[DRAFT] ‘Freedom of Assembly and Association’

[Kenmoria]

“In 4c, I fail to see how it would be possible to fight in the army without being compelled to do something political, as it is in the nature of the job. Also, I think you need to put something about being allowed to prohibited illegal religious or political actions, since assassination would be a political action.”

[Separatist Peoples]

“In 4c, I fail to see how it would be possible to fight in the army without being compelled to do something political, as it is in the nature of the job. Also, I think you need to put something about being allowed to prohibited illegal religious or political actions, since assassination would be a political action.”

"I have to disagree. Making war may be a political act when attributed to nations, but the fighting itself is apolitical. Soldiers and sailors aren't thinking of political goals when they're ducking bullets and shells."

[United Massachusetts]

We are in favour of this resolution, and will vote for it.

OOC: ^Proves the point of religious nations looking to this for legitimization of their discriminatory practices.

To Bears: Is there a particular reason you're not using list code?

Sure. Sure. Believe whatever floats your boat.

[Maowi]

Believing that the freedom for people to assemble and associate in pursuit of mutual interests (e.g. charity, culture, education, politics, religion, socialising), is a fundamental right which should not be restricted further than public safety truly requires, and therefore should be protected under national and international law;

Hereby states that Freedom is a compelling practical purpose for protecting these rights and, subject to any limits set by earlier resolutions that are still in force, requires member nations to uphold the following rights for all legally competent people under their jurisdiction except where an activity is for economic purposes and other GA legislation requires or at least does not forbid its further regulation:

'So, freedom is a compelling practical purpose for discrimination? In other words, the Charter of Civil Rights does absolutely nothing at all? Despite striving to expand freedoms for its citizens as far as possible - or perhaps, because of this - Maowi does not consider 'freedom', alone, a compelling practical purpose for allowing discrimination, which itself restricts the freedoms of whole swathes of people. And even if freedom itself were a valid reason for allowing discrimination, that would surely mean that the same should be permitted by individuals and by governments, not just civilian assemblies?

1.) People have the right to gather together voluntarily for whatever purposes they want (charitable, cultural, educational, political, religious, social, or otherwise), without risk of arrest or of law-suits (other than for non-performance of contractual duties) for doing so, and threats or force may not be used to prevent this, unless
a/ The assembly is to incite or cause direct physical harm to other people, otherwise-illegal harm to non-sapient animals, damage to other people’s property, or breach of WA laws against environmental damage.

'Maowi would like the power to prosecute assemblies formed for the purpose of psychological, or other types, of harassment targeted against certain individuals.

'As it stands, we find it impossible to support this legislation.'

[Araraukar]

OOC post, and my apologies for taking so long to get back to you. Life has been hectic and this topic requires brain activity. Haven't been avoiding you.

OOC

To Bears: Is there a particular reason you're not using list code?

I'm waiting until everything else is "complete" before adding that because I’m not practiced with using it and don't want to run the risk that changing the text after adding it might accidentally mess up the code.

If you want, I can give you the coded version whenever you edit the draft.

Also, why only physical harm to people?

There are nations here whose governments would claim all practice and teaching of ideologies they dislike -- rival political views, religion, or whatever -- to be psychologically harmful, and use that excuse to ban it: I am not going to legitimize that oppression.

What happened to yelling at me about good faith compliance? And in any case I'd suggest making it "psychological harm likely to require extensive therapy" or something like that. Or just, you know, "extreme distress", because it's unlikely that a person who really wants to believe in something, would be extremely distressed in doing so, whereas them using religion or politics or whatever reason to harass someone else, shouldn't be condoned by the WA.

It over-rides parts of the COCR (by declaring that Freedom is a "compelling practical purpose" for upholding the rights listed here)

Why do you think freedom of one person should override the freedom of another, just because one person is a part of a group?

Possibly even mentioning the environmental resolutions wasn't necessary, but I decided to err on the side of caution.

