billion population for the Earth, this calculates to one representative for every seven million people. Even though the offices of each representative will be very well staffed and designed to interact with the people in his or her constituency, this remains an untenable number of people for each representative. The initial world government could, of course, amend the Constitution according to the procedures set forth in Article 18. It could modify the House of Peoples to create, for example, 2000 persons and electoral districts.

But the early world government will likely be working through the Earth Emergency Rescue Administration outlined by the Provisional World Parliament to deal with all the above named global crises, including voluntary, non-coercive population reduction programs. It may be before long the population of the Earth will return to a sustainable size and the 1000 electoral districts and representatives will function very efficiently. Even though the legislative acts passed by the Provisional World Parliament are not binding on the final World Parliament once the Constitution has been ratified, the delegates of the Provisional World Parliament are making every effort to facilitate the work of the World Parliament through legislative measures addressing the multiple, growing global crises faced by the Earth.

Anticipating these growing crises that the initial World Parliament will face, the Provisional World Parliament passed an Education Act at its Eighth Session in which every public school in the Earth Federation will integrate into its curriculum discussion of sustainability, the population crisis, and quality of life issues. This program will be part of a massive educational effort on internet, radio, and television that may alone rapidly influence the people of Earth to reduce family sizes. Other steps, such as linking the interest on development loans from the Earth Federation to the nations to the success of nations in limiting population growth, have also been considered by the Provisional World Parliament.

The Eighth Session of the Provisional World Parliament also passed an act creating a Global People’s Assembly to complement and activate democratic participation and representation within the framework of the present structure of the House of Peoples. The Global Peoples’ Assembly sets up mechanisms to draw in grass roots participation from the local neighborhood or village level up through regional levels and integrates this participation into the system of representatives to the House of Peoples. In this way democracy becomes a real and effective force worldwide and the House of Peoples is strengthened in its role as the direct voice of the people within the Earth Federation. The Global Peoples’ Assembly feature of the Earth Federation will greatly enhance the democratic responsiveness of the House of Peoples even at an Earth population of seven billion persons.

The third house is the House of Counselors. This feature of the Earth Constitution is a brilliant and unique innovation to the concept of parliamentary democracy. For the House of Counselors is intended to represent the good of the whole, the public interest of the entire planet, the common good. World democracy requires not simply representatives who serve particular interests (whether the people of an electoral district or the interests of a nation-state), but wise, highly educated persons who are concerned with the common good of the Earth, its environmental integrity, its suitability as a home for all the Earth’s creatures, and the well-being of future generations.

The candidates for the House of Counselors are nominated by the students and faculty from all universities worldwide and elected by the other two houses of Parliament, ten persons each from twenty administrative districts worldwide. The Counselors do not have to reside in the districts that elect them. They are to represent the whole, the common good, the public interest. This feature of the Earth Constitution brings democracy itself to an entirely new level, beyond anything that has gone before. These 200 Counselors will act as part of the combined World Parliament, which will consist of about 1500 representatives altogether.

Their separate function will be largely for nominating candidates for office of the world government within the World Judiciary, World Executive, World Attorneys General and Police and World Ombudsmus, to be elected by a plurality vote of the three houses of Parliament in joint session. Counselors may also introduce world legislation to Parliament to be debated and voted upon, as will all world legislation, by the three houses in joint session. They may also introduce advisory or scientific documents into the World Parliament as needed by the Parliament to conduct the business of the Earth Federation with the appropriate knowledge and wisdom.

As mentioned above, the Constitution for the Federation of Earth establishes a parliamentary system for democratic, federal world government. This is particularly significant for ensuring democracy at the mundial level. The supreme authority of government is invested in the World Parliament, itself organized to represent the diverse voices of the people and nations of Earth. Democracy is brought to a new level, free of the special interests and inordinate power that an independent executive inevitably represents.

The Provisional World Parliament at its 13^th Session approved an act to create the Collegium of World Legislators (WLA # 57). This Collegium sets up a mandatory process of training for all legislators in the three houses of Parliament.  All members of Parliament will be instructed in nonviolent communication and in forms of dialogue directed toward mutual understanding. The Collegium will also facilitate meetings among the legislators: conferences, dialogues, informal discussions, and the dissemination of important information. The very nature of being a member of Parliament will be transformed from today’s combative and strategic maneuvering to a spirit of collaboration for the common good and equal participation of all peoples in self-government for the Earth.

The system does not try to “balance” power between an executive branch, a judicial branch, and a legislative branch of government. For the three houses of the World Parliament are already balanced to democratically represent all possible constituencies of the Earth. The legislative branch (institutionalized so that no group or constituency can assume excessive power) is directly involved in a number of ways in the running of the four main branches of government that report to it: the World Judiciary, the World Executive, the World Attorneys General and Police, and the World Ombudsmus.

The framers of the Constitution understood that a parliamentary system is the best expression of democracy in a world that has eliminated the nation-state-war system. Indeed, ratification of the Constitution will initiate a new world order that eliminates the present war system at the heart of today’s world disorder. The Constitution not only creates a demilitarized world and prohibits any military for the Earth Federation itself, but it institutionalizes a new economic, administrative, and legal order that removes all economic, political, and national incentives for militarism and war.

Just as the system of sovereign nation-states, with its institutionalized insecurity as well as inherent imperial systems of economic domination and exploitation, is the root cause of war, so a new economic and political order under a federation of nations will eliminate the root causes of war. A parliamentary democracy for the world reflects this new order in a direct, democratic way.

We have seen that the present world system is a war system in which nations find their very existence threatened by the possibility of invasion from non-democratic neighboring states, subversion and destabilization by terrorist forces, a never-ending arms race to keep up with other nations in destructive (military) power, or imperial domination by the large and powerful nations of the world. The history of nation-states over the past five centuries shows that nations tend to fall into the trap of the present world system that creates political, economic, and practical incentives for military readiness and organization.

In practice this means that nation-states tend to rely on an executive branch that has authority over the military and administrative branches of government. In a dangerous world, where external and internal subversion or attack many happen at any time, nations feel that power must be invested in a branch of government that has the authority to deal with these dangers. In today’s world, therefore, the legislative branch of government (that in democracy is often the most direct voice of the people) is subordinate to the executive. It should be clear that no genuine democracy can or does exist in a dangerous, militarized world characterized by the threats of terrorism, subversion, invasion, domination, or war.

Repeatedly, under the nation-state-war system, we have seen the executive branch become dictatorial, bring the nations into wars, perpetuate secrets and deceits even from its own people, produce corrupt and self-serving leaders, or sacrifice internal freedoms to the need for security. Even the United States, which once seemed a beacon of democracy and freedom to oppressed peoples worldwide, is today seen as a dictatorial center of empire run by an imperial executive branch and a bloated military-security apparatus that are the very antitheses of democracy. The election of Barack Obama as President did not, and could not, change the structurally embedded nature of this anti-democratic system that, since the Second World War, has invested so much militarized power in its executive branch.

Under the Earth Constitution there is no need for a powerful executive branch with command over a ready military and security apparatus. Not only are the economic and political incentives for such a system removed, but the parliamentary system is set up so that the executive branch of government has need of very little power of this kind. The World Executive has no military power (for all military is illegal under the Constitution), no police power (for the civilian police are a separate organ of government accountable, like the executive, to the Parliament), no power to suspend the Constitution in a state of emergency, and no power to refuse to administer and spend the budget allocated to it by Parliament.

