Convention of Rights in the Mediterranean Sea

 

“Make the Mediterranean Sea one of the areas generating a humanity who want to live together”

 

 

Given that:

 

  1. The action “Towards a convention of the rights in the Mediterranean Sea”, aims to reach the following objects:

recognize the common origins in the history , geography, cultures of the peoples of the Mediterranean Sea, in order to give centrality to a plural, Mediterranean identity taken as the basis of the relations among the peoples in the area;

affirm a conception of the Mediterranean site as a new space generating a humanity who want to live together;

implement a permanent net among the adhering subjects; diffuse and practise experiences of participatory democracy.

 

  1. Both the contents and actions which follow are the result of co-building, expression of five theme group workshops, full of utopian capacity able to oriente and prefigure solutions which can transform the existing order,

and of a Strong Pact among the partecipating members aiming at generating a Convention of rights in the Mediterranean Sea to be proposed to citizens, social organizations, and institutions at any level.

 

Such a Convention:

considers peace, health, water, food, knowledge, cultural and environmental resources, common public goods of the peoples of the Mediterranean area framed by transversal elements, such as: global sustainability, gender difference, disequalities, safety, climate change.

Such a premise has to be realized by means of a systemic approach given by the analysis of the international human mobility.

 

  1. The peoples of the Mediterranean Sea are not only holders of rights, but they are an active collective geopolitical subject.

 

  1. An effective social transformation of the Mediterranean countries can be real only through a kind of awareness which rejects any form of cultural colonialism and founds itself on the conscious increase of relations by means of a deep and shared net among local institutions and members of civil society; the respect of cultural and environmental heritage; the legacy of a millenial history; the safeguard, recovery and enhancement of local traditions and identities.

 

Given that

today the Mediterranean zone appears as an area affected by wars and conflicts inside single countries, frequently nurtured by countries external to the Mediterranean area;

in the area the dominating powers, supported and sometimes even on behalf of foreign powers and multinationals, carry out predatory strategies and policies of the resources which determine further increase in poverty and disequalities;

at present a further move towards the privatization of common goods is present;

nationalism and exasperated populism affect more and more the states’ policies , giving rise to closures and inhumane exclusionary practises;

the big migratory flux reminds us that the first victims of Climate Change are those people who try to escape from desertification; the first victims of war are those people who try to escape from local wars; the first victims of insecurity are those people who try to escape from countries condemned to suffer violence;

sufferance of the so-called migrants questions and disturbs, making it possible the existence of a new Humanism and of a Common House;

the Mediterranean area is still today a nerve element of world economy: across its waters passes more than 15% of maritime commercial trade of the whole Planet and 20% of the economic value linked to it, in addition its role as producer of energy is continuously growing;

in such a society like the Mediterranean one it is essential that peoples who belong to it reacquire the awareness of their essence and together to it the awareness of the peculiarity of their place, so that they can aim at the local qualitative growth of their territories, recognizing their values, traditions, asset deposits, identities, all factors that may bring to the acquisition of autonomy and self-government;

sustainability in processes regarding food and energetic sovereignty, collective government of common goods, models of production and consuming based on the enhancement of local resources, on social inclusion, are the assumption to affirm a model of development not assisted and heterodirect, but self-centred and able to produce solidarity relationships inside the communities and among different communities; participation in such a context does not only represent the indispensable strengthening of democracy, but it becomes a real tool of liberation of daily life, of collective life, of ordinary practise of government aiming at the creation of welfare , referring to the overall quality of life of each human being.

 

Noted that

 

It is time for an urgent, renewed responsable, and cooperative protagonism of social subjects active in the Mediterranean area, able either to create or strenghten relationships among groups, associations, movements, local institutions deeply democratic, in order to give birth to a very AgorĂ  of the citizenships of the Mediterranean Sea and to create a critical mass of people who may foster change.

 

In light of these premises

 

We subjects of civil society and local institutions in the Mediterranean area

 

Assume

 

Individual and Collective Freedoms, Possible Peace, Social Justice, Brotherhood as Value Horizons on which can be based

 

a STRONG PACT that can

 

realize a new life style based on rights and responsabilities; contribute to eliminate disequalities;

fight with energy the private appropriation of life forms:

act concretely for the affirmation of the Right to Democracy, that is those who control what, and to the right to Progress, that is to whom the welfare produced by the community is destined;

keep a dynamic, process-based approach towards possible instances which concern the values and objectives of the project

 

and agree

 

on the following Strong Ideas and Paths.

