"we have a universal right to a place on earth"

Greetings, fellow campaigners for peace and justice,
I wanted to draw your attention to this important petition that I recently signed:

"we have a universal right to a place on earth"
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/AmendUNHumanRights?e The UN declaration is failing the most vulnerable part of humanity. This is explained here:http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/AmendUNHumanRights/WhyDeclarationFatallyFlawed.pdf

I really think this is an important cause, and I'd like to encourage you to add your signature, too. It's free and takes less than a minute of your time.

Thanks! Janos

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Why the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights is fatally flawed
(This text is an extract from chapter 7 of The Silver Bullet)
AROUND the world, people campaign for human rights as never before. Curiously,
however, the birthright to land receives rare acknowledgement. Collectively, we have
forgotten the philosophy of sharing the resources of nature, a primordial right that was
recognised by John Locke when he wrote Two Treatises on Government (1690). That
is why it is one of the supreme ironies that Locke helped to lay the foundations of the
modern power structure that excludes the majority from their right to land. The
tradition which he helped to enshrine in law has disfigured the various bills of human
rights in the 20th century, including the United Nations’ attempt to pronounce on the
right of all people to be treated as equals.
In his account of the rules of governance (he called it a social contract), Locke
explained that everyone enjoyed the natural right to “life, liberty and estate”.1 That
word estate is the traditional English word for the bundle of rights held over land and
property. There was no ambiguity in Locke’s exposition of natural rights: we all had
the right to land, without which there could be no life. But he conceded that, in a
commercial society, people could hold more land than they needed to meet their
immediate needs, so long as they left enough land for others to use. But that provision
– that everyone was entitled to access land – was not incorporated into his draft of the
constitution for the settlers of Carolina. Instead, his provisions consolidated the
monopoly of land for the English aristocrats who embarked on the most audacious
land grab in history.
Today, the property rights that were defined by Locke’s successors are treated
as sacred. Those rights, however, are wrapped up in documents that display a curious
opaqueness, as if there was something to hide. The UN’s Universal Declaration of
Human Rights is the prime example. It affirms the right to private property in a way
that (1) sanctions the deprivation of people’s human rights, and (2) legitimises the
appropriation of property that belongs to others.
The modern doctrine of human rights has abandoned its origins in natural
rights. The doctrine has become little more than the expression of a vested interest.
The constitutional documents of the US, for example, protect the version of property
1 Locke, (1690:Ch.5).
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rights favoured by the heirs to the English aristocracy,2 a historical reality that is
obscured by the rhetorical claim that all citizens are treated as equals.
The United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in
1948. This is the template against which we judge the behaviour of individuals and of
sovereign nations. It purports to define the rights of everyone on earth. Unfortunately,
the exercise of those rights permits the institutionalised abuse of people in every
country of the world.
• The Declaration fails to specify the pre-conditions for liberty. So even if we
all complied with its strictures, people cannot secure their humanity because
the individual’s right to life is unenforceable.3
• The Declaration fails to specify the conditions for a healthy society.
Obligations are placed on the state which cannot be fulfilled without abusing
people’s freedom, which includes their right to retain the property they create
by their labour.
These defects render the Declaration inadequate to secure the universal rights
as these were conceived under natural law.
Problems begin with the preamble, where the UN promotes “inalienable
rights”. Primordially, early humans acted as if they recognised the equal right of
everyone to access nature’s resources. This biologically-based ‘right’ gained formal
recognition as humans acquired the cultural capacity to consciously express their
inter-personal agreements. And yet, there is no reference to people’s equal right of
access to land or nature’s resources in the UN document.
The UN records its disapproval of the barbarous acts which result from
contempt for others. But those abuses were rarely inspired by the desire to deprive
people of employment, shelter, or medical attention; in the significant cases of mass
intrusion on the rights of others, the aggressors sought to appropriate the territory on
which people were settled. And yet, the Declaration makes no provision for restoring
every person’s equal right of access to, and use of, land.
2 Jensen (1970).
3 In Britain, for example, with its Welfare State and commitment to the human rights championed by
the UN, an estimated 50,000 people die prematurely every year because of the impact of the tax
regime. The estimate is by the late Dr. George Miller, who was a member of Britain’s Medical
Research Council’s Senior Clinical Scientific Staff, and Professor of Epidemiology at the University of
London Queen Mary and Westfield College (see Miller 2003).
3
Without land, the affirmation that people are “born free and equal in dignity
and rights” (Article 1) is meaningless. In Article 2, we are assured that “everyone is
entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration”. They are
guaranteed freedom of religion, to get married and have children, to work and
associate with others. But what they are not guaranteed is an entitlement to occupy the
space they need on which to build their homes, work for their living, practice their
religion and procreate.
Article 3 offers a variation on the Lockean theme. Whereas the philosopher
wrote about the right to “life, liberty and estate”, the UN, in Article 3, offered
“security of person” in place of land. But without the guarantee of land, no-one’s life
can be secure.
