Alfred-Maurice de Zayas Quotes

If the Bank really has development at heart, it will change the conditionalities away from privatization, deregulation and lower corporate taxation and put the emphasis on reducing military expenditures, ensuring that progressive tax legislation is enacted and enforced, that tax havens are outlawed, and that a financial transactions tax is adopted and the revenues used to build “A World Free of Poverty” through international solidarity.

The rules of the game must be changed so that loans are not granted on purely economic considerations and that the loan “conditionalities” henceforth aim at advancing the wellbeing of the populations concerned.

I am concerned about the secrecy surrounding negotiations for trade treaties, which have excluded key stakeholder groups from the process, including labour unions, environmental protection groups, food-safety movements and health professionals.

Article 103 of the UN charter says that if there is a conflict between the provisions of the charter and any other treaty, it is the charter that prevails.

While in totalitarian regimes, government controls the media and criminalizes journalists, bloggers and human rights defenders who do not echo the State’s propaganda, in numerous democratic countries, the media are largely in private hands — too few hands. Often media are controlled by conglomerates responsive to corporations and advertisers who determine the content of news and other programmes, frequently disseminating disinformation or suppressing crucial information necessary for democratic discourse. Indeed, the media blackout on important issues constitutes a grave obstacle to democracy, since absent sufficient information and without free and pluralistic media, democracy is dysfunctional and the political process, including elections, becomes a mere formality — not an expression of the will of the people.

Representative democracy betrays the electorate when laws have no roots in the people but in oligarchies. Studies on the concept and modalities of direct democracy are therefore becoming more topical

The UN Charter, adopted on 24 October 1945, has not lost its relevance in the 21st century. In fact, we need the United Nations more than ever, because the Charter constitutes humanity’s only rules-based order, and its best hope to build a peaceful modus vivendi that will facilitate development and prosperity for everyone on the planet.

In a democracy, it is the people who are sovereign. Therefore, with regard to the promotion of democracy at the local, country and regional levels, civil society must have a stronger voice in all political processes.

It is time to label NATO a "criminal organization" within the meaning of articles 9 and 10 of the Nuremberg Statute and judgment. NATO's raison d'être expired when the Soviet Union ended and the Warsaw Pact was dismantled. In a desperate effort to self-perpetuate, NATO invented enemies so that it could justify its continued existence. It embarked on a series of expansions aimed at encircling Russia, although Gorbachev had voluntarily withdrawn Soviet forces precisely in order to “give peace a chance”. NATO attempted to usurp the functions of the UN Security Council and its exclusive authority over the use of force under the UN Charter. NATO's eastward expansion – in flagrant violation of internationally binding commitments made in 1989, 90, 91 by George H.W. Bush and his Secretary of State James Baker – constituted since 1997 and continues to pose a threat to international peace and security within the meaning of article 39 UN Charter. Today the continuing megalomania of NATO’s leaders goes as far as pretending to expand to Asia and Africa. NATO member states have engaged in naked aggression against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, they have illegally intervened in the Middle-East, committed abhorrent war crimes and crimes against humanity hitherto in total impunity. More recently, NATO is at the source of Ukraine’s egregious violations of the Minsk Accords (as recorded by OSCE), which eventually triggered Russia’s invasion. To claim that NATO is a “defensive” alliance is preposterous – its credo is not defence, but provocation, bravado, bullying, and new-style imperialism. NATO may still throw all of humanity under the bus.

The regulatory chill caused by the mere existence of investor-State dispute settlements has effectively dissuaded many States from adopting much-needed health and environmental protection measures.

Never must the courts become instruments of injustice. Never should they lend themselves to the execution of manifestly unjust investor-State dispute settlement awards.

States should practice multilateralism and abandon unilateral actions that adversely affect a democratic and equitable international order, refraining from the threat or use of force. They should apply international law uniformly, abandon overreliance on “positivism” and efforts to circumvent treaty obligations or invent loopholes. As “nature abhors a vacuum” (Spinoza, Ethics), human rights law abhors “legal black holes”

It would be preferable to teach that honour and glory can also be won through civil courage and working for social justice.

The Independent Expert believes that a fundamental rethink is necessary and should result in an explicit definition of new priorities that puts the interests of billions of human beings who are deprived of the necessities of life ahead of those of foreign investors.

The manipulation of public opinion both by governments and corporate media, and the manufacturing of consent undermine the essence of democracy, which is genuine participation. The harassment, imprisonment and killing of human rights defenders, including journalists, in many countries shocks the conscience. But also certain aspects of the war on terrorism and the abuse of anti-terrorist legislation have significantly eroded human rights and fundamental freedoms. In a democratic society it is crucial for citizens to know whether their governments are acting constitutionally, or are engaged in policies that violate international law and human rights. It is their civic duty to protest against government secrecy and covers-up, against disproportionate surveillance, acts of intimidation and harassment, arbitrary arrests and defamation of human rights defenders, including whistleblowers as unpatriotic or even traitors, when in fact they are necessary defenders of the rule of law.