Under this system, the World Parliament is truly the democratic voice the people and nations of the world and institutionalizes a system in which world problems can be dealt with effectively without danger to the democratic structures of government itself. Since the greatest internal danger in any democracy comes from investing executive powers in a few persons (such as Prime Ministers or Presidents), or from a standing military that may take action into its own hands or inordinately influence the policies of the executive branch, the Earth Constitution sees to it that this danger is permanently removed from government. The war system of autonomous nation-states is forever abolished with the advent of the second stage of the Earth Federation, and the government of the Federation itself is designed to forever prevent inordinate power from accruing in the hands of any few persons.

4. The World Courts

A World Supreme Court is established by the Constitution, and the Parliament may also establish district and regional World Courts as necessary for a properly functioning, efficient, and just world court system. No democracy can function without an impartial, non-politicized, efficient judicial system. Democracy is precisely that governmental mechanism through which orderly change can continually occur without people having to find recourse through violence or revolution.

To be effective, people’s needs and interests must really be represented through the legislative process. That is, they must have their voices heard and their interests really represented. This is the function of the World Parliament (as well as several other organs created by the Earth Constitution). Nations and groups will not resort to violence if they have a real voice in the affairs of the world and a real power of democratic self-determination that is protected by the Earth Federation.

Secondly, their disputes, conflicts, and misunderstandings must be resolved nonviolently through an impartial, fair, and efficient judicial system. Such a system of courts on the world level is one of the keys to world peace. This becomes clear if we consider the eight benches of the World Supreme Court set up by the Constitution.

(1) The Bench for Human Rights will deal with claims that human rights have been violated as these are guaranteed under Articles 12 and 13 of the Constitution. It is the function of the World Supreme Court to uphold the Constitution for the Federation of Earth and therefore ensure the protection of human rights globally as specified in Articles 12 and 13.

Unlike the present, nearly worldwide, system, the right to private property is not the foundation of all other rights in this Constitution. The wonderful list of inalienable rights in Article 12 mentions private property only in number 16: “safety of property from arbitrary seizure” (from the government or anyone else). This clearly guarantees personal property, and the right to accumulate personal property. However, within the context of all the other dozens of rights provided for by Articles 12 and 13, it is clear that the right to private property will not be an unlimited right to private accumulation of wealth at the expense of nature and other people, which is the foundation of the present world system.

For the courts to protect human rights means that the courts will protect human freedom and well-being. They will not sacrifice both of these, as in the present system, to the false god of unlimited private property rights. There is no hint in the Constitution that everyone will have the same, or even nearly the same, amount of property. However, the framework weighs clearly in favor of a world in which the freedom and well-being of the majority cannot be sacrificed to the unlimited wealth and power of the few. Like the world Ombudsmus, and unlike the present court system within most countries, the world courts will really protect human rights and well-being. We have here yet another foundation of the world peace system created by the Constitution.

The WCPA continues to be in contact periodically with the International Criminal Court (ICC) that has been developed under the Rome Statute sponsored by the Assembly of States Parties for several decades. Since the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also in the Hague, is concerned only with d-states (subject to the voluntary agreement of the disputing states), the ICC represents an admirable attempt to hold individuals responsible for crimes against humanity, war crimes, or crimes against peace. However, the ICC is similarly hamstrung by the system of so-called sovereign nation-states from which (its statues state) it can only “request” evidence or extradition of suspects, etc. No true court, of course, “requests” such things, but rather orders them, using its power of mandamus: the court order.

The Provisional World Parliament has studied some of the excellent statutes of the ICC (such as its statutes on human rights, its penal code, and its rules of procedure and evidence), rewritten them in the language of a true, constitutionally empowered court, and passed them as provisional World Legislative Acts. The WCPA periodically attempts to communicate with the ICC and its States-Parties sponsors that the court could be immeasurably empowered by affiliating with the World Court System under the Earth Constitution.

Between 31 May and 11 June 2010, the first Review Conference on the Rome Statute that guides the operations of the International Criminal Court was held in Kampala, Uganda. This meeting is to be distinguished from the annual meetings of the Assembly of States Parties: the nations who have signed the treaty empowering the ICC. The Review Conference will consider amendments and elaborations of the Rome Statute as recommended by various nations in the Assembly of States Parties. WCPA representatives were in Uganda with copies of the Constitution, urging the authorities there that a world under the true rule of law can be greatly enhanced by linking the court with the Earth Constitution.

(2) The Bench for Criminal Cases will deal with “issues arising from the violation of world laws and world legislation by individuals, corporations, groups and associations, but not issues primarily concerned with human rights.” Corporate polluters of the environment will be jailed; terrorists will be prosecuted and jailed; anyone dealing in weapons of war (design, transport, buying, selling, or deploying) will be prosecuted and jailed. The multi-billion dollar per year scourge of human trafficking for sexual and slave-labor purposes will be brought to an end. Currently there is no enforceable world law and such persons often act with impunity. The World Court system will bring the rule of law to the world for the first time.

(3) The Bench for Civil Cases will “deal with issues involving civil law suits and disputes between individuals, corporations, groups and associations arising under world legislation and world law and the administration thereof.” Again and again disputes arise within any society. We do not live in a perfect world and the Earth Constitution does not project an unrealizable utopia, but rather a fully attainable practical utopia.

It is absolutely important to have an impartial judiciary enforcing both the Constitution and the laws enacted by the World Parliament under its authority. What is needed includes the Collegium of highly trained World Judges, created by the Constitution, who can make binding, just decisions and therefore undercut both the drive toward violence and the drive toward criminal disdain for the law. This is precisely what is lacking in the contemporary world, despite the well-meaning existence of the ICJ and ICC.

(4) The Bench for Constitutional Cases will “deal with the interpretation of the World Constitution and with issues and actions arising in connection with the interpretation of the World Constitution.” All thoughtful people understand that no document, whether this be a sacred text like the Bible, or an Earth Constitution, can be written without ambiguity, without being open to various interpretations in some passages, and without the need for a procedure to deal with ambiguities. The Bench for Constitutional cases will play an absolutely crucial role in the protection of the Constitution and the integrity of the Earth Federation.

(5) The Bench for International Conflicts will “deal with disputes, conflicts and legal contest arising between or among the nations which have joined in the Federation of Earth.” A forerunner of this bench, as mentioned above, already exists in the form of the International Court of Justice in The Hague that is mandated to deal with disputes between nations. The differences, however, are also immense.

For a court to be effective in preserving the peace and good will among the community of nations its jurisdiction must be mandatory, it must have the power of subpoena, the power of ordering hearings concerning evidence, and the power of making binding, enforceable decisions. As we have seen, the International Court of Justice in the Hague, attempting to operate as it does under the unworkable system of nation-states, has none of these powers and is therefore impotent to keep the peace and good will among nations.

Under the Earth Federation, if nations have disputes that threaten to endanger world peace, the Bench for International Conflicts of the World Court may subpoena representatives of the disputing parties to a hearing concerning the dispute. The World Court System, like the rest of the Earth Federation, is part of a peace system in which the parts synergistically work together to assure peace and prevent wars or violent conflicts of any kind.

(6) The Bench for Public Cases must “deal with issues not under the jurisdiction of another bench arising from conflicts, disputes, civil suits or other legal contests between the World Government and corporations, groups or individuals, or between national governments and corporations, groups or individuals in cases involving world legislation and world law.” In other words, whenever there is conflict in the world, there must be a court in existence that can justly deal with this conflict and thereby inhibit both violence and criminality. The Bench for Public Cases is meant to cover all cases not specific to the other benches of the World Supreme Court system.