The Declaration offers a crude portrait of the individual detached from nature
and barely anchored in the community that gives personality its content. Thus its
catalogue of rights are assigned to individuals in a sometimes empty rhetoric: who
would one sue to secure a remedy for the right to employment?4
The Declaration grants society a grudging status. Where it is introduced,
society is burdened with the responsibility to secure the rights of individuals without
provision for it to acquire the necessary resources. In Article 28, for example,
“Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and
freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realised”. But the Declaration
remains silent on the rights of a community against the individual. Where the
individual is said to have a duty to the community (Article 29 [1]), the duties are not
specified.
It is not possible for people in community to fulfil obligations without access
to resources to fund the provision of public goods. Culture, for example, is
acknowledged as indispensable for the dignity and development of personality
(Article 22). Everyone “has the right to participate in the cultural life of the
community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits”
(Article 27 [1]). So we are entitled to the benefits of a civilisation. But civilisations
are contingent on the ability of people to generate and share in the economic surplus
(rents), without which there would be no culture, arts and science. And yet, the UN
4 Difficulties with the concept of the right to work in human rights legislation are reviewed in Blake
(2002:144-145). See also Blake (2000).
4
Declaration is silent on the right of the community to claim those rents to fund culture.
And it is silent on the duty of the individual to deliver those rents.
This places the nation-state in an invidious position. It is obliged (under
Articles 21 and 22) to deliver public services to everyone, including social security,
but the terms on which it may raise the funds to meet the costs are not specified.
There is a right way and a wrong way to achieve this, and a person’s liberties are
infringed if the wrong choice is made.
• The wrong way is to tax the product of people’s labour. This is an intrusion
on private property that is possible only by exercising coercive power. Under
the Declaration such revenue-raising instruments ought to be outlawed, unless
there are extenuating circumstances in each case to justify the infringement of
a person’s liberty and private property.
• The right way is for the state to act as the guardian of the public value. In this
case, the rents are freely yielded by the individual in exchange for the use of
public goods. Under the Declaration, this financial expression of human rights
and obligations ought to be sanctioned as the pre-eminent method for raising
revenue.
The omissions from the Declaration create an intolerable philosophical and
legal situation, for the individual depends on a healthy society for the fulfilment of
personal potential. The individual is recognised by the UN as a social being –
someone with “honour and reputation” to protect (Article 12). But this means that, for
the individual to equip the community with the means that lead to the enforcement of
personal rights, revisions to the Declaration are imperative.
The need to fill the void in the UN Declaration is urgent, for sovereign states
today are unable to meet their responsibilities. In Britain, for example, more than 25%
of households are deemed to be ‘breadline poor’.5 Those households are dependent on
the state for subsistence, a dependency that undermines their right to the dignity that
comes with the ability to pay one’s way through life. Britain, despite its tax exactions,
5 Dorling at al (2007). The authors found that the wealth gap had increased over the previous 40 years
– the better part of the life of the Welfare State, which employed progressive taxation. What the authors
called the “breadline poor” households had increased over this period, peaking at 27% in 2001.
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is not able to fulfil its obligation to enable everyone to live the life visualised by the
UN Declaration.
If an honest politician were to propose that all of the rental income of a
person’s land should be paid to offset the cost of the services that give his site its
utility, the howl would go up: confiscation. Legal action would probably follow on
the grounds that government was taking the property of its owner. We need to
untangle the mess behind property rights.
• Criminals who reallocate the possession of articles that we have earned the
right to possess by our labours are left in no doubt about what law-abiding
citizens think of them. They are imprisoned.
• When people walk away with publicly-created wealth, however, action is not
taken to restore that property to the rightful owners. The owners are the people
who, by their presence and co-operative activities in the community, originate
that value. Yet, their deprivation is sanctioned by law.
Why don’t we throw into gaol the people who steal the public value – because the UN
ritualises a doctrine of property that makes respectable the private appropriation of
that value.

The United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights is failing humankind. Indeed it's failing planet Earth itself.

The evidence is everywhere: a billion citizens live and die on a dollar a day; people lack control over their own community's resources; terrorism, war and unrest threaten everyone; the planet's future is imperiled by cataclysmic 'natural' disaster. The root cause of all these problems is privileged and unethical access to our common wealth and the failure to protect the equal right of future generations, which are entitled to receive Earth in as good a condition as we ought to have received it from our ancestors.

The 1948 Declaration is silent on this. It is past time for it to speak up. The Declaration fails to protect our most basic universal human right — our right to a share in Earth — and our corresponding universal duty — our duty to compensate the community for what we take. The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights needs to be amended to restore the birthright of every man, woman and child to their share in the earth's common gift of land and natural resources.

A world citizenry with a declared stake in its home. Fairer, richer, more secure for us all.