To be fair, in IC Araraukar would highly approve mentioning environmental laws, but would likely request the addition of "national environmental laws" in there as well. The existing WA laws on environment largely target national and business actions, not actions of individuals, whether in groups or not.

and why should "state-approved" events automatically be entitled to more protection under this proposed resolution than other events -- especially as they're likely to be given more help by the approving governments anyway -- to start with?
I'll see whether I can fit in something specifically about advance notification and access for emergency services, instead of just leaving those [hopefully] covered by ‘1.d.’ -- and arguably, for the emergency services, '1.b.' as well -- instead.

Because a state-approved event would presumably (reasonable nation theory and all) include plans for attender safety and emergency services - the lack of the provision for which is being used as a repeal argument for the existing/previous resolution - as well as possible traffic re-routing and such that are necessary in RL mass gatherings. Random spontaneous gatherings of large amounts of people tend to lead to violence and other disruptions of order (or even crimes) in RL, so it's fairly safe to assume that would still hold true in NS.

The exceptions in clause 5 allow single-party or theocratic governments to remain legal (thus avoiding illegality for ‘Ideological Ban’)

It's funny how forms of government are considered ideologies, when actual ideologies (like communism or socialism) aren't. Though if you're pressed for character limit, maybe nix the examples (not the exceptions) list entirely?

What you effectively mean by “allows brainwashing children” is 1. “allows families to decide what ideological beliefs their children are taught”, yes? Are you actually suggesting that 2. children shouldn’t be told anything at all about such matters until they reach legal adulthood, despite the principle of (and existing resolution to protect) freedom of expression, or 3. 'just' suggesting that the state should have a monopoly of such teaching? State-monopolised 4. ‘education’ on these topics is probably just as likely as parentally-authorised education to become indoctrination, perhaps even more so given that the 5. exclusion of alternative viewpoints would be on a wider scale and so children would be less likely to encounter them, and therefore neither I on an OOC basis nor a majority of the Bears IC regards it as a preferable approach.

Short and to the point:
1. No. Though families shouldn't be allowed to decide that in any case (see your own later comment about exclusion of alternative viewpoints).
2. Yes. And unless you can find extremely good reasons why that isn't already allowed by the current FoE and other existing resolutions (there's that one I never can remember the name of, that leaves setting important age limits to the nations), that's the IC stance of Araraukar as is (and what you're planning to do with this proposal won't change it as you're not contradicting existing resolutions by your own admission).
3. Why not? You mentioned theocracies already. Aren't they single-religion nations?
4. You do realize that I live in Finland, right? Religion (Lutheranism) was an actual school subject for me. (Which, funnily enough, killed my Christian faith.) We were still taught about other religions and cultures.
5. Why would state-provided learning be automatically worse than that provided by non-professional teachers likely repeating information based on hearsay or what they were taught as kids, thus repeating and multiplying errors across generations? Also, I'd say that parents and such would very much more likely to have much narrower viewpoints on ideological things, than the national curriculum, since the parents are excempt from the bans for spreading discriminatory hate-speech. (Think of a skinhead teaching their kids about how all black people are [self-bleep as I can't make myself write such slurs even in an example] and should be killed to make way for the more "pure" whites. A state couldn't teach that, because of CoCR, and would have the ability to intervene on a teacher trying to teach that.)

[Bears Armed]

OOC
I apologise about not replying yet to the first two comments that I quote below. This was due to a combination of RL matters, feeling a bit burnt-out about the GA, and the fact that as nothing seems to be happening with the Repeal that would have to pass before this replacement could be submitted (maybe, at least in part, because that repeal’s author is waiting for somebody else to prepare an alternative replacement draft that they prefer to mine?) this has simply slipped down my list of priorities...
Here's a start on replies to the second of those posts, and to the more recent post by Araraukar. More to follow fairly soon, hopefully...

That's a reasonable question. Individuals’ rights to promote causes are covered already by the existing resolution ‘Protecting Free Expression’. Which of the other rights that I recognise here for assemblies and organisations do you think specifically (a) would be relevant for individuals as well and (b) aren’t also covered already by existing resolutions, so that we can see whether I or anybody else wants to start work on that?

