Human life and dignity require the recognition and satisfaction of Human Rights to PEACE, to DEVELOPMENT (to food, to water...) and to the ENVIRONMENT, and they require that NOW!

On this 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and at the initiative of the World Forum of Civil Society Networks – UBUNTU, we, the undersigned, wish to emphasise that all Human Rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent, in full accordance with the Declaration of the World Conference on Human Rights made in Vienna (United Nations, 1993).

Hence this is what is required NOW!:

I.- The HUMAN RIGHT TO PEACE. Though not yet explicitly regarded as a human right¹, it cannot be doubted that if this Human Right to Peace is not established, the other human rights cannot be realized. With the United Nations (“We, the peoples…”) being sidelined by the most prosperous countries (“We, the powerful…”) and with the democratic principles being replaced by the laws of the market (“We, the rich…”), our tragic inability to resolve conflicts peaceably is persisting. Resorting to force brings ignominious profits for industry's colossal war machine, fuelling war economies. We shall not desist from denouncing this, nor from endeavouring to build a world system of democratic governance precisely to put an end to this intolerable situation. We cannot refrain from demanding just solutions for the dramatic conflicts such as those raging in Gaza, Darfur, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Congo... among the forty-plus armed conflicts estimated to exist now.

The force of reason should always prevail over the reason of force. “If you want peace, prepare for war”: the conviction that being armed is the best assurance of security is one of the most tragic of our age-old irrational beliefs. It is evident that worldwide disarmament, under the control of the United Nations, is fundamental for scaling back violence and strengthening peace. If disarmament is a prerequisite for peace, and thus for life, then it too becomes another Human Right that must be recognised and adopted forthwith. Yet the fact is that now, after a ten-year period (1988-1998) in which world military spending had been decreasing, we are witnessing renewed escalation in arms spending, which is once more exceeding 2,700 million dollars a day...and this at a time when attaining the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 requires 500 million dollars a day!

Specifically, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is going through its bleakest, most contradictory period since the cold war: some countries are given de facto authorisation to produce nuclear weapons, while others are the object of sanctions on account of their nuclear-energy programmes... and, most alarming of all, the United States, with its anti-missile shield, is prompting the Russian Federation to threaten non-compliance with the Reykjavik agreements, with both countries in fact confirming the existence of programmes to renovate and modernise their nuclear arsenals, in violation of the NPT.

International civil society must make its voice heard to break the current deadlock of the Disarmament Conference and, in this context, transform the forthcoming NPT Review Conference (2010) into a definitive and irreversible turning point on the path to the Human Right to Disarmament as Freedom from War and Violence are essential for peace.