NEWS RELEASE
February 24, 1989 STRUCTURES FOR PEACE
Washington, D.C.
GARRY DAVIS STATEMENT
(From Tokyo)
While over 150 heads of state or spokespersons are here today united in burying the
dead, we of the World Government of World citizens are attending to the living...as usual.
From a tiny room at the Dai Ichi Hotel, with the world flag scotchtaped to the wall
over the bed, a hot iron at the ready (for laminating World Government documents), the
various tools of passport issuance and world citizenship registration neatly arranged on
the small table converted into the Tokyo branch office of the World Service Authority, I
have been registering individuals from all parts of the world community as citizens of our
global government and issuing them the official World Passport since I arrived in Tokyo a
week ago.
The heads of state or spokespersons will all return soon to their respective nations to
continue arming for a final test of strength, a test ironically by which humanity itself
will be totally destroyed.
Among all the discussions heads of state will hold with each other today, none will
broach the subject of the anarchic condition between them. Yet most of them govern by
virtue of the mandate of a constitution which defines the legal parameters which bind
them. Why this obvious dichotomy? Because without that anarchy, they relinquish their
alleged sovereignty.
We will continue, therefore, to affirm our individual sovereignty as human beings
exercising our inalienable right to choose our political allegiance by entering into the
world social and political contract WITH EACH OTHER, THE RESULT OF WHICH IS WORLD PEACE.
This conference is wise to dedicate itself to structures for peace. For this assumes the
present structure of nation statehood and its handmaiden, the United Nations, is not such
a structure.
But humanity is already a "structure," as is our planetary home. We, as
sovereign individuals, are already dynamically allied to both. The affirmation of that
allegiance in legal fact is world citizenship. The aggregate of thus worldly legalized
human beings is the World Government of World Citizens.
"Citizenship" is the seminal condition for social peace between humans
residing in the same geographical area. Placing "world" before
"citizenship," therefore, connotes that same social contract raised to the
global level.
As the right to choose one's political allegiance is an inalienable or natural right,
resulting in legitimate government derived from the consent of the governed, so the World
Government of World Citizens is likewise legitimate having been derived from the willful
exercise of sovereign individuals claiming a civic commitment of a planetary character.
That the World Government of World Citizens, at this moment in its short history, is not
yet circumscribed by a formal constitution does in no way diminish its legitimate status
as a declared and recognized government.
With its citizenry increasing rapidly, however, and its present function as a role
model, distinct from the nation-state system, and given the two major problems facing the
entire world community-war and environmental crises-a more formal structuring of our
government is implied and necessary.
For this reason a World Government Constitutional Convention is planned to begin in
September, 1990 for the purpose of drafting a constitution for our already operative
government. The government of New Zealand-a nuclear-free nation by law-is in essential
agreement that this convention be held in that country. Delegates for this convention,
specialists in their respective fields, reflecting all facets of humanity's activities
while at the same time pledged to reflect humanity's integral character and nature as well
as its common earthly home, will be chosen from the already-pledged world citizenry.
Copies of the draft constitution will then be submitted to World Citizen Assemblies
throughout the community for ratification. By the third millennium, the WGWC should be
formally instituted and fully operative.
A world peace structure will then have been achieved. Humanity will then have justified
its presence on Mother Earth. From Tokyo-in-the-world, I greet in love and peace one and
all.
Garry Davis
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