Urgent change in global governance

(This article was originally published in Spanish by Other News)

 

‘No challenge is beyond

of the creative capacity 

of the human species’.

J. F. Kennedy, June 1963.

 

The turning point is when situations of an irreversible nature are reached. It is important to ensure that circumstances do not arise that inevitably require new solutions. And let there be no despair. It is a citizenry conscious of equal dignity and capable of expressing itself that must finally put into practice the lucid Charter of the United Nations: ‘We the peoples... have resolved to save succeeding generations from the horror of war’ —war and any other ‘horror’, such as the deterioration of the environment and thus of the habitability of planet Earth—.

 

The time has come to act, to move from being impassive spectators of what is happening to being very diligent actors. Not a day more of being ‘silent listeners’. It is time for action, for us not to be mere recipients of often biased information, but actors who participate, each in his or her own sphere, bearing in mind Burke's maxim: ‘No one makes a greater mistake than he who does nothing because he thinks he can do very little’. All the seeds, without exception, are necessary. Every grain of sand. Every drop.

 

There are moments, very few, when change is suddenly possible. The radical change that is required can only be imagined as the result of a great global outcry of ‘We, the peoples’, at last able, with a resolute attitude, to make the transition from force to word, from imposition to joint reflection.

 

There is an urgent need for many voices to mobilize in the knowledge that now —equal in dignity and able to participate— they must act without further delay. Yes: now, for the first time in history, ‘We, the peoples ....’ can get the veto abolished in the United Nations ... and in the European Union, also disqualified from decision-making by the requirement of ‘unanimity’, the antithesis of democracy.

 

It is imperative to address the major challenges on a global scale, before their possible solution is no longer effective.  The major priorities of food, access to drinking water, quality health services, care for the environment, education, emigration... are challenges to which we must respond together. 

 

Inventing the future. Through modern technology, the best expression of the voice of the people, of global solidarity, can take place. Civil society now has, in addition to its undeniable leading role in solidarity aid, the possibility not only to make itself heard, but also to make itself listened to.

 

The human species longs for, dreams of, a ‘new beginning’, where instead of preparing for war, it can achieve peace by listening, understanding, joining voices and efforts.

 

In 79 years (since 1945) it has NOT been possible to implement the Charter, to fulfill the will of ‘We, the peoples...’, always silenced by the veto, by plutocratic and supremacist governance. It was Eisenhower, the President of the United States, who had the courage, on 20 January 1961, to convey to his successor, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and to the American people, that it was not the President but the ‘war industrial complex’ who was really in charge in America. From President Wilson's creation of the League of Nations at the end of World War I to Roosevelt's founding of the United Nations, the opportunities for the transition from the force to the word have progressively faded. Now, as I have already stressed, the time has come for ‘We the peoples...’

 

And what should we do immediately for the generations to come? It is not a question of economic, political, social provisions... It is above all a question of inventing a different future. In this respect, I will never forget what Professor Hans Krebs, Nobel Prize winner in Biochemistry, said to me in his laboratory in Oxford: ‘The solution does not lie in these sophisticated instruments, nor in the collection of data... The solution is to think what no one has thought of’... Yes: each human being, unique and capable of creating, our hope.

 

Let us give wings to the human species so that, without vetoes, it can act democratically for the great transition from the force to the word.

 

The world is entering a new era. We have many things to preserve for the future and many things to change decisively. At last, the people. At last, the voice of the people. At last, citizens' power. At last, the word and not force. A culture of peace and never again a culture of war.