I defer to your far more extensive knowledge of past resolutions. The point is that this draft doesn't recognise rights for assemblies, it recognises the grounds on which rights can be withheld. It doesn't say that people can assemble for certain purposes, but that they can assemble for any purpose except for some specific exceptions. And if we accept that it would be undesirable to create a situation where people can do in an assembly things they are prevented from doing when on their own, then this proposal essentially subjugates the whole of every member nation's laws to one single list of things they are able to prohibit. To call this invasive of national sovereignty would be a considerable understatement. Whether or not your list in practice matches up with existing resolutions on individual freedoms is beside the point, which is that this is poor basis for making international law.

Why shouldn't member nations that choose to do so pass laws against consuming hormone treated beef, eating blue cheese on public transport or any other example you can think of? Why should a nation that wants to legislate on litter have to build a case that it's covered by pre-existing WA resolutions on the environment? These might not necessarily be good laws, wise laws or laws you would want to see replicated in every member nation, but it is a considerable thing to deprive all governments of the right to have them and it goes considerably beyond the scope of the sort of pooling of sovereignty that should be involved in joining an international body. It's extreme overkill to micromanage the domestic law of member nations in this way if all you actually want to do is address the fact that Protecting Free Expression doesn't apply to groups.

I strongly suggest that you aim to confer on assemblies the important rights you want them to have rather than continuing with this "all of them except x,y and z" approach.

Believing that the freedom for people to assemble and associate in pursuit of mutual interests (e.g. charity, culture, education, politics, religion, socialising), is a fundamental right which should not be restricted further than public safety truly requires, and therefore should be protected under national and international law;

Hereby states that Freedom is a compelling practical purpose for protecting these rights and, subject to any limits set by earlier resolutions that are still in force, requires member nations to uphold the following rights for all legally competent people under their jurisdiction except where an activity is for economic purposes and other GA legislation requires or at least does not forbid its further regulation:

'So, freedom is a compelling practical purpose for discrimination? In other words, the Charter of Civil Rights does absolutely nothing at all? Despite striving to expand freedoms for its citizens as far as possible - or perhaps, because of this - Maowi does not consider 'freedom', alone, a compelling practical purpose for allowing discrimination, which itself restricts the freedoms of whole swathes of people. And even if freedom itself were a valid reason for allowing discrimination, that would surely mean that the same should be permitted by individuals and by governments, not just civilian assemblies?[/spoi/er]

1.) People have the right to gather together voluntarily for whatever purposes they want (charitable, cultural, educational, political, religious, social, or otherwise), without risk of arrest or of law-suits (other than for non-performance of contractual duties) for doing so, and threats or force may not be used to prevent this, unless
a/ The assembly is to incite or cause direct physical harm to other people, otherwise-illegal harm to non-sapient animals, damage to other people’s property, or breach of WA laws against environmental damage.

'Maowi would like the power to prosecute assemblies formed for the purpose of psychological, or other types, of harassment targeted against certain individuals.'

OOC
Organising that harassment could probably be classified as "hate speech" in most cases where classifying the action as harassment would be reasonable. This proposal specifies that it would apply only subject to the limits set by earlier resolutions that are still in force, one of those resolutions is ‘Protecting Free Expression’ which specifically allows actions to be taken against "hate speech", and one of the changes that I intend to make in the next draft here would extend that limiting clause to cover future resolutions on ‘Freedom of Expression’ as well in case the existing one gets repealed & replaced [again]. Harassment being organised by people who don’t themselves hate the targets but who are being hired for the purpose by haters could be tackled under this proposal’s ‘economic purposes’ activity. What other reasons might people have for organising that harassment that might slip through the gaps in existing law? I suppose there’s “for the lulz”, perhaps… I’ll think further about this, but do not intend to give governments blanket authority to suppress anything that they claim to be harassment: After all, for example, protests and opposition parties’ political campaigning potentially could be classified as “harassment” of the government…

OOC post, and my apologies for taking so long to get back to you. Life has been hectic and this topic requires brain activity. Haven't been avoiding you.

