[DEFEATED] Self-Defence Education Compact

[Seppen]

I was talking about that above. As conviced pacifist and antimilitarist, I think that schools should never teach violence (both physical or other forms), not even as defensive solution.

This is where I'm at as well. I think I'd be fine with this proposal if it wasn't mandatory. My nation (admittedly an exception here) is entirely non-violent and the people in it are pacifists. They have no need to address how to mitigate violence or potential violence in situations, making pushing this into classes a waste of time. If it were a requirement to provide this as an elective for primary and secondary schools, I wouldn't mind it.

As a nation which has outlawed guns (and encourages all others to do the same), we take issue with the implications of Article d. Furthermore, Croanique is a pacifist nation with a low crime rate, and we cannot encourage the use of violence among our youngest citizens, even as self-defense. There's nothing stopping anyone receiving a formal education regarding self-defense from using that knowledge to further harm others in non-defensive ways. Finally, we cannot support any resolution stressing the importance of staying "physically able" as though that is a choice everyone gets to make. Physical education classes are notoriously ableist and fatphobic environments which breed contempt among the majority of people and rarely teach much of anything valuable in a long-term sense. Croanique votes wholeheartedly AGAINST this resolution.

Thank you, I feel really comforted, knowing that I have allies on the path of pacifism and non-violence.

[Princess Rainbow Sparkles]

I voted for. The proposal is well-intentioned and well-written.

But I do understand the substantial opposition. On principle, it's hard to view this as a compelling international issue calling for the hard mandates. Perhaps a softer "encourages" proposal would have been more successful. Anyway, at the end of the day, teaching self-defense requires teaching the use of violence. Even if it is a use of violence that many consider justified (Christ didn't), there's no good argument made for requiring everyone to accept that premise. Without hard evidence, I'm willing to assert that most of us were children once, and that few of us ever found ourselves in anything remotely resembling a true self-defense situation.

[Saint Euphelia]

"Oppose on the ground of inefficiency. Physical Education classes are for physical activities related to sports and health, and adding one more item into the list will only increase workload for the teachers. Physical Classes should offer variety in sport activities conducted in classes to promote interests rather than just focusing on some activities only. Adding a self-defence class will only restrict the list of activities students can do in classes. If students really intended to study self-defence, they would seek such classes as part of their co-curriculum. It is better not to waste both students' and teachers' time during already limited time in PE classes, and most students are more interested in having fun during that time than really learning something in the first place.
If the purpose of teaching self-defence is to protect oneself, it is better to de-escalate or avoid such threats in the first place rather than resorting to violence immediately. It could further complicate a situation where there will be question of who is threatening one or vice-versa, therefore delaying police duties and court processes if it escalated to that point. Plus, it can be a reason of increase violence and disturbances in schools since students are taught to respond 'violence with violence'.
If the resolution does include the idea of avoiding threats as "self-defence", it is more of a moral lesson than physical. Some nations had moral lessons as part of their curriculum already and they offered the advices on avoiding and de-escalating dangers. For nations that don't have such lessons, they could have extra talks for protecting one self, but self-defence classes involving physical actions should not be compulsory nor encouraged in the first place.
Therefore, the nation of Saint Euphelia will vote against the resolution."

[Cathamye]

I think this proposal is well-intentioned and potentially a positive idea. As a mandate I am not sure if it makes too much sense -- realistically, most young children will never be able to defeat an armed assailant with their bare hands even with training -- but I do think there is value in encouraging the teaching of deescalation tactics and nonviolent conflict resolution. It will not meaningfully address violent crime directed at children but it could help deter and ameliorate the risk of bullying and encourage physical fitness (as referenced in part b of the proposal and a portion of part c). I'm personally voting 'For' but I can understand why the 'Against' votes are in the majority at this stage. I suspect that if this does end up passing then there may be a push by other nations to amend some of its provisions.

[Desmosthenes and Burke]

As indicated previously, we oppose the proposal on grounds that school curricula are properly considered the strictly internal affairs of a member state not subject to interference from this body.