(7) The Appellate Bench is designed to “deal with issues involving world legislation and world law which may be appealed from national courts; and to decide which bench to assign a case or action or litigation when a question or disagreement arises over the proper jurisdiction.” In other words, it is an appeal bench that may operate when litigants are not satisfied with the decisions of lower courts.

(8) The Advisory Bench must “give opinions upon request on any legal question arising under world law or world legislation, exclusive of contests or actions involving interpretation of the World Constitution. Advisory opinions may be requested by any House or committee of the World Parliament, by the Presidium, any Administrative Department, the Office of World Attorneys General, the World Ombudsmus, or by any agency of the Integrative Complex.” Judges within the Collegium of World Judges will be highly trained experts on the Earth Constitution and the functioning of the Earth Federation. This final bench will make their expertise available to the organs of the Earth Federation, including the World Parliament, as an aid in making intelligent decisions or passing good world legislation.

It should be clear that all these eight benches of the World Supreme Court serve functions vital to the maintenance of a decent, law abiding world society. The amazing thing is that none of them exists today. Under the system of so-called “sovereign” nation-states, there is only anarchy, the use of violence or threat of violence, deceptive political maneuvering for position or bargaining power, unenforceable treaty agreements that may or may not be honored, or the arbitrary veto by one of the five big powers on the Security Council of the United Nations. A world without a World Court System such as the above is a world of terror, war, violence, and anarchy, exactly the world we see before us today.

5. The World Attorneys General and Police

Every society employs public prosecutors who work with the police in gathering evidence regarding those suspected of violating the law, serving arrest warrants, and prosecuting the alleged offenders. Under the Earth Constitution this dual function (of police and prosecutors) serves as one of the four main branches of government responsible to the World Parliament. The World Attorney General, the four Associate World Attorneys General, and the twenty Regional Attorneys General are all nominated by the House of Counselors and elected by a simple majority vote of the World Parliament in combined session.

They in turn appoint the World Regional Police Captains. However, this system of enforcement for the Earth Federation has an additional function not often found in national enforcement systems. In addition to the functions of investigation, apprehension and arrest, prosecution, and remedies and correction, we have seen above that the world enforcement system also specifies “conflict resolution.” The enforcement system of the Earth Federation will have as its goal the minimization of conflict not only through formal systems of conflict resolution, a just system of federal world courts, and a truly representative world parliament, but through an “enforcement system” that is designed to promote nonviolent means of conflict resolution and to enforce world law with an absolute minimum of violence.

To facilitate the intent of the Earth Constitution with regard to its emphasis on human dignity, equality, and conflict resolution, the Provisional World Parliament has passed World Legislative Act #32, (see www.worldproblems.net) creating a Department of Conflict Resolution in which the World Ombudsmus and the World Police, under the supervision of the World Parliament, will work together to assure that all parties to conflict are respected in their human rights and dignity and provide a forum where genuine dialogue, directed toward mutual respect and understanding can take place.

By constitutional law, there will be no military or military police in the Earth Federation. There will only be civilian police trained to serve the public and perform their duties with a minimum of violence and careful protection from harm of innocent bystanders. This distinction is crucial. Military and military police do not serve the public but rather an absolute command structure in which some “enemy” is designated to whom they are ordered to do lethal harm. This is the old war system in which harm to a designated “enemy” through lethal means is acceptable in today’s world, as is “collateral” damage to innocent bystanders, in the course of achieving some military objective.

Civilian police, on the other hand, are accountable to civilian authorities precisely for protection of the innocent and the use of the minimum necessary force to apprehend lawbreakers. The two systems are entirely different. Secondly, the military system targets collective enemies – some other nation-state or some collectively defined groups who are designated the “enemy” to be militarily destroyed or dominated. We have seen that the first “basic principle” of the enforcement system under the Earth Constitution is to hold individuals responsible for their actions no matter what organization or government they are working for.

The world system of war and militarism of today is predicated on the destruction of entire groups as designated “enemies.” A civilized world order under the rule of law bases enforcement on individuals alone. As one of the main organs of government reporting to the World Parliament, the world enforcement system will be qualitatively different from most national enforcement systems and all militarized enforcement systems. For as we have seen, the entire apparatus of the world government is designed to end war and promote the living together on Earth of individuals, nations, cultures, religions, and ethnic groupings. The enforcement system is also constructed according to this goal of positive peace.

The Constitution puts this as follows:

A basic condition for preventing outbreaks of violence which the Enforcement System shall facilitate in every way possible, shall be to assure a fair hearing under non-violent circumstances for any person or group having a grievance, and likewise to assure a fair opportunity for a just settlement of any grievance with due regard for the rights and welfare of all concerned.

In a just and nonviolent world order, the attorneys general and police will function to promote peace, freedom, and democratic law. They will not be seen as oppressors or enemies as is often the case with police and militaries within today’s nation-states. In a just world system, there will be no need for massive surveillance and spying on populations worldwide as is done today by the NSA and other agencies of the US government.

6. The World Ombudsmus

We have seen that one unique feature of the Earth Constitution is the House of Counselors as one house of the World Parliament concerned with the common good of humanity and the Earth. Another unique feature is the World Ombudsmus as one of the four principle organs of government under the World Parliament. The World Ombudsmus is yet another aspect of the Earth Constitution that will create a new just, prosperous, and peaceful world order for the Earth.

The first two functions of the World Ombudsmus are the following: (1) To protect the People of Earth and all individuals against violations or neglect of universal human and civil rights which are stipulated in Article 12 and other sections of this World Constitution. Article 12 provides a comprehensive list of protections for information, assembly, speech, press, religion, travel, habeas corpus, etc. It also specifies the right to privacy and freedom from surveillance as a means of political control. (2) To protect the People of Earth against violations of this World Constitution by any official or agency of the World Government, including both elected and appointed officials, or public employees regardless of organ, department, office, agency or rank. An entire branch of government, with the power of investigation, subpoena, and initiating court actions, is directed toward the protection of human rights, not only from national or group forces that might violate these rights but from the world government itself.

As with the World Attorneys General, the Council of five World Ombudsmen is nominated by the House of Counselors and elected by the three houses of the World Parliament in joint session. These functions of the World Ombudsmus harmonize with the functions of the Parliament, the Courts, and the Enforcement System in their emphasis on human rights, the responsibility of individuals (not groups or nations) before the law, the creation of institutions of mediation and conflict resolution, and the construction of a just and peaceful world order.

The World Ombudsmus is also directly concerned with the second bill of rights in the Constitution (Article 13). Article 13 is entitled “Directive Principles” for world government because it deals with economic, social, and environmental rights that will not be immediately enforceable when the Earth Constitution is first ratified and the newly created Earth Federation must deal with the mess of poverty, violence, injustice, and environmental destruction left behind by the old system of “sovereign” nation-states in league with global monopoly capitalism.

To this end, the third and fourth principles of the World Ombudsmus state the following:

(3) To press for the implementation of the Directive Principles for the World Government as defined in Article 13 of this World Constitution. (4) To promote the welfare of the people of Earth by seeking to assure that conditions of social justice and of minimizing disparities are achieved in the implementation and administration of world legislation and world law.

The World Ombudsmus is one of the four main branches of the world government directly responsible to the World Parliament. Its function is to activate the highest potential embodied within the Constitution for a world of peace, prosperity, freedom, and justice. The Constitution does not represent a set of ideals that are unrealizable. It is internally designed to realize the very ideals that are embodied in the noble words of the Preamble. As we saw above, this agency will also sponsor Truth and Reconciliation Commissions wherever on Earth these may be needed. Justice, reconciliation, human rights, and human dignity will be foundational principles worldwide under the Earth Constitution.

