World Thinking Day – Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, Earth Right’s and Child’s Rights – what do they all have in common?
On World Thinking Day, I have been thinking about how I have always been fascinated by how change happens. It was only in 1965 that the first Race Relations Act came into law, when at last, it was illegal to discriminate against somebody because of the colour of their skin. Our western mind-set supported the notion of superiority, if your colour was white.
Many of us have followed the story of the Civil Right’s movement in the US, and Martin Luther Kings’ ‘I have a dream’ speech. What we have in common is fundamental. Though our society likes to believe that one person is intrinsically ‘better than’ the other – for colour, status, religion.
In 1928 the Conservative government passed the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act giving the vote to all women over the age of 21 on equal terms with men, it still relatively recent. The Woman’s Rights movement changed the law despite years of ongoing sex-based discrimination. “Land, like woman, was meant to be possessed”.
“The enormous difference between fighting gender discrimination as opposed to race discrimination is good people immediately perceive race discrimination as evil and intolerable. But when I talked about sex-based discrimination, I got the response, ‘What are you talking about? Women are treated ever so much better than men!”
― Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States).
None of this is meant to say that white men or any man is not discriminated against. All of us are vulnerable and positioned to being treated as inferior, and feeling inferior.
And what of our children on World Thinking Day? This voiceless generation of young people, who were until 1800’s without protection. Children could be abused, put to work, and killed. There were no Rights. In 1919, the League of Nations created a committee for the protection of children. Five years later, it adopted the Geneva Declaration, first international treaty on children’s rights. With the creation of the United Nations, The 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) was formed.
Today, in 2019 on World Thinking Day, we are still grappling with what kind of society we want to be, with what values and morals. I believe, human law is a necessary vehicle to align us with these morals and values.
“The strength of the social hierarchy and the importance of status serve as indicators of how far a society departs from equality. The further the departure from mutuality, reciprocity and sharing, the stronger the basic message that we will each have to fend for ourselves.” (Resurgence 2019: K. Pickett & R. Wilkinson).
So now we face a similar need to change the law and our way of thinking towards the land. To place human law in line with natural law. To go way beyond the idea that we possess the land, women or children, and can do what we want. We need to realign human law with a higher moral code.
Polly Higgins, is leading the way for a change in law that would protect the earth – giving us Earth Right’s, in the form of ‘ An International crime of Ecocide’. Ecocide is serious loss, damage or destruction of ecosystems, and includes climate or cultural damage as well as direct ecological damage.
Under ‘Earth Rights’, we all benefit when we look after and respect each other, our beloved men, women, children and earth.
What can we do to create Earth Rights?
It’s simple: all it requires is an amendment to the Rome Statute (not a whole new treaty) which is the governing document for existing international crimes and the International Criminal Court (ICC).
It’s possible: any member nation State to the International Criminal Court, no matter how small, can propose the amendment. Once tabled, it cannot be vetoed.
Sign yourself up now as an Earth Protector to help fund this law:
https://youtu.be/FQKhOPihzSQ
Mission Lifeforce is the campaign Polly co-launched in order to launch ecocide crime into the wider public domain. In an unprecedented step, an Earth Protectors Trust Fund was created. The fund provides for representation at the annual Assembly of the International Criminal Court for Small Island Developing States and their delegates costs.
Finally, on World Thinking Day:
Greater equality across humans and non-humans is critical to protect ourselves and future generations of all species. Our ‘human systems’ are based on a power structure that provide privileged access to resources for those at the top, regardless of the needs of others. ‘The others’ – in history people of colour, women, children have been (and still are) discriminated against and history has shown this voicelessness & powerlessness describes a value-system, that we can and are trying to change.
We have many different models within us. At least one, based on friendship across people and non-human, and another based on ideas of superiority and inferiority. We are also hardwired for survival as well as to appreciate great beauty and belonging. Many of us who are reading this, do have choices and are able to share our views and contribute to challenging older views that stem from fear, scarcity and power over.
Let’s remember that it did take courage for individuals to stand up and be counted and it is possible to make massive changes that over time help us to live more in balance with the rest of life.
Marina Robb, Director – Circle of Life Rediscovery CIC.
Transforming education, health and family through nature.
Circle of Life Rediscovery provides exciting and highly beneficial nature-centred learning and therapeutic experiences for young people, adults, and families in Sussex woodlands, along with innovative continuing professional development for the health, well being and teaching professionals who are supporting them.