GENERAL ASSEMBLY PROPOSAL
Repeal "Recognising Achievements Act"
A resolution to repeal previously passed legislation.
Category: Repeal | Resolution: GA#146 | Proposed by: Christian Democrats
The General Assembly,
Praising Resolution 146, Recognising Achievements Act, for setting out to reduce discrimination against individuals who are educated in foreign countries by prohibiting accreditation bodies from denying them certification to practice their trades,
Recognizing that a number of degrees, such as medical degrees and engineering degrees, are indeed transitive across national boundaries,
Aware, however, that other degrees, such as legal degrees, are not necessarily transitive and that it is entirely reasonable to treat people differently based on the countries where they were educated if there are systematic cross-national differences,
Realizing that a national government, for example, justly might wish to deny a lawyer trained in a different nation a license to practice law domestically because of major variations between the domestic legal system and the foreign legal system in which the lawyer earned his degree (e.g., substantial differences between common law, civil law, socialist law, customary law, and religious law educations),
Troubled that an individual who is not qualified for admission to a domestic graduate or professional school could take advantage of Resolution 146 to travel to a foreign country to receive an inferior education, which his home country would then be required to recognize as legitimate,
Noting that Resolution 146 is flawed because it uses the terms "academic title" and "professional title" as if they were interchangeable despite the fact that higher academic degrees, such as the Ph.D., D.Phil., or Th.D., and professional degrees, such as the J.D., M.D., or D.N.P., are distinct from one another,
Identifying that Resolution 146 is also deficient because its scope is limited to "national" and "supranational" accreditation bodies and that it fails to account for countries that commit accreditation to subnational jurisdictions, such as provinces, states, territories, counties, or oblasts,
Believing that Resolution 35, the Charter of Civil Rights, is wholly sufficient to stop accreditation bodies from treating foreign-educated individuals unreasonably as it prohibits discrimination based on nationality, ethnicity, race, skin color, language, or cultural background without a "compelling practical purpose,"
Repeals Resolution 146, Recognising Achievements Act.