 

  1. Mediterranean: Common Home, plural Identity

“For the recognition and the narration of a common Mediterranean history which respects diversities

  • Elaborate and diffuse a re-narration of the Mediterranean area which traces back its history starting from ‘900, thinking back to the colonial and post-colonial phase and its effects;
  • make a historical Atlas of the Mediterranean area;
  • know, study and enhance the languages and dialects spoken in the whole area;
  • imagine a Map of the Mediterranean Sea, with the South to the North and viceversa, in order to destabilize and subvert even simbolically the banks and the hegemony of the North on the

 

  1. Listening, Knowledge, Dialogue, Collective Learning

“We need to meet the other person not to be afraid of him/her”

  • Study and Learn better diverse languages;
  • carry out a    research/survey    in order to grasp        from the bottom the elements which characterize the Mediterranean identity;
  • create moments of intercultural and religious exchanges, the latter linked to the right to personal freedom of religion and to social practise of cult;
  • create moments of informal education;
  • activate an online platform which may help rinarrate the Mediterranean area;
  • contribute effectively    to the fair and equitable      access to digital

 

  1. Importance of a Net among civil societies and local Institutions

“Civil societies and local institutions have to get a louder voice and more space in the public debate, increasing their own relations”

  • Strenghten the net guaranteeing continuity and participation of other subjects of the Mediterranean civil societies, and of democratic local institutions;
  • contribute to the diffusion and strenghtening of society’s informal nets, being aware of the difficulties experienced by the institutional international organisms;
  • promote and/or enhance opportunities of exchange and meeting, in particular among the youths, even through digital platforms;
  • cooperation among countries in the Mediterranean area has often developed in an unbalanced and unidirectional way (from the northern countries to the southern ones);
  • oppose to the western model founded on competition among countries a model founded on cooperation, starting from a common Mediterranean

 

  1. Pivotal role of women

“Women as fundamental resources for peace and democracy”

  • Activate projects fostering equal opportunities and enhancement of woman’s role in the productive field of the countries of the area, promoting cultural mediation between women and context, aimed at emancipation from need and economic autonomy economic autonomy;
  • promote projects and actions that may foster women’s participation and

inclusion in decisional processes at any level;

  • Provide economic and educational aids in order to foster access to education to women who can’t study because of either economic difficulties or of peculiar social conditions;
  • promote access to care and services;
  • promote women’s status and define a Family Code which may guarantee their rights.

 

  1. Support to young people who are capital of the future

“Let us listen to the cry coming from the young generations”

  • Promote cultural exchanges, training courses for students of the Mediterranean universities, extending the borders of Erasmus Project, which could be renamed MedErasmus or more precisely Al-Idrisi in honour of the Arabic cartographer and geographer of the XII century, great traveller along all the countries in the Mediterranean Sea;
  • apromote exchanges among youths, even for social and solidarity aims,

planning a sort of Social Service of the Mediterranean area following the model of the European Body of Solidarity;

  • foster access to training courses to the youths who can’t attend either

school or university for economic reasons and particularly disadvantaged social conditions, also by means of economic and educational aids.

 

  1. Fight against poverty and social and economic disadvantages

“The increase of disequalities among rich and poor countries and the rising level of poverty is intolerable”

  • Affirm the right to the minimum vital of water and food, which will have to be protected by an International Convention;
  • promote and involve the countries of the areas economically “depressed” and with a greater migratory flux in projects of technological innovation and professional training in order to “activate” the actual young human capital, strenghten their self-determination capacities, mitigate the migratory flux deriving from the lack of work and perspectives;
  • pay great attention to Promote the protagonism of the

involved subjects and guarantee equal access opportunities.

 

  1. Riacquisition, safeguard and enhancement by the countries of the Mediterranean Sea of the regional resources with a view to global sustainability, containing social, economic, environmental, and cultural

“Let us release the economic potential of the region in order to make peoples and not predatory powers benefit of it”

  • Foster the expansion of renewable energy resources which have the potential for their development in the Mediterranean area, and sustain the shifting from an economy based on fossil fuels to a green economy;
  • support the development of financial instruments, such as microcredit which may give life to business activities;
  • promote commerce of proximity in order to keep small social relations alive and to make small local activities progress following models of sustainability;
  • promote the quality agriculture and the sustainable rural development;
  • promote experiences of sustainable turism;
  • indentify the financial issue as a crucial one, which, were it in its present forms, would represent a serious constraint to the rights’ recognition and respect;
  • foster actions aiming to contrast, in a phase during which mafia has become international, their participation more and more pervasive in the economic activities and control of the

 

  1. Mare Nostrum great resource to be protected and enhanced

“Our Mediterranean Sea is an economic, social, and environmental resource to be enhanced and protected for the welfare of the whole humanity”

  • Build up and promote a blue economy for the Mediterranean Sea guaranteing health to our sea, to its coast, and its maritime ecosystems;
  • enhance the history of the “Peoples of the Sea” supporting the organisms which can carry out functions of management and preservation of fish stocks, and coastal development of the Mediterranean Sea, in a perspective of cooperation able to stop conflicts produced by nationalistic policies;
  • cooperate with the international organisms for the manteinance and safety of commerce, navigation, and fish activities;
  • set up targeted projects for the port cities which have always been crossroads of innovation,  multiculturalism, naturally devoted to welcoming human beings and objects. Such projects have to integrate, in addition to cultural exchanges, the theme of the environmental and ecological care together with that of security in order to create a “governance” of the safe sea which may foster the creation of an area of protected free exchange;
  • favour agreements among institutions, associations, of the area in order to constitute a Confederation of the Mediterranean Islands for itinaray and off- season tourism;
  • consider the matter of transport and accessibility a core question;
  • promote a sustainable management of sea and its shoreline in order to stop the degradation of coastal areas;
  • support the building up of the “house of Mediterranean sounds”.

