Please offer your harshest criticism. I apparently didn't get enough the last time.
This might be the Final Draft, if nothing else is offered as criticism.
Rights of Sapient Species
A resolution to improveworldmultiverse-widehumansapient and civil rights.
Category: Human Rights
Strength: Strong
Proposed by: Excidium Planetis
Description: The General Assembly,
Applauding the efforts to secure rights for all sapient beings, regardless of race or species, and the many efforts not to limit such rights to only beings of the homo sapiens species;
Nevertheless Concerned at the many attempts to restrict the rights of sapient beings for purely racial reasons, including but not limited to attempts to restrict the rights of sapient machines and an attempt to make human decisions necessary in the warfare of non-human species;
Believing that to secure once and for all the rights of sapient beings everywhere, a resolution is needed to affirm these rights;
Defines:
- "Sapient Being" as any physical entity possessing the ability to:
- Think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic;
- Choose a sensible course of action or considered response;
- Experience subjectively, feel, or recognize, discern, envision, understand, or attain awareness of.
- "Existing international laws" as any passed World Assembly Resolutions which are extant and not void at the time an individual may read this resolution, whether those resolutions have been passed before or after this resolution was passed.
And Hereby Declares that any sapient beings found inside member nations are not to be denied any of the rights guaranteed to humans or sapient beings by existing international laws, unless these rights threaten the survival of the beings to be granted the rights, or unless said rights are specifically probihibited by an unrepealed WA resolution passed prior to this resolution. No member nation may discriminate against sapient beings for reasons of race or species alone.
Mandates that member nations extend the same rights given to humans below the age of majority and mentally ill or mentally disabled humans to the sapient beings below the age of majority and mentally disabled or mentally ill beings of the same species as a sapient being, unless these rights threaten the survival of the beings to be granted the rights, or unless said rights are specifically probihibited by an unrepealed WA resolution passed prior to this resolution. Age of majority is to be determined for individual species based on equivalent degree of maturation.
Requires that in defining legal age of consent and legal age of marriage, member nations must define legal age for individual species; the legal age cannot be lower than the average age of onset of reproductive maturation for that species, and all legal ages between species should be set at an equivalent degree of maturation. Beings that do not reproduce sexually are exempted from this clause.
Clarifies that it is the responsibility of individual member nations to determine whether a given physical entity is a sapient being, but that such methods of determination must apply equally to humans and any other entities examined, and must also be passable by all healthy, normal, adult humans. Tests must not be based on the anatomy or genetics of a species, but shall be based solely on the mental capabilities of species tested.
Further Affirms that sapient beings shall be recognized in the eyes of the World Assembly as living beings, regardless of biological status.
Frequently Asked Questions:
The definition of Sapient Being is too broad. Do you really want to give rights to [insert animal here]?
Isn't this forced roleplay? In my nation's universe, humans are the only sapient beings.
What if a nation tries to define the ability to reason in a way that excludes non-humans?
Doesn't this duplicate CoCR? The mods ruled that CoCR covers non-humans.
Why did you define sapience based on the individual, rather than the whole species? What if 50% of a species is sapient, but the rest aren't, does that mean 50% aren't given these rights?
Protection of Sapient Rights was Significant. Why is this Strong?