Care for Global Issues : Human Rights, Environmental Sustainability, Debt Crisis, Peace and Security

Human Rights
1.1 Principles
We believe that it is essential to:
a) ensure that basic human rights are respected in all countries;
b) avoid compromising on human rights for economic or political expediency;
c) recognise democratic institutions as a fundamental human right; and
d) work towards the sovereignty and self-determination of entities with historical, cultural and ecological identity.
1.2 Goals
We will pursue policies that :
a) restrict cooperation with governing regimes that violate human rights;
b) actively engage with other countries to promote human rights;
c) bring diplomatic and commercial pressures on regimes that violate human rights, to ensure that they respect the basic rights of their citizens;
d) keep the interests of disempowered communities foremost in all dealings with countries in which human rights violations occur;
e) support the end of colonialism and press for resolution of colonial conflicts through the UN framework;
f) develop a more distinctive and effective role for the International Court of Justice in the field of human rights; and
g) support, through the UN framework, democratic and economic reforms in countries coming out of totalitarian control.
Environmental Sustainability
2.1 Principles
We support the conservation of the earth’s environment and its biodiversity, both as a value in itself and as essential for human survival and happiness.
2.2 Goals
We will:
a) support international and national moves to halt deforestation in India as well as the rest of the world and help reforestation; this involves both cessation of unsustainable logging and more efficient use of land for human activities by encouraging the reduced consumption of meat and dairy products, especially in the richer countries;
b) support international moves to limit land degradation;
c) support international conventions to stop over-fishing in the oceans;
d) support international moves to reduce pollution of the seas and the atmosphere;
e) support moves to end trade in hazardous waste;
f) support moves to end exploitation of and trade in endangered species;
g) support the transfer of environmentally sustainable technologies to developing countries; and
h) promote the establishment of an Environmental Council at the UN with similar decision-making powers to the Security Council, but dealing instead with environmental issues of global significance.
2.3 Short Term Targets
We will support:
a) urgent measures to stop the exploitation of rainforests, which has resulted in both the loss of a rich biosystem and the displacement and possible extinction of the native peoples of the forests;
c) efforts to end the dumping of nuclear waste in the oceans;
d) effective measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and use of ozone-depleting substances;
e) legislation to require Indian companies, Government agencies and business enterprises, operating overseas to observe social and environmental standards no less stringent than those required in India.
The International Debt Crisis
3.1 Principles
We recognise that repayments of past loans have so outstripped new loans that the net transfer of money is from the developing world to the developed.
3.2 Goals
We will intensively lobby to :
a) cancel all debts of developing countries;
b) achieve radical reform of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund or establish a new international lending institution that would take over the responsibilities of these institutions, to be governed by a board with gender balance as well as equal representation from both developing country debtors and western lenders; and
c) encourage developing countries to pursue strategies of economic development which are highly self-reliant and which prioritise the production of goods and services from local sources.
Peace and Security
4.1 Principles
We are committed to:
a) developing fair and just international relations with other countries, peoples and regions;
b) building positive peace into our international security relations;
c) resolving conflict rather than merely deterring war through the maintenance of traditional military structures;
d) ensuring the greatest possible transparency in India’s foreign and security relations, domestically and internationally;
e) working with individuals and organisations which openly and democratically work for such an objective at a local, regional, national and international level;
f) working towards a framework of sustainable international relations, strongly supported by nonviolent strategies of international cooperation, conflict prevention, international mediation and conflict resolution, and which recognise the local, national and international dimensions of conflict in our region;
g) capability for the foreseeable future, subject to eventual regional-wide demilitarisation;
h) reforming the Indian defence forces to ensure that they are trained and equipped for more sustainable national and international security roles aimed at ensuring peace; and
i) invisaging an ecologically sustainable post nuclear "New Intenational Political Order" on the matrix of Civilisational Homes (like EU) superceding the present nation - state arrangement.
4.2.1 Working towards Regional and Global Demilitarisation.
We will:
a) participate in global regime initiatives to monitor and reduce the manufacture and export of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons technologies;
b) support a global nuclear weapons Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), with particular reference to nuclear weapons testing in the Asia-Pacific region;
c) support global nuclear non-proliferation, and comprehensive measures to dismantle all nuclear weapons and their target systems, through convening a UN-sponsored International Peace Conference on general nuclear disarmament;
d) support a global ban on the militarisation of space.
4.2.2 Combating the International Arms Trade and Provision of Military Assistance.
We will support policies to:
a) ensure that India will not produce weaponry or components for export;
b) compile a register of all dual-use (civilian-military) technologies which may be exported from India, and restrict the trade with reference to a broad range of security considerations (such as the human rights record of our trading partners);
c) encourage other states to phase out external military aid in the Asia-Pacific region;
d) end arms trade fairs in India and coordinate with neighbouring states on similar measures; and
e) establish a realistic, comprehensive register of the arms trade in the Asia-Pacific region, and work to develop alternative regional and UN-sponsored disarmament initiatives with a capacity for binding verification.
4.2.3 Regional Confidence-building and Peace-building
We will support policies that:
a) develop regional security relations which build peace and confidence, and work towards resolving conflicts before they evolve into violent international disputes; and
b) recognise that the basis of regional peace and security is a sustainable framework of human rights protection and promotion, just and equitable regional trade arrangements, generous and appropriate overseas aid programme and strong multinational environmental safeguards; and
c) ensure that the Asia-Pacific states, and their constituent peoples, have open access to dependable international legal dispute mechanisms.
4.2.4 Regional Conflict-Prevention
We will encourage:
a) the development of an inter-related set of global security campaigns through the Ministries of Defence, Foreign Affairs and Education;

b) effective diplomatic intervention in potential conflict situations, through India’s network of regional diplomatic ties, and through regional institutions and the UN where appropriate; and

c) conflict-preventive peacekeeping deployments for interceding in potential conflict situations, wherever appropriate, in the form of monitors, police, aid and assistance personnel or peacekeeping forces, with all-party support managed through relevant regional organisations or the UN.
4.2.5 Linking Peacebuilding with Peacekeeping and Peacemaking
We will support policies which:
a) manage India’s foreign and security relations in ways which recognise that peacebuilding and peacemaking are crucial elements of any regional conflict management framework, and that peacekeeping has the potential to operate at an interface between the two;
b) develop an integrated strategy linking peacebuilding, peacekeeping and peacemaking approaches to conflict management;
c) establish an appropriate peacekeeping strategy to be developed both nationally and through the UN; and
d) respond to the urgent need to comprehensively develop international peacemaking capabilities, both in new regional institutions and through a reformed UN.
4.2.6 Sanctions Enforcement Action
We will work to ensure that trade embargoes:
a) are only conducted within a UN mandate;
b) are closely associated with an appropriate strategy of conflict resolution; and
c) are rigorously enforced in order to achieve their goals as rapidly as possible.
4.2.7 Military Enforcement Action
We will support a comprehensive strategy of nonviolent conflict management as the most effective means of promoting peace and security in the international arena; in which military enforcement action is only seen as appropriate in securing effective UN sanctions against states which seriously violate international peace.
4.2.8 Establishing an Agency for Monitoring Demilitarisation
We will support policies to:
a) establish an agency for monitoring demilitarisation.
l monitoring and/or coordinating regional arms control and disarmament measures;
l monitoring and combating the arms trade;
l monitoring weapons testing and military exercises;
l coordinating regional arms conversion strategies;
b) develop a culture of nonviolent conflict management and peace education throughout the world.
The changes discussed above for making developmental policies more useful need to be implemented with the support and endorsement from the Government of India as well as the State Governments.