 

  1. Protect and make available common goods, such as water and food to everybody “Let us affirm the human rights essential to the quality of life and to the carrying- out of all human beings’ rights”
    • Favour the spread of the culture of public good, linked to natural resources which may contrast the use of resources as means of pressure on the weakest populations;
    • sensitize the Mediterranean citizens to the overcoming of the “culture of waste”, in particular of water and food, in favour of a major social welfare and for the safeguard of environment;
    • contrast the privatization of common resources, such as, for example water: life has not to be privatized to the benefit of financial profits;
    • promote food consortiums with the Mediterranean-made brand which may enhance all local productions;
    • reaffirm the principle of Food Sovereignty;
    • favour the constitution of Grain Bank.

 

  1. Human and International mobility as an inalienable right

“Never again massacres in the Mediterranean Sea. Let us guarantee safe and legal migratory routes

  • Claim, besides the right to migrate as sanctioned by the article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, at present signed by all the States adhering to United Nations together the correspondent right to immigrate, to be welcomed;
  • experiment models of governing of migrations which can obstacle the actions of traffickers of the sea, also with the help of the organized civil society, permitting families’ reunions, and making the opening of humanitarian corridors possible;
  • diffuse in the countries which the migratory fluxes are destined to the culture of territorial integration, enhancing the development of competences necessary to its governing;
  • sollecitate the European Union for the institution of a RESCUE European Civil Service (RECS), European Civilian Rescue Service at sea and on land, in order to defend primarily the Right to Life, together with those who are committed in this

 

  1. Mediterranean site as a demilitarized area of peace and neutral space

“For a Mediterranean Sea without arms let us open up paths of peace”

  • Claim neutrality in the Mediterranean region, the application of ONU peace resolutions, the deep respect of human dignity, by protecting the weakest people, making apartheid contexts cease, and avoiding that famine and thirst can become instruments of war;
  • claim an immediated, generalized ceasefire and the opening of negotia- tions for the demilitarisation and denuclearization of Mediterranean Neutral Zone;
  • ban nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, and the mass destruction weapons;
  • exercise the right to peace and to a fair civil coexistence where conflicts have to be ruled wthout the use of force, of violence, of arms, and armies;
  • plan initiatives aiming at Mediterranean peoples’ liberation from external military presence and internal colonial forces, who can’t decide on local population’s destinies;
  • excercise a democratic control from the bottom on military spending in the Mediterranean area;
  • favour interculturality and interreligious dialogue to widespread the culture of peace against religious fundamentalism and culture of

 

  1. Right to health and access to cure

“Without a world ethics, which concretely respects the universal right to all inhabitants’ health, each of us is at risk”

  • Strenghten the effort of the Mediterranean peoples to suspend/abolish the patents of vaccines to be considered as “common goods”;
  • take on initiatives for empowering sanitary systems by means of big investments in “primary health care” and in dealing with pandemic phenomena;
  • activate campaigns of Health Education (sexual education-sexually transmitted diseases, food hygiene);
  • activate/strenghten “Health Centres”;
  • contribute to the research on the correlation between climate change and diseases;
  • take on initiatives supporting Health Education;
  • reinforce partnership and shared development of sanitary systems in the Euromediterranean area, relaunching multilateral and bilateral cooperation;
  • ask assertively for the increase of health

 

  1. Cities and sustainable Communities

“The sustainability of urban areas is the fundamental object for the Mediterranean region’s development”

  • Consider cities and communities places where to experiment sustainable development and participatory democracy;
  • activate energetic communities;
  • avoid the consumption of agricultural land;
  • sensitize to water saving;
  • take on the shared planning and partnership per objectives as key elements for a kind of transformative action;
  • promote actions aiming at the administrative simplification and at the approval/application of anticorruption

 

  1. Information as a common good, basis of democracy

“Quite strangely we have never got such a great amount of information, but we go on without knowing what it is happening”

  • Ask for more information, for autonomous information, information more attentive to the peoples’ voices rather than to the governments’ ones;
  • support the independent means of information which are more attentive to international issues and

 

WE SUBSCRIVE

 

Done in Palermo on March 19, 2022, in Italian, French, English and Arabic, the four texts being equally authentic, in a single copy which will be deposited in the archives of the Un’altra Storia Association. The President of the Association will send a certified copy to each Contracting Party of the Convention.