UN asks as ' Mother Earth ' worth human rights

United Nations diplomats on Wednesday will be reserved for urgent issues of international peace and security to spend an entire day debating the rights of "mother earth".

A block of Socialist governments usually led by Bolivia raised the issue on the agenda of the General Assembly to discuss the establishment of a UN Convention that the same rights found in the Universal Declaration of human rights would give to mother nature.

Treaty supporters want the introduction of legal systems to the balance between human rights and what they perceive to be the inalienable rights of the other members of the Earth community--plants, animals, and the terrain.

Communities and environmental activists would be given more legal power to monitor and control industries and development to harmony between man and nature. Although the United States and other Western Governments are in favour of sustainable development, some see the upcoming event, "harmony with nature," as political grandstanding--an attempt to blame environmental degradation and climate change on capitalism.

"The concept of" Mother Earth "is not generally accepted," said a spokesman for the British mission to the UN about Bolivian proposal. "In general, our position is that we must focus on key sustainable development issues through existing channels and processes to deal with."

The General Assembly a resolution two years ago, Bolivia guided proclaim 22 April as international mother earth day. " The measure was approved by all 192 Member States. But the Bolivian President Evo Morales eyes much more, vowing in a speech to the UN members who started a worldwide movement was to "a Declaration on the rights of mother earth."

Morales, who repeatedly says "the Central enemy of mother earth is capitalism", named for the making of a Charter that the right to life of all living things. Morales, who was named world hero of mother earth by the General Assembly, has since made great progress in his campaign.

In January, it was Bolivia's world's first nation to grant equal rights to the natural environment for humans. Bolivian law of mother earth is strongly influenced by the spiritual indigenous Andean world outlook that around the Earth deity Pachamama runs, roughly translated to mother earth.

The Bolivian law stipulates 11 rights for nature, which include: the right to life and existence; the right to clean water and clean air; the right not cellular structure modified or genetically altered; the right of nature free from human change processes. The law also provides a Ministry of mother earth to act as an ombudsman, who ensures the nature is "not affected my mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of the ecosystems and local resident communities."

Encouraged by this victory, Morales goal is to make its domestic performance as a UN Convention. An address in 2008 to a UN forum on indigenous people, he said the first step in saving the Earth is to "eradicate capitalism" and to force rich industrialized countries to "debt to pay their environment." Morales presented 10 points, or Evo's ten commandments, as they affectionately named by followers, to save the planet.

Among them is a call to the end of the capitalist system, and a world without imperialism or colonialism. Respect for mother earth is commandment 6. UN critics slammed the decision to spend a whole day of mother earth legislation as not only a waste of time and resources, but a great blunder.

"The UN is a one-Act show," said u.n. watchdog Anne Bayefsky, of view to the UN, in which "Western democracies are responsible for the world's ills and developing countries are eternal victims."

Bayefsky said that the General Assembly of the focus on mother earth distracts from more pressing issues and problems at the United Nations.

"The rights of inanimate objects violated by the developed countries to be considered as a useful focal point this month," she said, adding that "Syria is scheduled for next month to the UN's top human rights body to be elected, and Iran is on the u.n. rights body of the top women." Syria is one of the sponsors of the Treaty "mother earth".

Bolivia's Ambassador to the u.n., Pablo Solon, who was on the debate and the ' expert ' panel discussions at the UN Headquarters, said, "currently many harmful human activities are fully legally" Morales represent, including those that cause climate change.

"If legal systems recognized the rights of other-than-human," he says, such as mountains, rivers, forests and animals, "courts able to deal with the fundamental problems of environmental pollution."

It's not clear if Bolivia's new stringent environmental laws will actually go as far to protect life forms such as insects, but the legislation includes all living creatures.


View the original article here


0 comments to "UN asks as ' Mother Earth ' worth human rights"

Post a Comment

Blog Archive