              Since the two bills of rights in the Constitution (Articles 12 and 13, described below), provide not only the complete range of civil liberties and freedoms but also the second and third generation rights that substantially transform our world from one of immense violence, poverty, and environmental destruction to one of nonviolence, reasonable prosperity and environmental sustainability, the worldwide offices of the World Ombudsmus represent a necessary feature of the Earth Federation. An entire branch of government will be necessary and fundamental to the genuine conversion of our present destructive world disorder to a truly peaceful, prosperous, and sustainable world order.

7. The World Executive

The World Executive consists of a Presidium of five persons, one from each continental division, nominated by the House of Counselors and elected by a simple majority vote of the World Parliament in joint session. The World Executive Cabinet of an additional twenty to thirty persons, two or three from each of the ten world magna-regions, are nominated by the Presidium and elected by the Parliament in joint session. All twenty-five persons must be members of one of the three houses of the World Parliament. The twenty members of the Executive Cabinet are appointed as Ministers to head the agencies of the world government in the Integrative Complex or the World Administration.

We have seen that the World Presidium (as head of the World Executive branch) has no police or military powers, no court or judicial powers, no legislative powers, no power to declare a state of emergency suspending the Constitution, and no power to refuse to implement the budget. Limitations on the World Executive are explicitly formulated in the Constitution:

The World Executive shall not at any time alter, suspend, abridge, infringe or otherwise violate any provision of this World Constitution or any legislation or world law enacted or approved by the World Parliament in accordance with the provisions of this World Constitution. The World Executive shall not have veto power over any legislation passed by the World Parliament,…may not dissolve the World Parliament,…may not act contrary to decisions of the World Courts. The World Executive shall be bound to faithfully execute all legislation passed by the World Parliament in accordance with the provisions of this World Constitution, and may not impound or refuse to spend funds appropriated by the World Parliament, nor spend more funds than are appropriated by the World Parliament. The World Executive may not transcend or contradict the decisions or controls of the World Parliament, the World Judiciary or the Provisions of this World Constitution by any device of executive order or executive privilege or emergency declaration or decree.

These series of explicit limitations show a deep awareness in the framers of the Constitution of the dangers inherent in any executive function. The World Executive does have the power to appoint heads of the agencies and departments of the Integrative Complex and World Administration. The Executive is responsible to make up a budget for the operations of the Earth Federation and submit it to Parliament. The Executive may frame and submit legislation to the World Parliament and is responsible for annual reporting to Parliament. Such authority needs this sort of careful and explicit limitations placed upon it.

However, it is important to note that there is no world president or individual head of the world government. The Presidium of five acts by consensus or by vote, occasionally in conjunction with a vote of the entire Executive Cabinet. This feature of the Constitution serves to promote the sense of a collective effort by a professional ministerial and civil service to efficiently maintain the operations of the world government and democratically implement the legislative decisions of the World Parliament. This insight is also behind the Constitutional descriptions of the functions of the various agencies of the Integrative Complex and World Administration. This intent for the functioning of the executive branch of the Earth Federation is made explicit in the following way:

The World Administration shall be composed of professionally organized departments and other agencies in all areas of activity requiring continuity of administration and implementation by the World Government….Each Senior Administrator shall be nominated by the Minister of the particular Department or agency from among persons in the senior lists of the World Civil Service Administration, as soon as senior lists have been established by the World Civil Service Administration, and shall be confirmed by the Presidium. Temporary qualified appointments shall be made by the Ministers, with confirmation by the Presidium, pending establishment of the senior lists.

The Earth Federation is to be run efficiently and competently by qualified professionals accountable to the World Executive who in turn is responsible to the World Parliament. The World Civil Service Administration shall:

Formulate and define standards, qualifications, tests, examinations and salary scales for the personnel of all organs, departments, bureaus, offices, commissions and agencies of the World Government, in conformity with the provisions of this World Constitution and requiring approval by the Presidium and Executive Cabinet, subject to review and approval by the World Parliament.

Since heads of governmental agencies are also members of the World Parliament, the Constitution sets up the requirement that there be continuous communication between each agency (staffed by qualified professionals) and the Parliament. No longer will there be, as in the United States and many other countries, political appointments of unqualified persons to important posts, fomenting inefficiency, waste, and ideologically driven administrative practices. No longer will there be the corruption that attends unaccountable power. Every person can be removed for cause according to constitutionally defined due process procedures. The stage is set for government that is really democratic, really directed toward service to the people of Earth, and really able to serve the common good of everyone as well as future generations.

8. Article 12: The First Bill of Rights

The Bill of Rights of the Earth Constitution specifies as “inalienable” a list of eighteen rights, the first of which is “equal rights for all citizens of the Federation of Earth, with no discrimination on grounds of race, color, caste, nationality, sex, religion, political affiliation, property, or social status.” A major achievement of the Earth Federation, as well as genuine democracy, will be the effective realization of equality before the law for all the citizens of the Earth. Within most nation-states today, there is very little equality before the law. The rich get away with criminal activities that hurt countless people while the poor are incarcerated for the most minor of offenses.

This seemingly self-evident requirement of any bill of rights treat everyone equally is violated by every nation-state in yet another way. They all legislate rights only for their own citizens while effectively denying the rights of all other peoples on Earth. Either rights are inalienably held by all persons equally or they are a lie and a sham. To claim that “inalienable human rights” are only valid on a territorial basis is false and dishonest. The nation-state system, like the United Nations that represents it, makes a mockery of the concept of universal, inalienable rights.

The persons of the Earth Federation are not only guaranteed the usual democratic political rights of freedom of speech, press, assembly, association, habeas corpus, and due process of law, they are also guaranteed rights that are now routinely violated by all nations under the barbaric system of nation-states. Article 12 also guarantees:

Freedom to travel without passport or visas or other forms of registration….Prohibition against military conscription…. Prohibition against physical or psychological duress or torture during any period of investigation, arrest, detention or imprisonment, and against cruel or unusual punishment…. Prohibition against private armies and paramilitary organizations as being threats to the common peace and safety….and the right to family planning and free public assistance to achieve family planning objectives.

The violation of the right of citizens of this Earth to travel is a disgrace of the modern system of nation-states. The visa system is a criminal attack on our dignity and freedom as human beings. The right to travel is at the very heart of democracy and the restriction of this right is one reason why under the nation-state system no reasonably authentic democracy exists anywhere in the world.

The supposed right of national governments to conscript young people into their criminal war-making system is another disgrace of the nation-state system. To require of young people public work for the nation as a civic duty is a wonderful idea. To make of them trained killers and destroyers of other peoples on Earth (or, in some nations, of their own fellow citizens) is the most corrupt of criminal acts. In democratic countries people supposedly have a vote, but their vote is meaningless to deal with the most pressing problems of humanity that are beyond the scope of any nation. People vote on secondary domestic issues while they are forced to fight in foreign wars that are beyond their democratic decision-making power, and forced to endure global climate collapse or global economic forces that are beyond the scope of every government.

 Individual persons are disenfranchised under this system. Their vote cannot give them freedom from war, nor the freedom to travel, the freedom from surveillance of their private lives, nor a secure and healthy environment. Democracy is a sham unless it is world democracy. The same is true of family planning knowledge and assistance. The current policies of many nations and the U.N. involve the violation of people’s right to family planning knowledge and resources. Given the population crisis that is rapidly diminishing the life-prospects of everyone on Earth, of the ecosystem of the Earth, and of future generations, these policies constitute a thoughtless attack on the future of our planet, its people, and future generations. The Bill of Rights in the Earth Constitution institutes a complete set of political rights for the first time in history. Many of these rights, such as the right to travel, are impossible under the nation-state system.

