Table of Contents

Human Law: A Bridge to World Peace

By David Gallup

Throughout history, human beings have used the process of codifying laws to establish guidelines both for protecting the differences that we have and for avoiding conflict over these same differences.

Law-making has usually been a competitive, success-driven negotiation with one or another side claiming victory. To return to the positive roots of the law-making process, we need to view it as a way in which people can come together based on fulfillment of human rights and human needs. From a global perspective, law can protect people and encompass their wide range of ideas and customs. Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reaffirms protection of diversity: "Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status."

Yet many people's rights in the world are not respected, often due to the distinctions listed above. All of these different groups' rights fall under the rubric of universal human rights. Women's rights, for example, whether the society acknowledges them or not, are human rights. And the moment that women and men create or apply laws differently to women is the moment when women lose equal treatment.

In Backlash, journalist Susan Faludi promotes equality based on universal law. She writes, "Examining gender differences can be an opportunity to explore a whole network of power relations-but so often it becomes just another invitation to justify them. Whenever the 'specialness' of women is saluted (or any population group's, for that matter), the recognition is bound to be double-edged." Faludi argues that distinguishing one group's rights as "different" or "special" from civil and human rights further intensifies the differences, leading to disempowerment.

Because men have had an overwhelming influence in drafting, implementing and enforcing the majority of laws around the world, women have been either excluded from the process or their ability to exercise their rights has been limited. Although law ought to be a human construct, it has mostly been a male-only construct. Law-making has reflected the patriarchal power structure that has dominated politics, religion, culture, technology and business. For example, religious law as many men have interpreted it in the Talmud, the Bible, and the Koran, maintains an inferior and servile role for women. The disempowerment of women in Afghanistan, through restrictions on work, freedom of movement, and dress, reveals how warring males establish oppressive laws.

What is preventing the executives of transnational oil companies, the weapons producers, the clothing manufacturers and even the leaders in technology, who at first glance appear human-rights-affirming, from supporting laws and law-making that transcend religion, national politics and business gain? Those in power want to maintain the status-quo of profit versus equality. Rather than concede that everyone will profit through expanding markets if war is outlawed and human rights are upheld universally, the international power brokers exploit law to continue their domination, power games and petty arguments. They feel that if others are able to participate in evolving law, they will no longer control how the earth's resources are used, and they are right. That is why they continue to support national, political, religious and gender-based divisions.

International Law as a Codification of Division

International law-making has codified the divisions that those in power are afraid to give up. Generally, national government officials view law-making as a chance to control what others do based on their own "internal" security interests. Nuclear arms treaties, for example, have failed to eliminate nuclear weapons. The International Court of Justice has failed to outlaw nuclear weapons because the patriarchal power structure has dominated the process of legislating and adjudicating.

A playground fight is perhaps the most apt metaphor for current international law. While the nation-state bullies show off their nuclear weapons and duke it out, the rest of the developing countries are at the edge of the arena, cheering on one bully or another; leaving the playground in fear; or remaining speechless and powerless to intervene procedurally or substantively in the fight.

Under international law, enforcement is a state (national government) responsibility. The state may have an interest in enforcing the law outside "their" territory while also violating it within the mapped borders. International law separates humans by imaginary national boundaries, thus pitting people against people. It creates enemies because the disparity of empowerment among nations means that many people have no governmental protections to ensure that their rights are upheld. Some governments keep people oppressed, whereas others expend resources recklessly in a misguided effort to protect the citizens with weaponry and military force.

Human rights comprise the basis for world law, which is a human construct- law that applies to everyone equally and law that everyone evolves and enforces. World law, rather than national and international law, can expose the draconian divisions that have existed to maintain male dominance.

World Law as Peaceful Communication

When the process of law-making itself is violent, oppressive and exclusionary, we cannot expect to end up with law that is relational, human-rights-affirming and universally applicable.

How do we devise a process of law-making that is nonhierarchical and noncompetitive?

First, we may have to change our understanding of what law means. Law exists to help us get along. It is not meant to further divide us or to give some people advantages over others; rather, it is to provide equality of opportunity and outcome. Law-making is mutually beneficial as long as everyone views it as a communicative, consensual and constructive process. It should be a process that encourages alternative viewpoints, embraces differences and encourages compromise and understanding. The principle in this case is that we are equal- others' values count, and people are free to do what they want as long as their actions do not impinge upon others' freedom of expression or action.

Law-making does not have to pit Republicans against Democrats, Hutus against Tutsis, or the over-developed world against the developing world. Multiplicity of views represents our human differences better than dualistic dichotomies. When people focus on their own self-interest, they lose sight of a broader reality. They begin to reify their own goals and ideals, thus setting a law-making battle into motion.

In You Just Don't Understand, linguistics professor Deborah Tannen provides an explanation of interpersonal communication that we can apply to the law-making process. She writes, "Communication is a continual balancing act, juggling the conflicting needs for intimacy and independence. To survive in the world, we have to act in concert with others, but to survive as ourselves, rather than simply as cogs in a wheel, we have to act alone. In some ways, all people are the same: We all eat and sleep and drink and laugh and cough, and often we eat, and laugh at, the same things. But in some ways, each person is different, and individuals' differing wants and preferences may conflict with each other. Offered the same menu, people make different choices. And if there is cake for dessert, there is a chance that one person may get a larger piece than another-and an even greater chance that one will think the other's piece is larger, whether it is or not."

In this communication context, law formation requires us to balance our need for interdependence on others with our need to exercise our independence from others. The World Syntegrity(tm) Project (WSP) provides one process for law-making in a format based on consensus and equitable communication. World law as it is evolving through the WSP is based on human rights and human needs fulfillment. The WSP's law-making process is holistic, encompassing the diversity of human viewpoints. It provides a process that brings people together based on agreements between individuals, thereby ensuring that everyone has a vested interest in the process. By empowering everyone to participate in law-making, law becomes relational, linking people together. Through the WSP, people unite to determine how laws are made, which laws are made and how the laws are applied.

The only way to protect our diversity is through globally enforced law as well as through world citizenship because peace is a consequence of common law between common citizens.

Law can be a club with which we hit each other over the head, or it can be a common language that helps us evolve toward one humanity. World human rights law is about creating a common language to serve as a bridge to world peace.

David Gallup is the General Counsel of the World Service Authority.


Table of Contents