That said, we still profoundly disagree with the evil philosophies underpinning some delegations' opposition and encourage them to re-think their self-destructive and immoral commitment to so-called "pacifism".

[Bingsearching]

"The purpose of schools is to educate children, and we accept many member states' curriculums are not broad enough to provide young people with the skills they need. However, we do not believe self-defence is worth lesson time and we are yet to see good enough reason that self-defence classes could lead to realworld results.

Therefore we are voting against this resolution."

[Croanique]

Non-binding article.

For the 4,384,028,506th time - SDEC does not in principle require or prescribe that any form of self-defence be taught by schools.

Concerned that the ambassador does not know what the word "mandate" means and maintaining our other objections, we do not acknowledge this as a valid response.

[Texkentuck]

Yes, please push for the proposal through on every nation made up of a different social culture. Our nation takes serious the mental state of our students. They are taught in a way which builds their ego. This has reduced significantly the complaints of being bullied. We do not believe that every nations student body made up of bullies should be taught such useful tactics. The international organization of the WA is now acting as the worlds local school board. I’m guessing this education will teach the bullies too….We can not upon good judgement voice support for such a major international local school board curriculum overhaul. Pres. Bram W.Schirkophf

[Caymarnia]

This evening's vote of the National Council of the People's Will has returned a rejection of this proposal, considering it a blatant overreach at best, and a violation of the sovereignty of member states at worst. What business is it of the World Assembly how we school our children, or deal with the admittedly endemic issue of bullying?

Caymarnia therefore concurs with the honorable delegation of Desmosthenes and Burke, and votes against.

[United States of Americanas]

Uh, yeah, no, this is an instaNope for me.

The WA has no place ordering nations to military indoctrinate children in the school system.

This piece of legislation is ridiculous, I’d be more supportive of a WA statement encouraging schools to have increased psychology workload focused on deescalation and conflict resolution instead of claptrap that somehow makes a gym teacher with rarely enough education to do more than run the gym to suddenly know psychology, law, and proper use of force.

If anything the WA should have a fund set aside for nations who want to partake in the self defense compact for law enforcement officers to teach a class in schools that opt into the program. But any such program must have a national state and district opt out mechanism to respect the rights of sovereign education institutions.

[Te Nonoke]

We vote against enacting this mandate.

While we can acknowledge the positive intentions of it, the practicality and ethics of such a mandate are questionable.

Firstly, teaching of self-defense is quite different to general sports and physical education and we believe that it's inclusion in them is not a non-significant burden on teaching staff, and to mandate it's teaching will increase costs to the system that outweigh the benefits.

Secondly, we believe that self defense is not ethically appropriate to be included in our education curricular. The teaching of physical violence, including that for self defense, should not be mandated in schools as it encourages physical confrontation. We believe a better use of resources for education should be on preventing violent crimes, and it is well known that crime increases in regions with lower levels of education. We believe that non-violent conflict resolution would be a better use of resources and ethically appropriate for schools and children.

Non-mandatory self defense classes for school students taught as extra-curricular programmes would be welcomed, and we would be open to including these classes for areas that need it most/that have increased levels of violent crimes, in conjunction with other conflict resolution techniques as mentioned before.

[Ankoz]

After some reflection and reading through the forum, Ankoz has decided to now oppose the proposal submitted to the WA General Assembly for the following reasons;
a) It holds very little specifics as to how it will be implemented, monitored, or the conditions for it to be met, leading it to be a very ineffective mandate which leads to;
b) Since the proposal covers both physical education (P.E.) and self-defence classes, it leads it to have quite divided attention further reducing effectiveness which ultimately leads to;
c) Due to how inneffective and unenforceable the proposal is it'd both make a mockery of the World Assembly andt it'd also block further more comprehensive proposals on both subject matters, leading to an overall less effective WA.

So in summary, it's badly designed, hardly specifies anything, nearly unenforceable, and blocks further and better written legislation on the matter.

[Mackiland]

Totally agree. Everyone needs to know how to self-defence.

[Lawteria]

…What business is it of the World Assembly how we school our children, or deal with the admittedly endemic issue of bullying?

