Description: WA General Assembly Resolution #19: Child Protection Act (Category: Human Rights; Strength: Significant) shall be struck out and rendered null and void.

Argument: THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY:

APPLAUDS the aim of GAR#19, Child Protection Act, which is to protect children from abuse.

REGRETS, however, that shortcomings within this resolution cause it to fall short of successfully achieving this goal.

UNDERSTANDS that repealing this resolution will not prevent WA member nations from continuing their efforts to protect children within their borders.

ACCEPTS that physical and emotional abuse of children should be considered criminal acts within WA member states.

NOTES, however, that although this resolution states that "A child is entitled to ... not to be physically or emotionally abused" it fails to criminalize such actions.

FEELS that while giving children the right to not be abused is laudable, this resolution does not go far enough in working to prevent such horrific actions against children.

RECOGNIZES that this resolution's text also permits the continued abuses of children as Clause 3 reads: "A child has the right to remain with his or her parents or guardians, provided that articles 1 and/or 2 have not been violated".

OBSERVES that such wording, at minimum, permits WA member nations to leave abused children in the care of those who are abusing them until such abuse can be proven, which may result in children remaining with their abusers throughout the investigative process.

BELIEVES that children should be protected from those who are accused of abusing them throughout the investigative and judicial process.

REALIZES that the wording of the aforementioned Clause 3 means that children have a right to remain with their parents or guardians, which would include those who may be:

1. Detained in prison, for a crime unrelated to child abuse.

2. Fighting in a war in a foreign country.

3. Hospitalized for an extended period of time due to a severe illness or injury.

PROTESTS that this resolution clouds the issue of child protection rather than serving to clarify it through defining a child as “being under the age of consent or majority.” The wording of this clause is ambiguous, and it may permit WA member nations to pick and choose which definition they wish to employ in a given situation, depending on what best serves their governmental interests, versus serving the best interests of the child.

HOPES for future legislation that comprehensively ensures the protection of children.

REPEALS GAR#19, Child Protection Act.

Votes For: 8,434 (86%)
Votes Against: 1,425 (14%)

Implemented: Mon Oct 1 2012

Description: Recognizing the value of international trade to national economies and populations,

Seeking to promote multilateral trade negotiations between all World Assembly member nations,

The General Assembly,

1. Declares that multilateral trade negotiations must be hosted at the World Assembly at least once every ten years, with the mandate of reducing protectionist measures between all member nations;

2. Mandates that the World Assembly Trade Commission provide any financial or logistical assistance that is reasonably required to host these negotiations;

3. Requires that all member nations send at least one qualified delegate to these negotiations;

4. Further requires that, during these negotiations, delegates make a good faith attempt to cooperate with other delegates in order to come to mutually beneficial agreements which are in the best interests of all national populations involved;

5. Notes that any agreement arising from these negotiations is binding on all member nations which consent to that agreement.

Votes For: 5,133 (55%)
Votes Against: 4,146 (45%)

Implemented: Fri Oct 5 2012

Description: The General Assembly,

COGNISANT of the inherent innocence and naivety possessed by a child,

APPALLED that individuals may sometimes violate and/or take advantage of these attributes to further their selfish enterprises,

DESIROUS of a resolution where these natural attributes are protected and violations of the same result in swift retribution,

Hereby

DEFINES the following for the purpose of this resolution:

• A child as any individual under the national threshold of majority, or equivalent,

• A guardian as any individual that is legally accountable for a child, or the biological parent in nations where such definitions do not exist,

• Child abuse as any and/or all of the following:

  1. the forcing of unwanted or nonconsensual sexual behaviour and/or desire upon a child,

  2. the causing of excessive physical pain, injury or harm with a malicious intent, or through negligence, outside that which may occur from peer-to-peer bullying,

  3. any deliberate act and/or behaviour which results in serious emotional and mental trauma in a child,

  4. when a guardian deprives, intentionally or otherwise, a child of necessities such as care, nourishment, shelter, and/or healthcare on a long term or continuous basis, if that guardian is capable of providing such;

AFFIRMS that all children have the right, and expectancy, to be free from all forms of child abuse;

MANDATES that all acts of child abuse be criminalised;

REQUIRES nations to investigate fully, and to the best of their ability, all reports of child abuse;

INSISTS that such investigations be confidential, as well as respectful and impartial to the parties involved;

REQUIRES nations take all reasonable steps to ensure the safety of the victims of reported child abuse, both during and after such investigations;

FORBIDS the transport of children to a country not covered by this resolution for the purpose of contravening the articles of this resolution;

PROHIBITS the creation and/or distribution of materials without artistic merit depicting child abuse except for those which are needed for credible and genuine educational and research purposes, as well as for the investigation and prosecution of child abuse;

CLARIFIES that nothing in this resolution prohibits nations from enacting more stringent legislation on the subject of child abuse.