OOC
Understood, and certainly accepted. As you can see that I haven’t been very active in this thread lately myself, despite having comments from two other people to answer: Similar basic reasons (although the details of the hecticness [hecticality?] probably differ…).

OOCI'm waiting until everything else is "complete" before adding that because I’m not practiced with using it and don't want to run the risk that changing the text after adding it might accidentally mess up the code.

If you want, I can give you the coded version whenever you edit the draft.

There are nations here whose governments would claim all practice and teaching of ideologies they dislike -- rival political views, religion, or whatever -- to be psychologically harmful, and use that excuse to ban it: I am not going to legitimize that oppression.

What happened to yelling at me about good faith compliance? And in any case I'd suggest making it "psychological harm likely to require extensive therapy" or something like that. Or just, you know, "extreme distress", because it's unlikely that a person who really wants to believe in something, would be extremely distressed in doing so, whereas them using religion or politics or whatever reason to harass someone else, shouldn't be condoned by the WA.

It over-rides parts of the COCR (by declaring that Freedom is a "compelling practical purpose" for upholding the rights listed here)

Why do you think freedom of one person should override the freedom of another, just because one person is a part of a group?

Possibly even mentioning the environmental resolutions wasn't necessary, but I decided to err on the side of caution.

To be fair, in IC Araraukar would highly approve mentioning environmental laws, but would likely request the addition of "national environmental laws" in there as well. The existing WA laws on environment largely target national and business actions, not actions of individuals, whether in groups or not.

and why should "state-approved" events automatically be entitled to more protection under this proposed resolution than other events -- especially as they're likely to be given more help by the approving governments anyway -- to start with?
I'll see whether I can fit in something specifically about advance notification and access for emergency services, instead of just leaving those [hopefully] covered by ‘1.d.’ -- and arguably, for the emergency services, '1.b.' as well -- instead.

Because a state-approved event would presumably (reasonable nation theory and all) include plans for attender safety and emergency services - the lack of the provision for which is being used as a repeal argument for the existing/previous resolution - as well as possible traffic re-routing and such that are necessary in RL mass gatherings. Random spontaneous gatherings of large amounts of people tend to lead to violence and other disruptions of order (or even crimes) in RL, so it's fairly safe to assume that would still hold true in NS.

The exceptions in clause 5 allow single-party or theocratic governments to remain legal (thus avoiding illegality for ‘Ideological Ban’)

It's funny how forms of government are considered ideologies, when actual ideologies (like communism or socialism) aren't. Though if you're pressed for character limit, maybe nix the examples (not the exceptions) list entirely?

What you effectively mean by “allows brainwashing children” is 1. “allows families to decide what ideological beliefs their children are taught”, yes? Are you actually suggesting that 2. children shouldn’t be told anything at all about such matters until they reach legal adulthood, despite the principle of (and existing resolution to protect) freedom of expression, or 3. 'just' suggesting that the state should have a monopoly of such teaching? State-monopolised 4. ‘education’ on these topics is probably just as likely as parentally-authorised education to become indoctrination, perhaps even more so given that the 5. exclusion of alternative viewpoints would be on a wider scale and so children would be less likely to encounter them, and therefore neither I on an OOC basis nor a majority of the Bears IC regards it as a preferable approach.

Short and to the point:
1. No. Though families shouldn't be allowed to decide that in any case (see your own later comment about exclusion of alternative viewpoints).
2. Yes. And unless you can find extremely good reasons why that isn't already allowed by the current FoE and other existing resolutions (there's that one I never can remember the name of, that leaves setting important age limits to the nations), that's the IC stance of Araraukar as is (and what you're planning to do with this proposal won't change it as you're not contradicting existing resolutions by your own admission).

