THE PEOPLE’S CHARTER TO CREATE A NONVIOLENT WORLD
Launch date: 11 November 2011 (updated 14 May 2018 & 1 July 2020)
Recognising that:
1. The United States government dominates world affairs and is engaged in a perpetual war (sometimes presented as a ‘war on terror’) to secure control of essential diminishing natural resources (including oil, water and strategic minerals) from what the United States ‘Quadrennial Defense Review 2010’ refers to as ‘the Global commons’ (which means, in effect, anywhere in the world, including the land of other peoples). The USA, with less than 5% of the world’s population, consumes 33% of the world’s resources
2. The United States government (sometimes together with pliant government allies in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, America and Australia) maintains military occupation forces in countries such as Afghanistan, the Chagos Archipelago, Iraq and the Mariana Islands
3. The Chinese government occupies Tibet and Uyghuristan (East Turkistan)
4. The Russian government occupies Chechnya
5. The Israeli government occupies Palestine and the Golan Heights (of Syria)
6. The French government occupies Kanaky and French Polynesia
7. The Indonesian government occupies West Papua
8. The Moroccan government occupies Western Sahara
9. The Chinese, Indian and Pakistani governments occupy Kashmir
10. The Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian and Turkish governments occupy Kurdistan
11. The Afghan, Iranian and Pakistani governments occupy Balochistan
12. With 2000 nations in the world but only 200 states, many other national groups suffer occupation. For example, the Armenian government occupies part of Azerbaijan, the Papua New Guinean government occupies Bougainville and the Spanish government occupies Cueta and Milila (enclaves in North Africa)
13. Some peoples (such as the Bedouin, Rohingya and Roma) in particular contexts suffer state or even genocidal oppression as they aspire the liberty to live their chosen lifestyle independently of statehood
14. The populations of many countries including (but not limited to) Bahrain, Brunei, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chad, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Oman, Qatar, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan are violently suppressed by militarily-backed dictatorships
15. The Chinese government violently suppresses the people of China, including practitioners of the gentle, meditative art of Falan Gong, many of whose imprisoned members (along with imprisoned Tibetans, Uyghurs, prisoners of conscience and Christians) are subjected to forced organ removal, now totaling in excess of 100,000 organs per year in an extensive state-controlled program
16. Several elite fora, including the World Economic Forum, the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission, are used to facilitate planning, generation and exacerbation of the many ongoing wars, deepening exploitation within the global economy, environmental destruction and the refugee crisis, among other violent impacts.
17. Elite agents – including the judges and lawyers (who defend elite power using elite-designed and manipulated legal systems), corporate media editors and journalists, many entertainment industry personnel and academics, industry organizations (such as the European Round Table of Industrialists) that represent the interests of major corporations, so-called ‘think tanks’ (such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution) and ‘philanthropic trusts’ (such as the Rockefeller, Carnegie and Ford foundations) – all function to defend, justify or divert attention from elite violence and exploitation.
18. Elite-directed national agencies – notably including those in the so-called ‘intelligence community’ (such as the US CIA, British MI6, Russian SVR RF, Chinese Ministry for State Security and Israeli Mossad) which perform elite functions in relation to spying, surveillance and secret assassinations (particularly of grassroots activists) – and their many lower-level servants (including those who work as political lobbyists or in the bureaucracy as well as those who work in the education, police and prison systems or the military forces) conduct many of the propaganda and other functions necessary to maintain elite social control and perpetrate elite violence.
19. The world’s major corporations inflict enormous ongoing violence (in a myriad of ways) in their pursuit of endless profit at the expense of living beings (human and otherwise) and Earth’s biosphere. These corporations include those involved in the following industries: weapons manufacturers, major banks and their ‘industry groups’ like the International Monetary Conference, investment companies, financial services companies, fossil fuel (coal, oil and gas) corporations, technology corporations, media corporations, major marketing and public relations corporations, agrochemical (pesticides, seeds, fertilizers) giants, pharmaceutical corporations, biotechnology (genetic mutilation) corporations, mining corporations, nuclear power corporations, food multinationals and water corporations. (You can see a list of the major corporations in this article: ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’.)
