Sterminio per fame: I capi di Stato africani per il diritto alla vita e alla libertà
LES CHEFS D'ETAT AFRICAINS POUR LE DROIT A LA VIE ET A LA LIBERTE
LOS JEFES DE ESTADO AFRICANOS A FAVOR DEL DERECHO A LA VIDA Y A LA LIBERTAD| (www.radicalparty.org) DOCUMENTS ON: HUNGER / DOC.TYPE: APPEALS/AND RELATED TO |
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15/02/1986 | The african head of State for the right to life and freedom |
ABSTRACT: Five years after the distribution of the Nobel-Prize winners Manifesto, the Radical Party's campaign to obtain the approval of laws which proposed giving top priority to saving millions of people from death by hunger, has been partially successful in Italy only. The Italian parliament had in fact approved a grant of over a thousand billion dollars. On the other hand, no concrete act was forthcoming from the governments and Parliaments of the other industrialised countries of the west which maintain the level of aid to third world countries, below 0.70% of the GNP. The Manifesto signed in February 1986 by 11 African heads of State requests that "the United Nations be endowed with the power and authority to ensure that world pacts and inter-regional pacts for agricultural and food security are put into practice." WE who have been invested with the highest public authority in our countries and despite the diversity in our history all equally and together bear witness to the appalling consequences of the prevailing international disorder, a disorder which is at the same time legal, political, institutional, economic and moral; WE who must stand by and watch the wholesale extermination of human life through poverty and hunger brought about by the same extraordinary powers of science and human intelligence which are capable today of unimagined feats in the universe and of revolutionary social and technological achievements, through the mastery in a matter of decades of more concepts of greater significance than those amassed throughout the entire history of mankind; WE more than four years after the Manifesto Appeal was signed by 95 Nobel Laureates, which is still helping to spur on and must continue to make ever more tangible the aims, hopes, struggles and policies of life, peace and human solidarity and interdependence in the world; more than four years after the solemn resolution of the European Parliament endorsed by the vast majority of representatives of hundreds of millions of European citizens, which showed the world not just Europe the objectives, methods and means by which to lay, now, the foundations for the development of their land and their states through the survival of tens of millions of men and women otherwise faced with imminent death through poverty and starvation; more than two years after the historic resolution jointly adopted by the European members of Parliament and the representatives of the 65 countries of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific meeting in the joint ACP-EEC Assembly, which demanded that the LOME III Convention should have as its primary task that of ensuring the right to life, in addition to ensuring equally and within the same context human, economic, social and cultural rights; WE, believing it necessary without delay to formulate and demand consistent and appropriate ways of securing these ends, even by giving binding force to the moral law and the law of positive rights, now recognised and required by the highest international, political and religious institutions and by all free and responsible people: the laws of the right to life, of human and civil rights, of political rights, of the right to health and the right to development, all affirmed by charters, treaties, declarations and pacts all of which are not observed; WE, observing that the threat of a nuclear holocaust cannot be averted if we ignore the atrocious reality of the holocaust through poverty, the millions condemned to starvation, and the record level of exploitation; or if we ignore the fact that war has been for decades an everyday, tragic fact in the southern regions of the world and not just a threat, as too many people in the North appear to believe when they arm themselves "against the threat" and do not arm themselves against the terrible reality of war and holocaust through poverty, which is currently being enacted; WE, fully conscious of our responsibilities and seeking guidance from God under his different names, who lives in our consciences, guiding them and inspiring our diverse faiths and beliefs and those of all our peoples; BY REASON WHEREOF WE affirm our conviction and determination to do our utmost, and to demand that others do their utmost, from this moment on, to persuade the greatest possible number of countries, North and South, rich and poor, opulent and destitute, and the greatest possible number of organisations and individuals, to join together in a formal and binding manner; to link within the same context the right to life and the right to liberty, the right to peace and the right to justice, the right to equality in interdependence, and to reject once and for all the false choice, for oneself or anyone else, between the nations' right to defence and security and the human and civil rights of individuals, between the need to develop and the demands of law and freedom; to adopt immediately laws and decisions giving absolute priority everywhere to the survival of those on the verge of death from starvation and destitution, by winning back life, work and production from their land, by making bloom what today resembles an ever-expanding desert, by halting and reversing the desperate and tragic movements of refugees which transfer and extend further death, not life, misery, not well-being, disorder, not order, all this means of a major project of special integrated aid, adopted to this end; in order to confer binding power on the United Nations Organisation to introduce laws and resolutions on international peace and security in conjunction with the right to life and development for the populations suffering death through hunger and poverty, this right to life and development being a substantial right of the individual which must be considered as having absolute priority; in order that between now and 1986, all the governments accede to Resolution No 2626 of 24 October 1970 by allocating 0.7% of their GNP to aid for life and development and earmarking additional special funds for the first major special integrated intervention projects to ensure the survival and development of tens of millions of people on the verge of extinction through hunger and poverty; in order that the United Nations should be given powers and forces to promote the signing of world and interregional agreements guaranteeing agricultural and food security and development, which can offset and control perverse protectionist mechanisms and the monstrous world debt which now so often threatens the economics of the creditor countries themselves and is tending to mortgage their general policies to the advantage of private interest networks, both domestic and international, often based on iniquitous profits and "monopolistic" and "oligopolistic" concentrations of production and marketing. WE THE UNDERSIGNED, within the framework which constitutes and authorises our specific responsibilities, undertake to do our utmost to ensure that in our states, at the seat of the United Nations General Assembly, in the UN bodies and organisations and in all other institutional and political forums, the aforementioned objectives be pursued immediately by means of the appropriate, consistent and necessary deliberations, guidelines and directives, including those addressed to the International Court of Justice in respect of the non-fulfilment and non-implementation of commitments already made and those to be made in the future. LIST OF SIGNATORIES Mr. Abdou DIOUF President of the Republic of Senegal Mr. Félix HOUPHOUETBOIGNY President of the Republic of the Ivory Coast Mr. Robert MUGABE Prime Minister of the Republic of Zimbabwe Dr. Quett K.J. MASIRE President of the Republic of Botswana Captain Thomas SANKARA President of the National Revolution Council President of Burkina Faso Dr. Kenneth D. KAUNDA President of the Republic of Zambia President of the Organisation of African Unity Sir Dawda K. JAWARA President of the Republic of Gambia General Moussa TRAORE President of the Republic of Masli General Seyni KOUNTCHE President of the Supreme Military Council Mr. Swar Eldahab ABDELRAHMAN President of the Military Transition Council President of the Republic of Sudan Mr. El Hadj Omar BONGO President of the Republic of Gabon Captain Jerry RAWLINGS President of the Republic of Ghana Mr. Lansana CONTE President of the Republic of Guinea Mr. Gnassingbe EYADEMA President of the Republic of Cape Verde Mr. Hissein HABRE President of the Republic of Chad Mr. André KOLINGBA President of the Central African Republic Mr. Paul BIYA President of the Republic of Cameroun |