3. Why not? You mentioned theocracies already. Aren't they single-religion nations?

OOC
No, they're single-Church governments. Under other resolutions they already have to allow the existence of rival faiths within their nations, it's just that they're already [and would still be] allowed to exclude those from governmental roles... just as the governing parties in single-Party governments would now [if this wasn'tr already the case] have to accept the existence of organised dissenting groups too.

4. You do realize that I live in Finland, right? Religion (Lutheranism) was an actual school subject for me. (Which, funnily enough, killed my Christian faith.) We were still taught about other religions and cultures.

5. Why would state-provided learning be automatically worse than that provided by non-professional teachers likely repeating information based on hearsay or what they were taught as kids, thus repeating and multiplying errors across generations? Also, I'd say that parents and such would very much more likely to have much narrower viewpoints on ideological things, than the national curriculum, since the parents are exempt from the bans for spreading discriminatory hate-speech. (Think of a skinhead teaching their kids about how all black people are [self-bleep as I can't make myself write such slurs even in an example] and should be killed to make way for the more "pure" whites. A state couldn't teach that, because of CoCR, and would have the ability to intervene on a teacher trying to teach that.)

OOC
Exempt? As I replied above to Maowi, re their point about assembling for the purpose of harassing others, the facts that this proposal would only apply subject to the limits set by earlier resolutions that are still in force (and my planned expansion of that clause to cover any subsequent resolutions about 'Freedom of Expression' too) and that the existing 'Protection of Free Expression' does -- as any replacement for it presumably also would do so --allow government action against "hate speech" mean that if this passes then governments still could act against any such parental promotion of hatred.

You seem a bit more optimistic than I am (or the Bears are) about how well-meaning and wise governments & government agencies across the WA as a whole (rather than in our own nations in particular) are likely to be.

I take your point about the existing resolution whose identity you couldn’t remember: It’s #299 ‘Legal Competence’, and specifically its clause ‘4’. That’s actually one of mine, and although I hadn’t intended for governments’ rights to set [extra] thresholds to over-ride parents’ & other guardians’ rights to make decisions about their chidlren’s/wards’ lifestyles (rather than to permit those activities by the young subject to parental [etc] consent...) I do now see that it could definitely be read in that way. Oops! It seems that I’d need to Repeal & Replace that, to clarify the point, before submitting this… Thank you for pointing it out. (And before anybody reading this says that governments legalising something for the young should be allowed automatically to over-ride parental authority, would that same anybody say the same if the right in question wasn’t the right to not attend church, it was [for example] the right to own & use firearms?)

[Maowi]

OOC:

OOC
... and the fact that as nothing seems to be happening with the Repeal that would have to pass before this replacement could be submitted (maybe, at least in part, because that repeal’s author is waiting for somebody else to prepare an alternative replacement draft that they prefer to mine?)

I was wondering about this too. I hope they haven't abandoned the repeal entirely, because some good points were brought up about flaws with the target.

Organising that harassment could probably be classified as "hate speech" in most cases where classifying the action as harassment would be reasonable. This proposal specifies that it would apply only subject to the limits set by earlier resolutions that are still in force, one of those resolutions is ‘Protecting Free Expression’ which specifically allows actions to be taken against "hate speech", and one of the changes that I intend to make in the next draft here would extend that limiting clause to cover future resolutions on ‘Freedom of Expression’ as well in case the existing one gets repealed & replaced [again]. Harassment being organised by people who don’t themselves hate the targets but who are being hired for the purpose by haters could be tackled under this proposal’s ‘economic purposes’ activity. What other reasons might people have for organising that harassment that might slip through the gaps in existing law? I suppose there’s “for the lulz”, perhaps… I’ll think further about this, but do not intend to give governments blanket authority to suppress anything that they claim to be harassment: After all, for example, protests and opposition parties’ political campaigning potentially could be classified as “harassment” of the government…

I also agree that granting governments the power to both define and clamp down on harassment is a bad idea. I think I'd be happy with a WA definition of harassment, with the responsibility of enforcing a ban left to member nations themselves.