We have seen that the entire structure of the Earth Constitution is designed to protect and enforce these rights from every angle possible. The first paragraph of Article 12 reviews and repeats this fact:

It shall be mandatory for the World Parliament, the World Executive, and all organs and agencies of the World Government to honor, implement and enforce these rights, as well as for the national governments of all member nations in the Federation of Earth to do likewise. Individuals or groups suffering violation or neglect of such rights shall have full recourse through the World Ombudsmus, the Enforcement System and the World Courts for redress of grievances.

The Earth Constitution is premised on the interrelated concepts of human dignity and equality as asserted in a variety of ways throughout the document. We have seen that the very first item in Article 12 guarantees “equal rights for all citizens of the Federation of Earth, with no discrimination on grounds of race, color, caste, nationality, sex, religion, political affiliation, or social status.” Each of these differences among human beings has been used as tools of domination and humiliation of some human beings over others, as the work of such scholars as Evelin G. Lindner (2009) has made clear. By privileging some of these differences as mechanisms for the demeaning and disempowering of those not sharing the privileged characteristics, the history of cultures, nations, empires, and legal systems to date has been one sad history of domination and exploitation.

We saw in the Introduction that the Earth Constitution embodies the “third generation” of human rights (only hinted at by Article 28 of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights): the rights to a world of peace, environmental integrity, and reasonable universal prosperity for all persons. Here we see that the Earth Constitution also affirms universal human dignity and equality in ways that lay the foundations of a truly new world. One of the “differences” that has always led to systems of domination, militarized national security states, and hierarchies of humiliation and dehumanization of others is the system of sovereign nation-states in which other nations and peoples are demeaned or dehumanized as “enemies” in the service of the power and domination of elites within the “homeland.” With the ratification of the Earth Constitution, we witness major advance in human liberation. In a discussion concerning universal human rights and their premise of human dignity, Lindner writes:

This liberation offers a number of “sub”-liberations. One such subliberation is the opportunity to free ourselves from the need to pit in-groups against “enemy” out-groups, which in turn liberates us from malign out-group biases. We also have the opportunity to become liberated from collectivist and ranked social models in which a few masters turn underlings into tools in the service of the security dilemma, robbing everybody of their humanity. We stand at a time in history in which we can free everyone on the globe, and we can all retrieve our humanity. In a world of one single human family, no longer do we need to dehumanize young men to become killers of “enemies.” This does not mean that the world will become a rose garden—like in all villages, we will need police in the global village to apply the template of respectful social control. (2009: 75)

              This transformation can only come to fruition through ratifying the Earth Constitution. As Lindner asserts, human conflict will not end, nor will human beings suddenly become angels: we still need police. However, as we have seen, the World Police, the Ombudsmus, the Department of Conflict Resolution, and the Bureau of Truth and Reconciliation will be trained in ending mechanisms of humiliation and in protecting human rights with dignity equally for all. We have seen these goals built into the very foundations of the Earth Constitution as specified in Article 1: “To protect universal human rights, including life, liberty, security, democracy, and equal opportunities in life. To obtain for all people on earth the conditions required for equitable economic and social development and for diminishing social differences.” They are elaborated in unambiguous fullness in these all-important Articles: 12 and 13.

9. Article 13: The Second Bill of Rights

We have seen that, given the ravages to the world left by the system of nation-states and global monopoly capitalism, the Constitution for the Federation of Earth wisely separates people’s rights into those political rights of freedom and democracy that are immediately enforceable (Article 12) and those rights (equally important and vital to human life) that the newly formed Earth Federation will be unable to fully guarantee until the global crises have been brought under control (Article 13).

The rights guaranteed in Article 13 show the immense promise and potential for a decent world order under the Earth Federation. We have seen that it is the explicit mandate of the World Ombudsmus and other organs of the Earth Federation to realize the rights named in Article 13 as rapidly as possible. The first paragraph of Article 13 reads:

It shall be the aim of the World Government to secure certain other rights for all inhabitants within the Federation of Earth, but without immediate guarantee of universal achievement and enforcement. These rights are defined as Directive Principles, obligating the World Government to pursue every reasonable means for universal realization and implementation.

This list of 19 additional rights largely includes economic, social, and environmental rights that must be actualized if human beings are going to create a decent civilization for the Earth. People have the right to work with wages “sufficient to ensure human dignity” (abolishing forever the horrors of economic exploitation, sweatshop work, and starvation wages). They have the right to free and adequate public education for everyone on the planet, the right to social security for their old age, the right to free and adequate health-care for all citizens of the Earth Federation, and the right of every child to develop his or her potential.

Among the rights guaranteed by Article 13 and the immediate goals mandated by the Constitution are rights to a decent, safe, and healthy environment. These rights are of course fundamental and self-evident to any thoughtful person. However under the present world system of nation-states and global monopoly capitalism, they are impossible of realization. The so-called right to the unlimited accumulation of private wealth is the only right genuinely recognized by the present world system.

And the present world system actively prevents the realization of the many other rights listed in Articles 12 and 13. The recent failures of the United Nations Climate Change Conferences from Copenhagen in 2009, through Cancún (2010), Durban (2011), and Doha (2012) to the Warsaw Climate Change Conference of 2013 underline this truth once again. Since even before the United Nations Climate Change Conference at Rio de Janeiro in 1992, (likewise an abysmal failure), massive scientific evidence has accumulated showing the need for radical transformation of our economic and political ways of doing things (ways now destroying the planetary environment).

The WCPA had a large booth at the Rio Conference handing out copies of the Earth Constitution and literature concerning the global environmental crisis. Since 1977, it has sent copies of the Earth Constitution repeatedly to U.N. Ambassadors and heads of every nation: it is not as if the people and nations of Earth have not been informed. Yet not only the governments of Earth but its major news outlets have systematically ignored this central way out of the environmental and militarized trap in which the world is presently embroiled.

Not only can nation-states do nothing effective concerning the planetary environment (since they have authority only over their internal territories), they are active contributors to the destruction of the environment as the rich nations use their militarism to protect a system of corporate rapacity that externalizes pollution, toxic wastes, and environmentally destructive practices onto the planet and future generations. This corporate rapacity ensures that billions forever remain in the nightmare of poverty while the world’s elite accumulates unimaginable, unethical, and undemocratic wealth and power at the expense of the vast majority and all future generations.

Militarism itself, rampant and unavoidable among a system of so-called sovereign nation-states, has been shown to be the single most environmentally destructive institution on the planet (Sanders 2009; Parenti 1995). Immense amounts of petroleum, immense quantities of toxic substances, and immense amounts of radioactivity and other deadly agents are released into the environment annually by militaries worldwide, even when no wars are taking place. Under the system of sovereign nation-states, so-called national security trumps protection of the environment every time.

Similarly, multinational corporations use the nation state system to avoid their environmental responsibilities, shifting from one poor country to another with their toxic practices, and the imperial nation-states protect this very system. They fool themselves into believing that the destruction of the environment in poor countries will not impact them or their children in the wealthy fortress countries that they have built for themselves at the expense of the entire world and its future.