20. Many of the products of these corporations (including weapons, genetically-mutilated organisms and synthetic poisons) are destroying the ecological foundations of life on Earth
21. Terrorist organizations, criminal organizations, drug cartels and cults use terror and violence to exploit ordinary people
22. Indigenous peoples in many countries have been dispossessed of their land, culture, spirituality and human rights by settler populations from other countries. These indigenous peoples continue to suffer the extraordinary violence, in a wide variety of forms, inflicted by settler populations
23. Women and children throughout the world are subjected to sexual harassment and sexual violence in a myriad of forms, including female genital mutilation
24. The use of nuclear materials to generate electricity and create weapons of mass destruction exposes humankind and other species to unnecessary and unacceptable risks of radioactive contamination
25. The burning of fossil fuels, particularly through vehicle and air travel (producing carbon dioxide), and extensive animal agriculture (producing methane) is precipitating catastrophic alterations in Earth’s climate patterns
26. The Earth’s natural processes are being degraded and destroyed by human violence including (but not limited to) destruction of the atmosphere; destruction of ecosystems such as rainforests, rivers, wetlands, groundwaters, soils, grasslands, coral reefs and the oceans; the over-exploitation and pollution of fresh water supplies; and the degradation and poisoning of industrial agricultural and fishing systems, all of which are precipitating an unnatural and accelerating rate of species extinctions (now at 200 species per day)
27. The Earth’s biosphere is increasingly being polluted by an ever-expanding range of chemical, toxicological, radioactive and other contaminants ranging from plastic and tyre dust to nanowaste and nuclear waste
28. The covert military use of geoengineering – spraying tens of millions of tons of highly toxic metals (including aluminium, barium and strontium) and toxic coal fly ash nanoparticulates (containing arsenic, chromium, thallium, chlorine, bromine, fluorine, iodine, mercury and radioactive elements) into the atmosphere from jet aircraft to weaponize the atmosphere and weather – in order to enhance elite control of human populations, is systematically destroying Earth’s ozone layer – which blocks the deadly portion of solar radiation, UV-C and most UV-B, from reaching Earth’s surface – as well as adversely altering Earth’s weather patterns and polluting its air, water and soil at incredible cost to the health and well-being of living organisms and the biosphere
29. The deployment of 5G electromagnetic radiation technology on Earth and in Space as part of the strategy to implement the fourth industrial revolution will vastly enhance elite control of the human population by enabling more intrusive surveillance while increasing the potential for military violence (including because of the vulnerability of satellites to cyber attacks) and will inflict enormously increased health damage on individual lifeforms while threatening all life on Earth with extinction
30. The militarization of Space and Space exploration are dangerously diverting resources from critical priorities on Earth and polluting Space (with recent estimates of Space junk in excess of 100 trillion items)
31. There are extensive wildlife trafficking networks that capture and illegally transport endangered birds, reptiles and animals to sell for a variety of purposes, forcing many ‘exotic’ species to the brink of extinction
32. The industrial farming of birds and animals for meat and other products causes phenomenal suffering and the premature death of billions of creatures annually
33. There is a massive and increasing number of refugees and internally displaced persons caused by the use of military violence and climatically induced ‘natural’ disasters
34. The trafficking of forcibly removed human organs is widespread
35. Many people devote their energy to the design, manufacture and/or use of weapons and torture equipment in order to harm, mutilate or kill fellow human beings
36. The global economic system (capitalism), maintained by Western military violence, results in the death through starvation-related diseases of 100,000 people in Africa, Asia and Central/South America each day, often denies ordinary working men and women a fair return for their labour, forces many people in industrialized economies into poverty and/or homelessness, and ruthlessly exploits the natural environment and nonhuman species
37. Violent and/or discriminatory practices often deny many groups – including (but not limited to) children, aged people, women, working people, indigenous peoples, racial groups, ethnic groups, religious groups, cultural groups, people of particular castes or without caste, people with particular sexual orientations, people with disabilities, military personnel, incarcerated people and nonhuman species – the opportunities to which they are entitled as living beings on Earth
38. The global slave trade denies 27,000,000 human beings the right to live the life of their choice, condemning many individuals – especially women and children – to lives of sexual slavery, forced labour or as child soldiers
39. Practitioners in the medical and psychiatric industries, vigorously supported by the pharmaceutical industry, inflict enormous violence on human health, both physical and mental
40. There is widespread violence in the family home, in schools, at the workplace and on the street
41. All of the violent behaviours described above have their origin in adult violence against children: this violence generates the warped emotional and behavioural patterns that later manifest as adult violence in its many forms. See Why Violence?
