Release . September 24, 2004.
Messrs. President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry. On November 2, one of you will be elected President of the United States. Because of the power wielded by your great country far beyond its borders, billions of women and men who are not called upon to vote will be deeply affected by the choice made by American voters.
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We, members of the International Ethics Collegium, it is as citizens of the planet, voters without a ballot paper, that we are sending you this letter. We ask you to take into account the fact that in this new era of interdependence which is ours, where the elections still stop at the borders, but their consequences go beyond them, your responsibilities are no longer exercised only towards the States. -United and the American people but also vis-à-vis the whole world.
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From global warming to the global market, from internationalized crime to technology, interdependence is pervasive in our world. It is, however, terrorism that has brought to light the fatal interdependence that characterizes our twenty-first century. The heinous attacks of September 11, 2001, such as those that followed in Casablanca, Bali, Madrid and elsewhere, have aroused unanimous condemnation and sympathy around the world, and have also shown that no nation is more capable of preserving, it alone, its internal security and its sovereignty.
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The realities of interdependence require us to fulfill its positive promises through the establishment of a global architecture that ensures full equity in the distribution of economic resources, social benefits and human development. In this context, the United States must recognize the fundamental needs and principles that our Collegium has placed at the heart of its concerns:
the need for democracy to be established on a planetary scale so that popular sovereignties can tame global anarchic forces which are beyond the control of nations, and that the diversity and equality of democratic cultures and civilizations is ensured;
the need to recognize the public goods of our world, and to protect them as a common heritage, whether they are intangible goods such as access to knowledge, information and communication technologies, or non-material resources renewables such as drinking water and fossil fuels;
the need to formulate and establish common and interdependent values, which can serve as a bulwark against cynicism and relativism, values which can only be defined through dialogue between cultures and civilizations and through democratic deliberation;
the need to affirm that political freedoms are inseparable from the definition of economic, social, and cultural rights whose scope extends across cultures and generations.
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We believe that we have thus expressed to you the fundamental concerns of the citizens of the world who will have to live with the consequences of American leadership without having been able to take part in the vote. At the same time, we are aware that as leaders of your great nation you are also a bearer of hope, able to use the power bestowed on you by the American people for the benefit of all mankind. The United States will not find peace and justice without cooperating multilaterally with the rest of the world and its international institutions, but we also know that the world will not experience peace and justice without the involvement of the United States.
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It is in this spirit that we ask you to read this letter ˇ even if you have a legal obligation only towards the citizens of your country ˇ and to offer the citizens of the planet (your invisible voters) a thoughtful response. You can be sure that it will be greeted with the recognition due to those who go beyond their political responsibilities to encompass the ethical responsibilities of statesmen, and who, in doing so, recognize the reality of interdependence and transform it into hope.
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The petitioners
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Milan Kucan, former president of Slovenia, and Michel Rocard, former Prime Minister of France, co-presidents of the Collegium international.
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Andreas Van Agt, former Prime Minister of the Netherlands; Henri Atlan, bio-physicist and philosopher, France; Lloyd Axworthy, President of the University of Winnipeg, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Canada; Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former president of Brazil; Manuel Castells, sociologist, Spain; Mireille Delmas-Marty, professor of law, Collège de France; Ruth Dreifuss, former president of the Swiss Confederation; Gareth Evans, President of ICG, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Australia; Malcolm Fraser, Chairman of the InterAction Council, former Prime Minister, Australia; Bronislaw Geremek, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Poland; Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie, former President of Indonesia; HRH Hassan bin Tallal, Jordan; Vaclav Havel, former President of the Czech Republic; Stéphane Hessel, Ambassador of France; Alpha Oumar Konaré, former president of Mali; Claudio Magris, writer, Italy; Edgar Morin, philosopher, France; Sadako Ogata, former High Commissioner for Refugees at the United Nations, President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency; Jacques Robin, philosopher, founder of “Transversales”, France; Mary Robinson, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, former President of Ireland; Wolfgang Sachs, economist, Germany; Mohamed Sahnoun, Ambassador of Algeria; George Vassiliou, former President of the Republic of Cyprus; Richard von Weizsäcker, former President of the Federal Republic of Germany; Huanming Yang, Director and Professor, Beijing Genome Institute, China.