Among the 19 rights listed in Article 13 we find the following four:

(8) Protection for everyone against the hazards and perils of technological innovations and developments. (9) Protection of the natural environment which is the common heritage of humanity against pollution, ecological disruption or damage which could imperil life or lower the quality of life. (10) Conservation of those natural resources of Earth which are limited so that present and future generations may continue to enjoy life on the planet Earth. (11) Assurance for everyone of adequate housing, of adequate and nutritious food supplies, of safe and adequate water supplies, of pure air with protection of oxygen supplies and the ozone layer, and in general for the continuance of an environment which can sustain healthy living for all.

Two of the most fundamental rights that people have (rights that provide a framework for everything else) are the right to peace and the right to a clean, healthy environment. The right to peace is so fundamental that the Earth Constitution makes it the very framework of world government: abolishing all military activities from the Earth forever. It recognizes that all military activities are criminal in nature, since war is the attempt to destroy other peoples and their life-support systems outside the rule of civilized law, due process, equal justice, or respect for human dignity.

As we have seen, the right to a clean and healthy environment is violated by both the nation-states and their system of global monopoly capitalism. The Constitution is also designed to ensure the restoration of health to our damaged planet and restore the environment for future generations. We recall that the fifth “broad function” of the Earth Federation as given in Article 1 is “To protect the environment and the ecological fabric of life from all damage.” As we have seen, the Earth Constitution institutionalizes these “third generation rights” only hinted at in Article 28 of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In the second bill of rights (Article 13), this principle is spelled out further in the form of rights guaranteed to all the Earth’s citizens. These rights are summed up by number eleven which recognizes that food supplies, safe and adequate water, pure air, an integral ozone layer, and the global environment are all interconnected and interdependent. This is the principle of interdependence of all life recognized in the Preamble that serves as the fundamental insight of the science of ecology and reveals the holism discovered by every 20^th and 21^st century science.

The entire planet is an integrated and interdependent ecosystem and every environmentally destructive activity under the present unsustainable world system interacts with others to degrade the entire planetary ecosystem. Every activity from throw-away plastic packaging to gasoline engines to the dumping of toxic wastes to the emission of ozone destroying chemicals to the production of cancer causing compounds contributes to the general degradation of the planet and violates the rights of everyone to a clean and healthy environment.

Just as the right to peace is institutionalized throughout the Earth Constitution, so is the right to a clean and healthy environment. The Constitution sets up the Agency for Technology and Environmental Assessment within the Integrative Complex and the department of Environment and Ecology within the World Administration to monitor the global environment and report to the World Parliament on progress toward actualizing the right to a clean and healthy environment for the people of Earth. Principles of peace, environmental protection, and sustainability are woven into the texture of every article.

For example, among the “specific powers” granted to the world government in Article 4 of the Constitution is number 18 that reads: “Plan for and regulate the development, use, conservation and re-cycling of the natural resources of Earth as the common heritage of Humanity; protect the environment in every way for the benefit of both present and future generations.” The words “environment” or “environmental” appear thirty-five times in the Constitution reflecting a network of provisions such as this one directed to ensuring the people of Earth their right to a clean and healthy environment. Article 13 puts this in the form of rights, but the Constitution itself builds these rights into the very structure of the Earth Federation.

Article 13 also guarantees the “second generation” rights: “the essentially positive economic, social, and cultural rights, such as the rights to education, food, or medical care.” It is in the context of these rights that the concept of human dignity is explicitly raised, as in the very first right specified in this article: “Equal opportunity for useful employment for everyone, with wages or remuneration sufficient to assure human dignity.” The Earth Constitution affirms that human dignity does not end at the guarantee of civil and political rights (as important as these are) but affirms that extreme, involuntary poverty is also a violation of human dignity.

This concept is again specified in 13.13: “social security for everyone to relieve the hazards of unemployment, sickness, old age, family circumstances, disability, catastrophes of nature, and technological change, and to allow retirement with sufficient lifetime income for living under conditions of human dignity during older age.” No longer will older age be grounds for the humiliation of poverty and deprivation for a large portion of humanity. Dignity, as Mortimer J. Adler affirms in the epigraph to this chapter, applies equally to all: equality and dignity are coextensive within the Earth Constitution.

10. Article 14: Safeguards and Reservations for People and Nations

Article 14 guarantees the nations the rights to determine their own economic and political systems within the framework of the human rights guaranteed to everyone by Articles 12 and 13 of the Constitution. It also guarantees that governments within the Earth Federation will be recognized as authoritative within their respective territories and “full faith and credit” is to be given to their decisions, records, legislation, etc.:

The World Government shall operate to secure for all nations and peoples within the Federation of Earth the safeguards which are defined hereunder:

(1) Guarantee that full faith and credit shall be given to the public acts, records, legislation and judicial proceedings of the member nations within the Federation of Earth, consistent with the several provisions of this World Constitution. (2) Assure freedom of choice within the member nations and countries of the Federation of Earth to determine their internal political, economic and social systems, consistent with the guarantees and protections given under this World Constitution to assure civil liberties and human rights and a safe environment for life, and otherwise consistent with the several provisions of this World Constitution…. The powers not delegated to the World Government by this World Constitution shall be reserved to the nations of the Federation of Earth and to the people of Earth.

All nations must be “democratic,” for this is the only system that recognizes these inalienable rights in people. But major variations can and do occur in how democracy is organized and implemented. In addition, there are major disagreements as to what constitutes authentic democracy that must be allowed for within the framework of the Earth Federation. For example, the Revolutionary Committees Movement of Libya (before the recent NATO destruction of the Libyan government and social system) had powerful and legitimate criticisms of the failings of the systems of “representative democracy” that operate in many nations. They argued, during each of my three visits to Libya, that the Libyan system of “direct democracy” was more democratic and more legitimate as an expression of the will of the people than the elitist, often corrupt systems of so-called representative democracy. They certainly had the right, under Article 14, to be part of the Earth Federation and to determine their own political system.

Something similar is the case with economic systems. There is wide debate about what economic system is “more democratic,” more an expression of human freedom, more efficient, etc. As long as the internal systems of nations within the Earth Federation do not interfere with the political, social, and economic rights guaranteed in Articles 12 and 13 of the Constitution, a wide variety of economic and political systems must be welcome within the Earth Federation.

Article 14 asserts the integrity and autonomy of the nation-states within the Earth Federation. Nation-states are only illegitimate when they claim for themselves a spurious “sovereignty” that in effect denies the sovereignty of the people of Earth and claims an arrogant independence from the rest of humanity. Within the Federation of Earth, as territorial units of government, they are not only legitimate but important and necessary.

On each of my six visits to Cuba, the people of Cuba have repeatedly told me that they are a “sovereign nation.” The United States, they said, has no right to sponsor terrorism against Cuba or to economically blockade their country as it has done for more than forty years. What they do not realize is that under the nation-state system there is only the law of power, the law of the jungle. The system of so-called “sovereign nations” is precisely this law of the jungle.

When there is no rule of enforceable law in the world, the powerful presume the “right” to do whatever they please, just as they have stolen Guantanamo Bay from the Cubans. No one can stop them so why shouldn’t they crush weaker countries? The integrity and autonomy of Cuba can only be ensured under an Earth Federation in which the barbaric rule of power and force in the world is replaced by the civilized rule of law.

The entire Earth Constitution (as well as Article 14) is the way out of victimization for smaller and weaker countries in a world of domination. Article 14 is consonant with other features of the Constitution that emphasize the right of diversity and individuality for nations and peoples of the world. The Preamble, we have seen, places the Earth Federation on the bedrock principle of unity in diversity, and Article 13, number 16, sets before world government the goal of “encouragement for cultural diversity” and “decentralized administration.” The Provisional World Parliament has attempted to empower these mandates through organizing the Global People’s Assembly system (WLA # 29) that encourages active participation of citizens in government at all levels as well as by passing the Cooperative Community Empowerment Act at the 13^th session which again encourages grassroots involvement of people everywhere.