World Assembly has the ability to and should have the future generation’s best interests in mind, it is after all, our future too. The proposal also extends out to de-escalation, which if you take a look at where we are, the World Assembly, this is the type of skill that should be taught in schools to raise strong leaders.

[Sierra Lyricalia]

Leo shakes his head, a slightly confused grin on his face. He stands to address the chamber.

"There are a number of legitimate reasons to oppose this draft, but I'm flabbergasted at what most ambassadors have come up with. It's fine to worry about World Assembly overreach, and I understand the high gravity of Omicron Convenience V ensures that its people have no physical bodily condition between 'Hussein Thunderbolt' and 'clinically dead.'"

"What I can't understand is the opposition based on fear of violence. Unarmed self defence is neither more nor less than that - teaching the body how to react when it is physically threatened with violence by some other person or animal. Several martial arts, despite that term, are specifically designed to react to threats, and have no proactive - that is, aggressive - moves. Indeed, the entire point is that in an environment in which every potential victim has the basics of self-defense, physical or violent bullying becomes much harder to perform."

"And in the event someone is able to carry it out anyway, the victim will understand there was nothing they could have done; rather than agonizing hours, days, or even weeks later about 'Oh, I should've kicked him in the nuts but I froze up!', instead they'll be that much closer to realizing 'I did the best I possibly could, but Chacky Jan himself would've had trouble with those assholes - there was nothing else I could've done.' Trauma recovery proceeds a bit easier this way, yet you want to deny it for so many."

"It's difficult to imagine a downside to teaching these skills, but somehow my fellow ambassadors have achieved it. But they've gotten things bass-ackwards: teaching children how to protect themselves against violence does not increase violence, and helping kids understand and control their emotional responses - an essential part of any such training - is the opposite of encouraging anger and predation. We might as well say developing heart medicine will encourage more people to have heart attacks! The argument is asinine and should be disregarded, as my esteemed colleague from Demo-- from Desom-- uh, from D&B, has ably stated."

[Caymarnia]

The proposal also extends out to de-escalation, which if you take a look at where we are, the World Assembly, this is the type of skill that should be taught in schools to raise strong leaders.

Strong leaders are made by life, not by pointless legislation. And linking mandatory self-defense training to de-escalation of hostilities is, quite frankly, a farcical utopian dream. Pacifism is not only defeatist, it's self-defeating. "First, do no harm" is all well and good for physicians, but for nations?

Pacifism leads to submission, which ultimately leads to slavery. Never again. NEVER.

[Xanthorrhoea]

Leo shakes his head, a slightly confused grin on his face. He stands to address the chamber.

"There are a number of legitimate reasons to oppose this draft, but I'm flabbergasted at what most ambassadors have come up with. It's fine to worry about World Assembly overreach, and I understand the high gravity of Omicron Convenience V ensures that its people have no physical bodily condition between 'Hussein Thunderbolt' and 'clinically dead.'"

"What I can't understand is the opposition based on fear of violence. Unarmed self defence is neither more nor less than that - teaching the body how to react when it is physically threatened with violence by some other person or animal. Several martial arts, despite that term, are specifically designed to react to threats, and have no proactive - that is, aggressive - moves. Indeed, the entire point is that in an environment in which every potential victim has the basics of self-defense, physical or violent bullying becomes much harder to perform."

"And in the event someone is able to carry it out anyway, the victim will understand there was nothing they could have done; rather than agonizing hours, days, or even weeks later about 'Oh, I should've kicked him in the nuts but I froze up!', instead they'll be that much closer to realizing 'I did the best I possibly could, but Chacky Jan himself would've had trouble with those assholes - there was nothing else I could've done.' Trauma recovery proceeds a bit easier this way, yet you want to deny it for so many."

"It's difficult to imagine a downside to teaching these skills, but somehow my fellow ambassadors have achieved it. But they've gotten things bass-ackwards: teaching children how to protect themselves against violence does not increase violence, and helping kids understand and control their emotional responses - an essential part of any such training - is the opposite of encouraging anger and predation. We might as well say developing heart medicine will encourage more people to have heart attacks! The argument is asinine and should be disregarded, as my esteemed colleague from Demo-- from Desom-- uh, from D&B, has ably stated."