42. It is human violence – against ourselves, each other and the Earth – that threatens to cause human extinction
43. National governments, international government organizations and global institutions (such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization), all of which represent national elites, are not capable of addressing the above problems…
The Purpose of The People’s Charter:
This Charter identifies eight aims of a nonviolent strategy to mobilize ordinary people, local groups, communities, non-government organizations and international networks opposed to these and other manifestations of human violence to explicitly renounce the use of violence themselves and to take nonviolent action to strategically resist this violence in all of its forms for the sake of humankind, future generations, all other species on Earth and the Earth itself.
The aims of this nonviolent strategy are as follows:
1. To convince or, if necessary, nonviolently compel the United States government and United States corporations to no longer use military violence and economic coercion to control world affairs for the benefit of the United States elite and its allied national elites in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, America and Australia
2. To convince or, if necessary, nonviolently compel the United States government and its allied governments to completely dismantle their military (including nuclear) forces and overseas bases, to decolonize or end their occupation of all occupied territories, and to instead adopt a strategy of nonviolent defence
3. To encourage all individuals and organizations currently resisting the military and/or economic domination of the United States elite and its allied elites to recognize the shared nature of our struggle and, when appropriate, to coordinate at local, regional or global level our nonviolent strategies to resist this domination
4. To support the development and implementation of comprehensive nonviolent strategies for the liberation of Afghanistan, Bahrain, Brunei, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chad, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, French Polynesia, Iran, Iraq, Kanaky, the Mariana Islands, Myanmar, North Korea, Oman, Qatar, Palestine, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, Syria, Tibet, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Western Sahara, West Papua and all other countries living under the yoke of occupation or dictatorship. See The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach or Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.
5. To support the development and implementation of comprehensive nonviolent strategies to end violence in the home, slavery, the sexual trafficking of women and children, female genital mutilation, forced organ removal, the use of child soldiers, all manifestations of exploitation, all types of environmental destruction, wildlife trafficking, all forms of pollution, deployment of 5G, atmospheric geoengineering, industrial farming, medical and psychiatric violence, as well as the existence of terrorist and criminal organizations, drug cartels and cults. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy.
6. To support the development and implementation of comprehensive nonviolent strategies to end the marginalization and exploitation of particular identity groups including (but not limited to) indigenous peoples; women; workers; racial, ethnic, religious and cultural groups; children; aged people; military personnel; incarcerated people; refugees and internally displaced peoples; those who are homeless and/or live in poverty; people with a particular sexual orientation; people with disabilities and nonhuman species
7. To encourage the people of the industrialized world (except those already living in poverty) to each accept personal responsibility for reducing their consumption of global resources to a level that is commensurate with genuine equity for all human beings on Earth and the ecological carrying capacity of the Earth itself, particularly given the needs of other species. See The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth.
8. To encourage all adults to understand the violence they (unconsciously) inflict on children and to take responsibility for ending this. See ‘My Promise to Children’.
The methods of this nonviolent strategy are as follows:
1. To listen deeply to ourselves, each other and the Earth
2. To engage in acts of nonviolent resistance and creation: acts of nonviolent protest and persuasion, acts of nonviolent noncooperation and acts of nonviolent intervention, including the creation of new organisations, communities, institutions and structures that genuinely meet the needs of all beings in a just, peaceful and ecologically sustainable manner. (For ideas about nonviolent actions, see ‘198 Tactics of Nonviolent Action’.)
The People’s Charter Pledge:
Having read and agreed with this Charter:
1. I pledge to listen to the deep truth of myself, others and the Earth
2. I pledge to make every effort to progressively eliminate the violence I inflict on myself, others and the Earth
3. I pledge to engage in acts of nonviolent resistance and/or creation to bring about a nonviolent future on Earth
Signing The People’s Charter:
If you are committed to acting on this Charter, please add your name and country to the list of Charter participants here.
For Ideas:
If you need ideas to fulfill your pledge, please consult the websites and books cited in The People’s Charter.
You are welcome to invite others to consider signing this Charter.
Robert J. Burrowes – Australia
Anita McKone – Australia
Anahata Giri – Australia
The People's Charter to Create a Nonviolent World 