Good democratic government is necessarily federal in nature. Localities and regions and nations must be able to govern their internal affairs, drawing on their diverse customs, cultures, and traditions. Freedom and community are empowered from the ground up. Article 14 reaffirms this principle of the Earth Federation. Sovereignty belongs to the whole. However, its holism is empowered and shared through affirmation of the diversity of the many.

Article 14 ends with yet another recognition of the sovereignty of the people of Earth. The powers given to the Earth Federation by the Constitution are delegated by the people of Earth, who retain all power to themselves, and all inalienable rights, and delegate only such authority to governments from the local to the mundial level as shall protect their peace, environmental integrity, security, and freedoms. The right of nation-states to determine their own cultural, political, and economic systems also ultimately comes not only from their own people but from the people of Earth.

11. Article 17: The Process of Ratification

The people of Earth must ratify the Constitution through direct referendum. National governments, or their governmental authorities, may give preliminary ratification, for example, by the head of state or by a simple majority vote of the national legislature. Preliminary ratification must be followed by submitting the Constitution to the people in a direct referendum. Ratification will be confirmed by a simple majority vote in which at least twenty-five percent of all eligible voters over the age of eighteen have voted.

Provision number one of Article 17 says that the Constitution will be submitted to each member of the U.N. General Assembly and each national government (this has already been done several times). But it is important to realize that ratification of the Constitution is not dependent on approval by either the U.N. or national governments. Neither of these is a legitimate representative of the sovereignty of the people of Earth. Neither of these has any authority regarding the Constitution. Only the people of Earth in direct referendum may ratify the Constitution. Only the people of Earth have sovereignty. Governments of limited national territories make only illegitimate claims to sovereignty. As we have seen, they may regain legitimacy and a proper measure of shared sovereignty only by joining the Earth Federation. The Constitution represents all the people who live upon the Earth. It is they who have universal inalienable rights and sovereignty, not national governments and certainly not the U.N.

Article 17 allows for preliminary ratification by national governments and then direct referendum by the people of these respective nations. This is for convenience, since many nations have procedures for referendums already set up. But again this is not necessary. If national governments are uncooperative, world electoral districts may be defined and the people may ratify the Constitution directly, irrespective of the national territories in which they happen to live. This might be accomplished today, for example, via the internet.

Article 17 defines three operative stages in the implementation of world government under the Constitution. It recognizes three possible combinations of events that constitute ratification of the Constitution and initiation of the each stage of the Earth Federation. For each stage there may be preliminary or final ratification by so many nation-states. Or there may be a combination of preliminary or final ratification by nation-states along with direct ratification by so many electoral districts. Or there may be direct referendum by so many districts irrespective of whether any nation-states ratify the Constitution.

The powers, organization, and rights of the Earth Federation at each operative stage are defined by Article 17. Full implementation of the Earth Federation is achieved after:

Ratification by eighty percent or more of the nations of Earth comprising at least ninety percent of the population of Earth; or ratification which includes ninety percent of Earth’s total population, either within ratifying nations or within ratifying nations together with additional World Electoral and Administrative Districts where ratification by direct referendum has been accomplished….

At this point, when ninety percent of the Earth’s population have ratified the Constitution in direct referendum, the World Constitution achieves full force as the official government of the Federation of Earth.

              The 13^th session of the Provisional World Parliament unanimously passed WLA # 53: the Transition Process for National Governments Joining the Earth Federation. This act outlines specific procedures and mechanisms by which any government, democratic or not, can formulate a plan and a timetable for integration into the Earth Federation. It further articulates the road map that Article 17 is intended to be. There is no longer any excuse for nations to refuse to do what is necessary to create a just, peaceful, free, and environmentally sustainable world system.

12. Article 18: Amendments

Some in the movement of world federalism have refused to support the Earth Constitution because they disagree with this or that clause among the hundreds of clauses that make up the document (as if their fantasy of arranging a new Constituent Assembly would produce a another document in which they agreed with every clause). In the face of the increasingly lethal planetary crises that confront humanity, this attitude makes little sense. We need to create genuine, democratic world government as rapidly as possible, for it is the only route that is likely to make human survival both possible and worthwhile. Without world government, even if we survive nuclear holocaust, environmental collapse, or other deadly threats, life will be so degraded that little may be left that will make it worth living for the survivors and future generations.

              Irrational as this attitude may be, it is doubly irrational in the face of the broad possibilities built into Article 18 of the Constitution for revision, updating, or amendment. The Constituent Assemblies wisely understood that the technological, social, and environmental conditions on Earth will continue to change rapidly into the foreseeable future. They made it reasonably easy to propose amendments to the Constitution by any house of the world parliament or by any petition of 200,000 Earth Federation Citizens. These proposals then require an absolute 2/3 majority of each of the three houses of Parliament, a somewhat stiffer requirement, but still quite reasonable.

              In addition, the founders mandated a complete review conference of the entire Constitution every 20 years, beginning within 10 years of the initiation of the world government in its First Operative Stage. By contrast, the unworkable, undemocratic, and incoherent U.N. Charter has never been reviewed under the option provided in its Articles 108 and 109. The powers that control the U.N. do not want this to happen, and therefore it does not happen. The Earth Constitution must be reviewed within 10 years of its inception, since the intent of the Constitution is to serve the people of Earth as efficiently, justly, and wisely as possible, not to serve the dominant power structures of the old world order. What does not work properly, or is ill-conceived, can and should be changed. As Thomas Jefferson wrote concerning the U.S. Constitution:

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the Covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment… [L]aws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind…. [A]s that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, institutions must advance also, to keep pace with the times…. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain forever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. (in E. Brown 2007, pp. 78-79)

The wheel has been invented. It can be used with reasonable efficiency to bring humankind into a new place of peace, justice, prosperity, and sustainability. While no wheel will ever be perfect, and no wheel is suited for every kind of use, it is entirely irrational to insist on reinventing the wheel for any of the trivial reasons that have been given why the world needs to write a new constitution sometime in the future. Institutions must be established, and then “advance” forward, as Jefferson affirms. Precisely the same reasoning applies to the Earth Constitution. It is the wheel necessary and available for moving to a redeemed world order. It has been invented, and now is the time to ratify it and begin forward motion.

13. Article 19: Provisional World Government

Until preliminary ratification of the Constitution occurs, the people of Earth are empowered by Article 19 to begin elaborating Provisional World Government. They are empowered in this by the Constitution but ultimately by their sovereignty. Only human beings representing universal principles can move our planet forward toward practical utopia. The governments and economic institutions of today’s world, we have seen, are illegitimate. By and large, they represent the problem, not the solution.

As the Declaration of the Rights of Peoples confirms (Appendix X), the people of Earth have both the right and the duty to live under the legitimate rule of democratically legislated laws. Since most nation-states serve as an impediment to this right and duty, the people must take upon themselves the task of elaborating democratic world government. Article 19 serves as a guideline for proceeding with this endeavor.

In the literature of nonviolence, this is sometimes referred to as development of a “parallel government” (Sharp 1973). However, Provisional World Government is not parallel to any existing national government, nor is it parallel to the U.N., which is not a government but a treaty of sovereign nation-states. It is, therefore, a movement unique in human history where, for the first time, citizens really begin to take responsibility for the government and future of their planet. As “world citizen number one,” Garry Davis, has pointed out, none of the illegitimate nations can represent us politically, for as citizens of the Earth we have the unique and absolute birthright to govern ourselves and our planet (1984).

