Human Rights, Peace, Legality, and Justice

2019-2020

In the awareness that peace dies if separated from justice, we dream of a world where the Golden Rule, the heart of many civilizations and traditions, becomes the way to pursue personally and collectively. Let us embrace the goal of universal brotherhood, the key to the present and future of our peoples, the only one capable of disarming the throwaway culture and open up to better sharing of goods, interdependence, and dialogue, the main path to peace.

courses of action

We want to be the change we would like to see happen in the world, and that is why we commit ourselves personally, each one in their own place:

to recognize and promote fundamental and inviolable human rights, embedded in the constituent dignity of each individual, as building blocks for the common good;
to be peacemakers, wherever peace is wounded, the balance of the world is compromised, or human rights are denied;
to be a practical response to overcome conflict with dialogue, disagreement with potential agreement, offense with paths of reconciliation, separation with hardly won consensus, and broken relations with healing reparation;
to educate others and ourselves to practise legality, which in compliance with the laws considers the good of others as our own, even to the extent of personal commitment against all forms of corruption;
to take measures for justice to defend the dignity of each individual life.

good practices

Let us commit ourselves immediately, in today’s world that is in our hands, involving our friends, our colleagues, our civil or religious communities, associations, and national and international institutions. Let’s get our hands dirty together with many people and with creativity, starting from the challenges we face locally.

Many proposed actions are already underway. Here are some of them:

Time Out for Peace, every day at noon in each time zone we stop for a moment of silence or prayer to ask, together, for the gift of peace and focus our personal commitment to building it wherever we live;
Living Peace International, an international project of education for peace;
Economia Disarmata (Unarmed Economy), a sharing and action group for disarmament;
MilONGa Project, an international volunteering platform that offers the opportunity for young people aged 21 to 35 to experience “fraternal” and intercultural volunteer work, in synergy with the work of NGOs that are already operating in the “peripheries” of our planet.
Summer Campus of Legality and Hombre Mundo workshops, training and action workshops organized in various parts of the world, in response to a social need and/or a specific marginal area;
Slotmob, campaign against new poverty and addiction to gambling;
Rete Progetto Pace (Peace Project Network), an international network of schools, organizations, and associations that work together to promote a culture of peace;
Non Dalla Guerra (Not From War), a project of education for peace and international volunteering;
Sports4Peace, educating for Peace through games and sports;
Pro Bono Recife, free legal advice so that everyone can have access to justice;
Conferences and workshops on Human Rights, Peace, Legality, and Justice.

It is written in the Preamble of the UNESCO Constitution of 1945: “wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.” In a world torn by all kinds of conflicts, terrorism, destruction, oppression, walls that rise also in the hearts, peace can be built starting from small steps and concrete gestures. It is the fruit of an authentic dialogue, of fraternity lived so that what is recognized today as “the right to peace” may be realized, in the journey towards the unity of peoples.

Click here to download the in-depth kit.

On 10 December 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: a turning point in the history of humanity, seen – as in the Preamble – as human family. Universality underlines the centrality of human dignity, constitutive of every person and source of fundamental and inviolable rights. They are personal and social rights, which do not coincide with the claims of the individual, nor can they be conceived as their powers; they are essential attributes of every human being and as such worthy of protection.

Click here to download the in-depth kit.

In the current period of change, rules alone are not enough to prevent violence, widespread illegality, corruption, exploitation. Legality must become a “culture” and a way of life for citizens and institutions, in numerous relationships and in the reciprocity of rights and duties to the point of looking at the good of others as their own.

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Plights and events in history tell us that at the bottom of every injustice lies all kinds of choices, violent or not, which exclude or deny the other. So justice awaits the first step in relationships: inclusion and recognition of the dignity of each one. It is sharing beyond every abandonment, openness of oneself beginning with small gestures, giving and immersing oneself in every situation of discomfort and vulnerability. Justice restores, does not destroy, it is a condition of peace.

Click here to download the in-depth kit.