Constituent Charter of the Alliance for a Responsible, Plural and United World for its 2004 | 2010 Stage

The Alliance for a Responsible, Plural and United World, born in 1994, is a citizens’ alliance. [1] It includes other citizens’ alliances, institutions, movements, and persons committed to pooling their efforts, experiences, and intelligence to contribute to designing and driving the changes that are necessary to build a fair and sustainable world.

Nature of the Alliance

The Alliance for a Responsible, Plural and United World is, all at the same time:

 a shared adventure and a history;
 a vision, that of building a global community;
 a determination to overcome our helplessness in understanding realities, the scale and complexity of which are too great for us each individually and to weigh on these realities by pooling our efforts;
 an arena for sharing our initiatives, thinking and teachings.

The Alliance is also:

 a set of collective procedures and the working methods, drawn up and tested in the course of our first ten years’ working together;
 elements of a collective identity born from our shared values and common history;
 an image conveyed among others through a logo and a Web site through which the philosophy and the proposals of the Alliance have been gradually made known.

What Brings Allies Together

An acknowledged fact. That of the interdependence of persons, of societies, and of these and the biosphere, which calls for the common management of the planet. That of the inadequacy of the current models of governance, which calls for individual and collective mutations.

A rejection. That of a world where what is exchanged among people and among peoples is governed by unfair trade based exclusively on competition.

A conviction. That dialog and common work, pursued over time, among the peoples, among the different social and professional spheres, are the only way to bring forth viable alternatives for the evolution of the world.

A principle. According to which being and remaining an Ally depends entirely on his or her contribution, however modest, to the common effort.

Alliance Ethics

They are derived from the Charter of Human Responsibilities. [2]

Regarding the Alliance project, all Allies commit to:

 promoting a culture of peace and cooperation;
 making the Alliance an open and tolerant arena and welcome to all;
 keeping the Alliance alive by making it known and circulating its work;
 sharing their experience and maintaining links with the other Allies.

Regarding the governance of the Alliance, all Allies commit to:

 complying with the working procedures adopted in common;
 using the name of the Alliance in compliance with its Constituent Charter;
 accepting that their participation in the Alliance be public, otherwise respecting the rules of confidentiality defined in common.

Alliance Objectives

As contributor in the search for new processes of global governance:

 To promote the idea of a global community and to make the Alliance one of its building arenas
 To promote and to adapt in the different regions of the world and in different social and professional spheres the Charter of Human Responsibilities as the common ethical foundation on which to build the global community
 To circulate the Alliance Proposal Papers [3]
 To draw up and circulate new proposals
 To translate the Alliance proposals into practice by contributing to implement changes from the individual to the global scales
 To renew democratic approaches by giving rise to local or regional citizens’ assemblies benefiting from all of the Alliance’s methodological experience
 To design and implement procedures to form alliances with outside partners on limited objectives with appropriate procedures and working arenas

As a community of Allies:

 To finance the collective operation, the linkage of the Alliance
 To reinforce the internal participation tools of the Alliance and its procedures for collective decision making, in particular for the common guidelines: choice of partners, support of projects, methods, tools, etc.
 To promote cross-collaboration and cross-interaction
 To develop tools for the assessment of collective action

Alliance Governance: Rules and Procedures

 Allies can act and take initiatives in the name of the Alliance.
 Allies can use at their convenience all the documents having the Alliance label, [4] which is to guarantee compliance with the Constituent Charter. The group draws its legitimacy from its members, persons who are well-known for their involvement in the Alliance, their personal disinterestedness, their own good faith, and their knowledge and understanding of its history.

For any new initiative, it is in the interest of all to comply with two principles [5] :

The principle of good faith, in compliance with the Ethical Charter: the initiative is open to all other Allies, it respects the diversity of opinion, it is taken in a spirit of cooperation, etc. Good faith is considered to be acknowledged in the absence of motivated objections from other Allies.

The principle of previous information: any Ally who wishes to take an initiative in the name of the Alliance is held to presenting it on the Web site and showing that the project complies with the Constituent Charter. Agreement of the other Allies is considered as obtained if there has been no motivated objection in the month following the publication of this information on the Web site. The tools (t) available on the Alliance Web site and the procedure (p) to be followed by anyone wishing to launch an initiative in the name of the Alliance are presented in the following table.

(t) A multilingual section called "New Proposals"

(p) The person(s) promoting the initiative provide in this section the following information:  Identity and details of the project promoter(s)  Presentation of the project with downloadable files if necessary.  Reasons for wishing the initiative to carry the Alliance name  Mention of any active relations maintained with one or several Allies or Alliance Workshops  Special mention of how the proposed initiative is to contribute to the collective work of the Alliance  List of contacts (individuals, legal entities, institutions, movements, etc.) wishing to participate in the project

(t) A page presents the above information with a reminder of the principles of the Charter.

(p) Any Ally can give his or her opinion and vote for or against the initiative on the same page (anyone wishing to organize a collective discussion on the proposed initiative can facilitate it on the "alliance" forum)

(p) Any Ally can publicly propose a form of support (financial, methodological, etc.), offer, or solicit collaboration, etc.

(p) The number of days remaining before the possible agreement to the initiative’s carrying the Alliance label is displayed.

(p) The rule for the publication of the initiative is the following:  A proposed initiative is reserved for publication on line at a fixed date.  When the project is accepted, a section is opened for it in the most suitable part of the Web site.  When it is not accepted, it remains in the section archive, but it can no longer be voted on.  All projects remain displayed in the "New Proposals" section, which comprises three parts: current proposals, accepted projects (with a link to the page presenting its follow-up), refused projects.

(t)(p) If the collective decision-making mechanism does not succeed in producing a clear acceptance or rejection of the initiative proposed in the name of the Alliance after the month of consultation, it will be up to the Support and Mediation Group to arbitrate the decision in terms of the Constituent Charter.

Common Calendar for the 2004-2010 Stage

Allies agree that it is necessary to adopt of a reference calendar, a common agenda for the second stage of the Alliance. The reference calendar has as its starting point the Charter of Human Responsibilities and the Agenda for the Twenty-first Century, as a shared common projection. Once it is drawn up, it will only be fulfilled insofar as effective initiatives are born, with their specific human, material, and financial resources, to translate it into acts.

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