Co-author: The Dourian Embassy

Votes For: 9,348 (90%)
Votes Against: 1,002 (10%)

Implemented: Tue Oct 9 2012

Description: The World Assembly,

NOTING that certain surface water and groundwater resources, such as rivers and lakes, water basins, and aquifers are transboundary among nations.

CONCERNED that abuses committed by one nation on transboundary water resources could detrimentally affect the environment, economy, and well-being of neighboring nations.

AWARE that abuses may include, but are not limited to: Damming or diversion of rivers for irrigation or hydro-electric power generation, overtapping of aquifers, and discharge of urban wastes, industrial byproducts, and storm waters into rivers and lakes.

Hereby,

1) DEFINES, for the purpose of this Act, “Transboundary Water Resources” as water resources which are situated in part in different nations.

2) FORMS the Joint Water Resources Management Panel (JWRMP) to establish sustainable water use policies, cooperation protocols, and other regulations necessary to protect transboundary water resources,

3) ADOPTS the following articles to ensure that transboundary surface and groundwater resources are managed in-common and used sustainably.

Member nations shall:

1. Conserve, improve, and use transboundary water resources responsibly;

2. Mitigate any downstream hazards caused by upriver human activity;

3. Agree not to overtap, divert or dam transboundary water resources if the action causes significant harm to neighbouring nations;

4. Adopt measures to eliminate pollution from agriculture or industrial activities entering transboundary rivers and groundwater basins;

5. Ensure future development carried out on or near transboundary water resources will not cause lasting, adverse change to them; and

6. Allow neighbouring member nations to monitor the progress made in mutually agreed joint-implementation programs.

4) DIRECTS member nations to resolve disputes on transboundary water issues bilaterally or multilaterally, failing which, allows member nations to refer the dispute to JWRMP for arbitration with the consent of all parties involved.

5) CLARIFIES that member nations may:

1. Trade water rights so long as doing so is not detrimental to the public welfare or conservation goals; and

2. Enact more stringent environmental and water conservation laws than those stipulated by JWRMP.

6) AFFIRMS the importance of international cooperation and requests member nations cooperate with non-member nations on issues stated herein.

Votes For: 8,421 (83%)
Votes Against: 1,743 (17%)

Implemented: Fri Oct 26 2012

Description: The World Assembly,

Happily aware that Bees not only play a major role in pollinating many species of plants, including quite a few species that are useful to people, but can also produce both honey and beeswax in quantities that makes their harvesting by people worthwhile,

Open to the fact that keeping one or more hives can therefore provide people with a useful supplement to their diets and incomes, as well as assisting the pollination of some local crops,

Not at all happy that some nations might, for one reason or another, play unnecessary restrictions on bee-keeping;

Enthusiastically urges all WA member nations to _
1. Legalise bee-keeping, without setting unreasonable limits on whereabouts keepers may allow their bees to roam;
2. Legalise both domestic and international trade in hives or swarms of bees, honey, beeswax, bee-hives, and other relevant goods;
3. Refrain from imposing unreasonably strict or petty regulations upon bee-keeping and the associated activities, and from taxing these matters at rates that would render them not worthwhile for the bee-keepers;
4. Recognise the legal right of people from adjoining nations to reclaim swarms of bees that those people owned within those other nations under those other nations' own laws but that have strayed or even been lured across the international border;
5. Ensure that training in bee-keeping and in the processing of the bees’ products is available easily enough within their jurisdictions to meet the needs of any of their people who are interested in this possibility;
6. Discourage the reckless use of general-purpose insecticides, because those could harm bees (and other useful insects) as well as the 'pest' species that people actually want to get rid of;

Yearning to ease international trade in these goods, enacts that (subject to any restrictions imposed by earlier GA resolutions that are still in force) all WA member nations are required _
1. To allow the importation and exportation of any bees, bee-keeping equipment and/or products of bee-keeping of types whose possession would be legal within their borders, without unreasonably strict or petty regulation, subject to any restrictions that they apply to international trade in general in time of war or other national emergency, except as is genuinely necessary to prevent the spread of disease;
2. To limit any place customs duties, tariffs, or other taxation, that they place on the international trade in bees, bee-keeping equipment, and/or the products of bee-keeping, to levels that do not exceed taxation on the internal trade in such goods within their borders, except that if any imported goods received government subsidies within their country of origin at higher rates than equivalent goods are subsidised within the receiving nation then additional tariffs may be imposed to balance that difference.

Votes For: 8,599 (78%)
Votes Against: 2,463 (22%)

Implemented: Fri Nov 2 2012