To politely disagree, first of all, the proposal offers no definition of what self defence is. Your definition is not how others may define it, although I suppose that nations wishing not to promote violence could attempt to use a similar interpretation implementing the resolution were it to pass. I am also doubtful of the assertion that there exist martial arts that cannot be adapted for offensive purposes. They may intend to be purely reactive and defensive, however in reality, such techniques are easy to adapt to a more offensive purpose.

Secondly, your point about giving victims solace is dangerously wrong. People freeze, regardless of training. Soldiers freeze in battle, police freeze in shootouts, paramedics freeze in emergencies. All have been extensively trained. Training may reduce the frequency, but it happens anyway. Stating that having training is some magical cure to being unable to act is just wrong, and tacks dangerously close to victim blaming. People are in fact capable of doing the best they can even if untrained. Trauma will proceed just the same with or without training, possibly worse, as training runs the risk of raising a person's expectations of themselves. If you've been trained to fight and freeze anyway, you'll feel a lot worse than if you are untrained and simply didn't know what to do.

Finally, I feel that your heart disease analogy is inappropriate. Heart medicine (at least in modern times) is developed by having a thorough understanding of exactly what causes heart disease and how it manifests, and then by giving medications/therapy that addresses those underlying causes. Applying a similar process to the problem of violence would look more like investing in welfare and support programs that minimise the societal factors that lead to violence (poverty, addiction, mental health problems, predjudice and bigotry etc), in the same way that heart disease is mostly managed by reducing blood pressure, managing lipids, and giving aspirin to reduce clotting. There is a reason that the majority of heart medication is preventative, its the most effecctive approach. The approach used in this proposal is more akin to teaching people to perform CPR on themselves when they get chest pain. Nominally it may do some good, but it's probably the least effective thing you can do to fix the problem.

The downside to teaching these skills is that we're wasting money on an ineffective solution, when that money could be better spent in more effective ways. If we all had unlimited budgets, then sure, this idea might have merit, but we don't. In a sentence, the oppurtunity cost of this resolution is too great.

Edit: spelling etc (still probably missed some)

[Yeherusalem]

teaching self-defence sounds great, but after further contemplation, we have come to vote against it for two main reasons:
- the first reason is that it wouldn't change much since all children would learn to fight. Also the aggressive and malevolent ones.
- a second reason is that teaching self-defence to children would probably not have a big effect against an adult with bad intentions. On the contrary, given the narcistic personality of these criminals, resistance might cost the victim more dearly than not resisting.

What we think is that children should be taught to use their speed and agility in dangerous situations.

[Princess Rainbow Sparkles]

What I can't understand is the opposition based on fear of violence. Unarmed self defence is neither more nor less than that - teaching the body how to react when it is physically threatened with violence by some other person or animal. Several martial arts, despite that term, are specifically designed to react to threats, and have no proactive - that is, aggressive - moves. Indeed, the entire point is that in an environment in which every potential victim has the basics of self-defense, physical or violent bullying becomes much harder to perform."

Many of us see violence as the use of physical force designed to overcome someone else's will. Self-defense is a form of violence: using force to prevent someone else from using force on you. You're trying to draw a distinction between "aggressive" violence and "defensive" violence. But they're both violence.

There are extreme pacifists (Jesus, Ghandi) who view any use of violence - even in self-defense - to be wrong. There's no reason for the WA to compel nations holding such views to renounce it and teach their children how to use violence, "responsibly" in the view of the WA.

It's difficult to imagine a downside to teaching these skills... teaching children how to protect themselves against violence does not increase violence[.]

Pssh... someone obviously never saw the Karate Kid. Spoiler alert: kids can be cruel and sometimes kids use skills they learned in "self-defense" class to bully others.