Article 19 defines various working commissions that people may set up to facilitate dealing with the global crises beyond the scope of nation-states and with ratification of the Constitution. It defines the manner in which the Provisional World Executive can be created and the responsibilities and duties of this office. It deals with financing for the Provisional World Government, and with the possibility of elaborating a world court system.

Perhaps most importantly, it defines criteria by which a Provisional World Parliament can be created and maintained. This has been the aspect of Provisional World Government that has been elaborated the most. As we have seen, the Parliament has met thirteen times in different locations worldwide from 1982 until 2013. A significant body of provisional world legislation has emerged that should be of great help to the actualized World Parliament when the Constitution is finally ratified in its First Operative Stage. This legislation is not binding on the final World Parliament but powerfully suggestive of the kind of legislation that will need to be immediately adopted. The world will need all the help it can get to pull itself out of military chaos, universal surveillance, population crisis, environmental collapse, global poverty, disease, lack of sanitation, and misery.

The Provisional World Government and the Constitution for the Federation of Earth exist today in a unique and interesting legal status. They have more moral and philosophical legitimacy than any government on Earth, for we have seen that territorial governments cannot themselves be legitimate outside of an Earth Federation representing the sovereignty of the people of Earth. In addition, they have been democratically constructed through a thirty-three year process involving four Constituent Assemblies. They represent the origins, the beginnings, of the historical fulfillment of the human project culminating in a world of peace, justice, freedom, sustainability, and reasonable prosperity for all.

On the other hand, the morally and politically legitimate Earth Constitution does not yet have enforceability, nor is it yet ratified by the people of Earth. Many national governments have effective enforceability for their internal laws. There is no democratic enforceability for anything on a world scale, however, since the only mechanism for such currently involves generalized economic sanctions affecting entire populations or military action against entire countries. Both these U.N. mechanisms for “enforcement” are inhuman (violating peoples’ inherent rights to life, liberty, and security of person) illegitimate, and illegal according to the Earth Constitution.

According to any decent human standards, they are also both deeply immoral. Hence, on the world scale, the only forms of “enforceability” are criminal in nature (violating peoples’ due process rights, rights to be treated as individuals, rights to be presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, rights to life, liberty, peace, freedom, and a decent environment). Just ask the good people of Iraq (poisoned by depleted uranium) or the good people of Vietnam (poisoned by dioxin infected Agent Orange) how their right to a healthy environment has fared under the nation-state system. The world system as we experience it today is not only illegitimate but criminal in nature. All nations and their leaders who participate in or support this system are complicit in this criminal activity.

On all these grounds, the Constitution for the Federation of Earth and its Provisional World Government activated under Article 19 are more legitimate than any existing laws or governments. We are all morally and politically obligated to live under democratic world government. We are all individually responsible to create a decent future for our children and our planet. The Constitution deserves and demands our civil obedience (our personal ratification and pledge of allegiance) to its higher, legitimate authority.

The Constitution for the Federation of Earth was written at the time when the alarm was being widely raised concerning our collapsing environmental stability and viability. Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring appeared in 1962 and had launched a worldwide movement in environmental studies and concern. The World Constitution and Parliament Association (WCPA) had been founded in 1958 by Philip and Margaret Isely and others explicitly to write a constitution for the Earth, and the lists of world problems produced in the literature of WCPA exhibited very clear awareness of the environmental crisis.

Philip Isely set up WCPA World Headquarters in Denver, Colorado, in a two-story building. He and Margaret hired several employees to coordinate a worldwide effort to bring world citizens together in the process of writing the Earth Constitution. This process included many international meetings, regular phone and mail correspondence, and a sustained effort at coordination. The high points of the process included four “Constituent Assemblies” that took place in Interlaken, Switzerland, in 1968, Innsbruck, Austria, in 1977, Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 1979, and finally, Troia, Portugal in 1991.

At the first of these assemblies, the delegates choose a drafting committee of 25 persons (chaired by Dr. Reinhart Ruge from Mexico) and specified what should be included in the Constitution. At the subsequent three assemblies, successive drafts were critiqued and modified. (At the 2^nd session, no changes were thought necessary, but the group issued an important declaration stating that the people of Earth had the right and duty to ratify the Constitution regardless of whether this process was led by nation-states.) At the 4^th assembly, after a number of final changes, the Constitution was declared finished and ready for ratification by the peoples and nations of Earth under the democratic procedures set forth in Article 17. The process took 23 years, hundreds of mailings, thousands of telephone calls, and many sub-meetings.

Of the 25 persons on the drafting committee, there were 5 primary authors: Philip Isely, Secretary-General of WCPA from the USA, Dr. Terence Amerasinghe, International Lawyer from Sri Lanka and Co-President of WCPA, S.M. Hussain, who was to soon become Supreme Court Justice in Bangladesh, D.M. Spencer, Professor of Law from Mumbai, India, and Dr. Max Habicht, renowned International Lawyer from Switzerland. The first drafts emerged in 1972 and were circulated worldwide several times to the participants who later gathered at the Second Constituent Assembly in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1977.

The Constitution was intended to replace the unworkable Charter of the United Nations. It explicitly states that all relevant agencies of the UN will be incorporated into the Earth Federation government. But the UN as it operates under its antiquated charter (based on the 350 year old paradigm of militarized sovereign nation-states) has been utterly unable to deal with the climate crisis both at that time and clearly today as well. The design of the UN system cannot possibly produce sustainability. It was never designed to do that and the consequences of the design it does have are the global chaos that we see all around us.

A 1994 publication of WCPA, for example, written by Philip Isely, was called “A Bill of Particulars Why the UN Must Be Replaced.”  Its section on “Environmental Destruction” lists the following:

From this list it should be clear what the framers of the Constitution understood: We live in a single, holistic world system that requires planetary integration and coordination on all these issues. The UN is simply not designed to address any of the environmental problems listed in the first list. It is a merely a coordinating organization for sovereign militarized nations and carries little or no binding authority. It continues to develop international “conventions” or agreed upon treaties, but has no authority to pass binding, enforceable legislation. Nor is it designed to effectively address any of the problems in the second list immediately above.

The World Constitution and Parliament Association (WCPA) in coordination with the Earth Federation Institute (EFI) to this day remains the sponsor and promoter of the Constitution for the Federation of Earth. It is organizer of the Provisional World Parliament (PWP) and the other features of Provisional World Government described below. A new generation of activists now run the worldwide programs of WCPA, focused especially on getting the word out to the people of Earth that there is a simple and effective way of transcending and transforming the current world mess.

Only a democratic World Parliament can address the problems outlined above by Philip Isely and his colleagues in these documents from the World Constitution and Parliament Association. Some anarchistic collaboration of independent units as envisioned by many of today’s environmentalists will never supply the Earth with the “brain” it needs to create a world where human survival and flourishing can only happen by design.

The holistic paradigm that has emerged from 20^th century science was embodied in the Earth Constitution. The system is designed to address the entire nexus of these global problems efficiently and effectively. The hundreds of world citizen thinkers, international lawyers, and practical engineers working together to write the Earth Constitution designed it to explicitly to holistically and synergistically address these problems.

Take note of the above diagram of the Earth Federation Government as defined by the Constitution. Reciprocity goes both ways, especially through the House of Counsellors and the House of Peoples, but even some nations in the House of Nations may choose to have their Earth Federation delegates elected. The empowerment of the people of Earth in multiple ways (already begin through Provisional World Parliament legislation) will follow from the design of this democratic world government.