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CWPS Human Rights Initiative

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CWPS believes that the protection of human rights is essential to the achievement of international peace as well as peace within nation states. People are entitled to the protection of the individual rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights and to equal protection of the law regardless of their identity. CWPS strongly supports the defense of human rights and works toward continued strengthening the role of international institutions and courts in protecting them.

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Totalitarian regimes: a threat to the rights of their citizens and to the

workings of international institutions at the same time

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The wholesale violation of individual rights within totalitarian states, along with their more limited violation in authoritarian states, poses a severe challenge to the world. International organizations that need to be able to penetrate to individual facts and issues in order to uphold international rules. All sovereign countries sometimes make themselves somewhat impenetrable, but those that ordinarily respect human rights are much easier for international institutions to penetrate in appropriate ways, as information flows fairly freely in and out, and legitimate international civil servants are not readily excluded.

            The totalitarian and authoritarian challenges are doubly troubling for the Security Council. There, China and Russia wield a veto directly against measures that would penetrate their shield, as well as using their control system at home to prevent the penetration needed for implementation of UN decisions.

            To overcome this problem, CWPS works for a limited but real empowerment of the General Assembly through the Binding Triad system of triply-weighted voting, so the General Assembly would have the authority to uphold international norms when a means of enforcement has a high enough (2/3) level of support among both the economically advanced countries and the populous countries without facing individual-nation vetoes as in the Security Council.

            CWPS welcomes the French initiative for disallowing vetoes in the Security Council on humanitarian and human rights matters. Also welcome are the initiatives for use of weighted voting within the Security Council, as a step toward a gradual phasing out the veto.

            The impenetrability of information in unfree countries also creates a problem for UN technical agencies in spheres vitally important for human safety: nuclear non-proliferation, the sphere of the NPT and IAEA, and health, the sphere of the WHO, whose problems in penetrating the Chinese informational curtain have played a major role in the nightmare of the current pandemic.

            Unions of free and democratic countries, such as the Euro-Atlantic organizations, avoid the problem of obstruction of rights enforcement and information flows by totalitarian and authoritarian member regimes. They do this by limiting membership to democracies. They have been relatively better able to protect human rights against violations by member nations and to straightforwardly oppose violations elsewhere. They have served as important supplements to the global institutions. CWPS welcomes their continued role and strengthening and creation of new ones.

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Group rights and women's rights

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            Protection of rights of groups and of their member individuals is also essential for the global public. Nations need their autonomous areas of authority to be protected by political balances in the joint decision-making structures as well as by legal provisions; thus the Binding Triad. Ethnicities, sexes and genders need for their individual members to have protections.

            The human rights of women are violated throughout the world, often on a terrifying scale. This must be overcome. We believe humanity has reached a stage when it can be overcome.

            CWPS advocates for the United States and other nations to approve treaties aimed at eradicating these violations. The United Nations puts pressure, and in some cases needs to be able to put much more effective pressure, on societies that deny women education, protection from domestic violence and rape and genital mutilation, equal opportunities for employment, and the right to vote to change their laws. CWPS, alongside other supporters of human rights, works toward progress in defending human rights including the human rights of women. We support United States ratification of The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. This initiative acknowledges the centrality of women in families across the globe where the welfare of female adults determines the fate of the whole family.

            The inability of women to be safe from domestic violence and rape can mean the destruction of the family unit. The inability of women to work can stop them from providing for their children to have an education, health care, and the opportunity to realize their dreams. The inability of women to vote can mean that the interests of women and families are ignored by policy makers. When the human rights of women are violated, there is also the threat that everyone’s rights can also be violated because of the breach of the covenant to respect human rights. The achievement of universal justice, including justice for women, is indispensable to progress in advancing civilization.

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The oppression of any human being represents an erosion of respect for human rights and threatens the human rights of everyone. To maintain human rights nationally and globally, we will need free, democratic, and empowered institutions on both the national and global levels. That has often been shown to be an inevitable end result of global human political development, if we survive until then. Getting us closer to that end result in real time, while we are in fact surviving, is the purpose of CWPS.

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OUTREACH