The new observer. September 15, 2005. By Jean Daniel

In addition to this, you will need to know more about it.

To face the dangers which threaten the world - political but also economic, ecological, scientific - a reform of the United Nations will not be enough. Now is the time for citizen mobilization.

In addition to this, you will need to know more about it.

Men, human beings, are condemned to live together on their planet. But do they all really want it? And have they given themselves the means to do so while respecting each other? Before this question was answered by the Heads of State and Government meeting on September 14 in New York at an exceptional UN summit, a conference was held in Paris on Monday 12, organized by a group whose initiative , inspiration and funds come from the American left. This group, extended to include European personalities, has met every year for four years in a different country. In 2004 in Rome. In 2005, therefore, in Paris. In 2006 it will be in Morocco. It is Professor Benjamin Barber who is the soul and the theorist. In Paris, Michel Rocard exercises his intellectual authority and represents the International Collegium for Ethics, Politics and Science.

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The response of this group to the question posed at the outset about the means of coexistence is not negative. In principle, from a legal and moral point of view, as Stéphane Hessel emphasized, the values ​​proclaimed in 1945 to get out of Auschwitz and Hiroshima were successively clarified in the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (1948) , the conventions on humanitarian law (1949) and in the supplements to these conventions at the Rio Earth Summit (1992) and then at the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna (1993). These values ​​remain inscribed in all official texts and in the constitutions of all democratic states. But the balance sheet obviously remains to be made since the twentieth century, even if it ended up freeing itself from Nazi and Soviet totalitarianisms, even if it saw the end of the colonial empires and the unification of Europe, remains the one of the most barbaric in history.

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On the one hand, principles such as Erasme, Montaigne and Montesquieu dreamed of them; on the other, a reality which invites us to register barbarism in the normal evolution of civilization. The 197 heads of state and government of the exceptional summit believe, at least for more than half of them, that a reform of the United Nations is only made necessary by the new distribution of power States. They have the idea that the Security Council, in particular, no longer represents the balance of the world, even in its only demographic dimension, since it lacks countries like India, Brazil, Nigeria. Secretary General Kofi Annan, inspired by French constitutional experts, also advocates deep reforms in the way decisions are implemented in the Council and in the general assembly. This is where the Movement for Interdependence comes in. In the eyes of its leaders, the operational flaws and serious shortcomings of the past have been far too aggravated by absolutely new and threatening phenomena for it to be sufficient to “reorganize” the United Nations.

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We are in a state of planetary alert. The problems posed by the erosion of the physical resources of the Earth and the overexploitation of seas and forests as living species and subsoils; the scientific and technological explosion, which is growing exponentially due to the intervention of IT; "The regrouping in less and less numerous (especially American) hands of the levers of the world economy"; finally, the relative incapacity of the United Nations to meet all these challenges: all this must lead to the promotion of a new and vast movement which would no longer be animated by official bodies but by civil societies and public opinion, so as to make all individuals interdependent global citizens.

In addition to this, you will need to know more about it.

One of the reasons for hope of this American left comes from the fact that the terrorism of September 11, 2001, the disaster of the Iraq war and the disaster of Louisiana convinced the Americans - against George Bush - that they could not no longer do everything on their own and that unilateralism had become a dangerous absurdity. The interest of this movement is that it takes into account international realities, the strength of nationalisms and the weaknesses of individuals. It is a question of organizing mobilizations of individual energies to alert those responsible and alarm public opinion. It is only in the face of the urgency of the danger that men realize their interdependence, the identity of their condition and their will to act.