Release . September 9, 2005. By Stéphane Hessel

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One week before the exceptional summit which brings together in New York the heads of state or government of the 192 member states of the United Nations, the question arises of the meaning that should be given to this meeting and of the commitments that can and must there. To be taken.

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Sixty years after the adoption of the charter which proclaims in its preamble the fundamental values ​​to which the organization is dedicated to promoting, the world has changed.

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The legacy that the twentieth century leaves to ours is contrasted and the trauma it suffered from September 11 of its first year, a deeply irrational attack targeted at the heart of what we call "civilization", has further obscured its significance. scope. We grope for meaning.

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On the one hand, the values ​​proclaimed in 1945 at the end of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, made explicit in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, in the conventions on humanitarian law in 1949, completed at the top of the Earth at Rio in 1992 and at the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993, remain inscribed in all official texts and in the constitutions of all democratic states.

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On the other hand, no century has known as many massacres, genocides, dictatorships, violations of human rights and violations of international law as the twentieth, but it is also the one that saw the end. colonial empires, apartheid, Soviet totalitarianism and the unification of Europe.
But above all the growing acceleration of economic and cultural globalization, the explosion of technologies and means of communication have accentuated the interdependence which marks all human societies at the start of the 21st century.

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The boat we're all on board no longer has a separate deck for the rich and the poor, for whites, blacks, yellows, for the north and south, for the haves and have-nots. It is essential that we become aware of this interdependence, which excludes all populism and imposes a strong global democracy. However, three phenomena today challenge this interdependence.

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The first is the erosion of the Earth's physical resources and of humanity's cultural wealth. With unbridled speed, we have exploited the seas and the forests, the living species and the subsoils despite the cries of warning from environmentalists. Almost as quickly we let cultural diversity die out, disappear thousands of languages, hundreds of traditional wisdoms.

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The second challenge is the scientific and technological explosion with the changes imposed by the computer age without any regulation, as to its impact on living conditions and this not only in the field of armaments where we reach destruction potentials. shudder, but also in that of bio and nanotechnologies, the control of which in the name of the most elementary principle of precaution risks escaping us.

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The third challenge is corporate concentration, which has grown spectacularly over the past twenty years. Put at the service of a tireless and highly competitive search for financial profit, the regrouping between less and less hands of the levers of the world economy leaves the States and the civil societies powerless to seek less inequalities in the distribution of income. and more safeguard of public property.

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In the long term, in the short term, these three challenges spare no one: neither companies, nor scientists, nor technicians, nor States, nor especially the citizens of the world that we know to be more and more each of us and that will be the next generations.

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They frame with their threats an interdependence that calls for new forms of solidarity. Because each of these challenges can be met by decisive and responsible action combining the efforts of civil societies of all peoples and democratic states. It would give global institutions, defenders by definition of the interests of all, the missions and resources that would enable them to effectively serve the values ​​proclaimed by the charter.

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After having consulted with the world leaders gathered in San Francisco by the Saga Foundation on June 26, the anniversary date of the adoption of this charter, the International Collegium (1) proposes the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of a Universal Declaration of Interdependence which presents this term not as an observation, but as a project for a more just and truly united world.

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Online article: http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=322339