[Marlem]

What I can't understand is the opposition based on fear of violence. Unarmed self defence is neither more nor less than that - teaching the body how to react when it is physically threatened with violence by some other person or animal. Several martial arts, despite that term, are specifically designed to react to threats, and have no proactive - that is, aggressive - moves. Indeed, the entire point is that in an environment in which every potential victim has the basics of self-defense, physical or violent bullying becomes much harder to perform."

Many of us see violence as the use of physical force designed to overcome someone else's will. Self-defense is a form of violence: using force to prevent someone else from using force on you. You're trying to draw a distinction between "aggressive" violence and "defensive" violence. But they're both violence.

There are extreme pacifists (Jesus, Ghandi) who view any use of violence - even in self-defense - to be wrong. There's no reason for the WA to compel nations holding such views to renounce it and teach their children how to use violence, "responsibly" in the view of the WA.

It's difficult to imagine a downside to teaching these skills... teaching children how to protect themselves against violence does not increase violence[.]

Pssh... someone obviously never saw the Karate Kid. Spoiler alert: kids can be cruel and sometimes kids use skills they learned in "self-defense" class to bully others.

I do very much apologize for my delayed comment on the pending topic, but I am in full accordance with the Right Honourable Ambassador, Violence is something that has no place to be endorsed or promoted by the world assembly, it is not our duty to promote teaching violent practices, I understand that some other Rt. Hon. representatives might view this as an opportunity to help stop violence, on the other hand, there are people, more specifically, there are minors that might use the skills that are taught for self defense for all the wrong reasons, I am sure that some other form of reducing crime and violence will appear, but I do certainly believe that this is not the correct form to do it.

As once said by the Philosopher Karl Popper (please do forgive me should I misquote) that Violence is only acceptable when it used to bring down Tyranny and to (Re) establish Democracy. I do Agree with that point of view, In the modern societies that we attempt to build, we should bring down violent practices that are reminiscent of the dark past of most of our countries.

As such I am totally against this proposal, and do encourage other Nations to carefully analyze the negative impacts that the proposal might bring with it.

[Berusturg]

Berusturg votes FOR this resolution

Our federatives believe that the future generation should be able to protect themselves and others from any person wiling to hurt them, and choose to pass this resolution.

[WayNeacTia]

Perhaps a hint should be taken from all of this……

[Marlem]

Berusturg votes FOR this resolution

Our federatives believe that the future generation should be able to protect themselves and others from any person wiling to hurt them, and choose to pass this resolution.

Honourable Representative, I do respect your point of view, but at the same time that children are being taught "techniques" for self defense openly and in a mandatory form, are we not also giving a new generation of violent people an array of weapons to use?

[Texkentuck]

Technically this is teaching students to fight. Our nation of Texkentuck teaches students how to handle firearms and judo as a curriculum. We are surprised in this proposal it Doesn’t constitute what are advanced forms of self defense. Our nations curriculum does know. It’s where students are taught to outperform the opposition in which a defensive move is performed followed by doing an offensive move which is an attack taught to incapacitate the attacker. We believe that such promotion of this to every student in every culture you will see a rise in violence among the youth. Especially in cultures which students are “NOT” taught to refrain/evaluate and ask is it worth it to fight in this situation. This taught to students will be bully’s doing what was taught and those being bullied using what was taught offensively and defensively alike. You will see a rise of fighting in schools in which it’s more of a dangerous environment because everyone will know how to fight even the bully…Our school has for students answer a psychological evaluation every month. Teachers are taught to get behavioral problems out of the school system. In Texkentuck if your child can’t behave then it’s the parents problem. Your child by law must be in some form of education until the 9th Grade. Students who bully other students are sent home with an explanation. In teaching such skill our nation build up the ego of students so this form of skill isn’t the only curriculum making a child have an ego. Not every student or person should know this skill.
President Bram W. Schirkophf

[Amerion]

The South Pacific's World Assembly Delegation has cast the Coalition's vote FOR this proposed resolution, Self-Defence Education Compact, and warmly encourages fellow member regions to vote FOR.

'No Rec' or No Recommendation indicates a vote where, in the absence of a recommendation from the Office of WA Legislation, the Admiral Delegate General voted according to the majority stance of World Assembly members in the South Pacific.