A United Nations-San Francisco reunion for the new millennium.

Sixty years ago, the Charter of the United Nations was signed in San Francisco, marking the birth of a fledgling international body. The United Nations has since left and moved to New York City, with offices around the world, leaving San Francisco with a plaza bearing the famed Organization's initials to show the city's instrumental role in its conception. San Francisco is resolved to play more than ever an active role in the long life and future endeavours of the United Nations. It has outgrown its place among the dusty archival footage and yellowing newspaper clippings of the past, but it still has much history to make. A world-class city at heart, San Francisco seeks to set a global example for peaceful coexistence, just as it did on 26 June 1945.

While it may seem that it has been sitting back for the last six decades, San Francisco has actually been incubating in preparation for yet another innovative delivery at the dawn of the new millennium. It is on its way to complete the drafting of an international convention on human rights (ICHR)--a universal document that will be enforceable in all local courts, which will hold all nations to equal, socially and economically responsible standards. ICHR aspires to mirror the work done on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and parallel the structure of the European Convention on Human Rights, which applies to 45 countries and is enforceable in the European Court of Human Rights. The International Bill of Rights Project (IBOR), a San Francisco-based non-profit organization, whose mission is to educate people about existing international human rights, is behind this operation. It submits that the time has come to turn this Court into an international court of human rights, with jurisdiction over 191 countries. This international civil court, as it was, would act solely as a last resort for cases first brought before local courts.

An ICHR that promotes universal rules of conduct is most needed in an era of globalization and increasing interdependence between nations. Acceptance of this international convention would be the quid pro quo for transnational bodies, such as the World Trade Organization and the World Bank. Furthermore, it would expedite the process of development for many Third World countries, with a once unequal hand in the unregulated processes of globalization and capitalism. The proposed convention is just one part of San Francisco's tangible plan for peace.

On Human Rights Day--10 December 2005--IBOR will officially implement its human rights educational curriculum for a one class period in secondary schools in the San Francisco Bay area and other select cities worldwide. To mark the end of the Decade for Human Rights Education (1995-2004) and the start of the first phase of the World Programme for Human Rights Education, the United Nations General Assembly adopted in December 2004 a resolution mandating human rights education in primary and secondary schools around the world. Accordingly, ICHR aims to heed the United Nations urgent call and help the youth recognize and respect the rights they hold in common with all others.

The planned educational initiative will provide students with a booklet containing a compilation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights and the working draft of ICHR. A 17-minute film documenting the history of human rights documents will be shown in each classroom and a website (www.humanrightsday.org) will provide students with an enjoyable way to complete their requisite homework and engage in a global discussion on what rights they would like to include in the proposed international convention. They will also join San Francisco in the official celebration of Human Rights Day 2005 and the inauguration of the first-ever human rights educational curriculum.

San Francisco acknowledges that ICHR is the most important contribution it can make towards the realization of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and believes that the youth can make an invaluable contribution to such a process. If the United Nations hopes to meet all eight stated MDGs in time for its seventieth anniversary in 2015, it must seek solutions that will carry over to the next millennium. To this end and to enforce these eight MDGs, a ninth millennium goal should be for all nations--united--to create an international convention on human rights. After all, the unstated goal is to create a society that is self-sustaining and capable of functioning with or without the organs of the United Nations at hand. Until then, the world Organization could get a head start by further incorporating itself into the organic lining of society, such as in classrooms in every village worldwide. Once the United Nations begins to operate more seamlessly and harmoniously within the societal fabric, then it will give hunger, poverty and all other epidemics the agency with which to mend themselves.

Mishana Hosseinioun is Program Director of the International Bill of Rights Project (to be known as The International Convention on Human Rights), based in San Francisco, where she is also a long-standing intern in the Mayor's office. For more information, please visit www.IBOR.org.

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