To: Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations
760 United Nations Plaza
Manhattan, New York City, New York, 10017
[email protected]
Telephone: (212) 963-7160; Fax: (212)-963-7055
Re: Issues Regarding the Summit for the Future
Dear Secretary-General Guterres,
As representatives of our constituents, we join together to express our deep concern that a concerted, stealthy effort is underway at the United Nations to advance the goal of world government at the upcoming “Summit of the Future” on 22-23 September.
We especially oppose the subterfuge being employed effectively to amend the UN Charter. Instead of the specified, formal and transparent procedure that the document requires be followed for such a purpose, you are asking member nations to approve a “Pact for the Future” and two accompanying annexes. The goal is, among many other problematic things, to authorize a “process” to develop an international “emergency platform” that would fundamentally transform the UN.
The relevant language in the present draft of the so-called “Pact for the Future” is vague in that it does not specify the powers delegated to you in the case of so-called “complex global shocks.” Rather, it calls on you to “present for the consideration of Member States protocols for convening and operationalizing emergency platforms….“
This request ignores the fact that, as you know, you have already published your proposed protocols in a Policy Brief under the rubric of “Our Common Agenda.” Such Policy Briefs were intended to inform the Summit on the Future. Policy Brief #2, entitled “Strengthening the Response to Complex Global Shocks,” contains on page 12 the following statement:
Building on the ideas in Our Common Agenda and learning lessons from these recent crises, I propose that the General Assembly provide the Secretary-General and the United Nations system with a standing authority to convene and operationalize automatically an Emergency Platform in the event of a future complex global shock of sufficient scale, severity and reach. (Emphasis in original.)
Page 6 of this same Policy Brief contains a chart entitled “Possible Future Complex Global Shocks.” Such shocks include virtually every aspect of civilized life and reach even into outer space:
a) Large-scale climatic or environmental events that cause major socioeconomic disruptions and/or environmental degradation; b) Future pandemics with cascading secondary impacts; c) High-impact events involving a biological agent (deliberate or accidental); d) Events leading to disruptions to global flows of goods, people or finance; e) Large-scale destructive and/or disruptive activity in cyberspace or disruptions to global digital connectivity; f) A major event in outer space that causes severe disruptions to one or several critical systems on Earth; g) Unforeseen risks (“black swan” events).
In other words, you have already asked for an Emergency Platform that, once approved, would operationalize automatically – bypassing the need for approval by member states — in the case of whatever you deem to be a “complex global shock.” The fact that your powers are undefined in the Pact for the Future document itself, deferring crucial details to some undetermined time and opaque process, amounts to obligating member states to sign a blank check to you.
It is even more shocking that you are not only engaged in such an end-run on the ordained procedures for amending the Charter. You are employing the so-called “silence procedure” to try to get this process and the rest of the Pact for the Future approved basically without public attention, let alone serious debate.
In addition to the problematic Pact for the Future, its annex, dubbed the Global Digital Compact, also poses a serious threat to the sovereignty of member nations and the freedoms of their people. The Compact, for example, would give rise to a digital identification infrastructure that can be used to institute a global surveillance apparatus akin to and modeled on the Communist Chinese “Social Credit System.”
While these instruments are ostensibly non-binding resolutions, in fact, they will likely be treated as binding international commitments by the UN and most countries, making all the more worrisome the absence of any formal mechanisms for reviewing, let alone debating and rejecting the final results of these processes and accords.
The Pact’s other annex, the Declaration on Future Generations, prioritizes the concept of “climate justice,” (paragraph 29), “urgently addressing the causes and adverse impacts of climate change, and scaling up collective action to promote environmental protection” (paragraph 16). One can foresee so-called climate change giving rise to the declaration of a “complex global shock.” Upon this declaration, the Emergency Platform would operationalize automatically, damaging the sovereignty of our nations and destroying our liberties.
We seek to engage in an actual debate on the merits of the Pact for the Future – or lack thereof. Furthermore, we oppose the use of the Silence Procedure to pass what amounts to an amendment to the U.N. Charter which would dramatically alter the organization’s character and purpose.
The proposed emergency platform and other efforts to expropriate powers that the UN Charter clearly recognizes remain with member nations should be subject to a roll-call vote and only adopted with the consent of two-thirds of the member nations, after which it should be subjected to the respective treaty ratification processes of the 193 Member States.
We hereby serve notice that we will not comply with the Pact for the Future or any other legally binding international treaty, especially those that seek to alter the UN Charter via the use of the wholly inappropriate, non-transparent and devious Silence Procedure. And we will seek our national governments to do the same.
Sincerely,