General Assembly Resolution #522 “Protecting Sites of Religious Significance” (Category: Civil Rights; Strength: Mild) shall be struck out and rendered null and void.

The World Assembly,

Affirming the importance of identifying and protecting sites of cultural significance;

Acknowledging that religious sites frequently fall into this category and are deserving of protection;

Gratified by the long-standing success of General Assembly Resolution #287 "Cultural Site Preservation", which codifies identification and protection for sites with all manner of cultural significance;

Abhorring the needless and overreaching bureaucracy present in General Assembly Resolution #522 "Protecting Sites of Religious Significance", which both duplicates effort and exceeds reasonable boundaries;

Notes that the target resolution creates extensive and overlapping efforts in this regard through the creation of a second committee tasked with an overlapping mandate, and the separate designations of significance for religious sites now being required under multiple competing resolutions;

Annoyed that the creation of this unnecessary second committee will massively waste World Assembly funds that would be of better use elsewhere;

Further notes that the target resolution uses incredibly broad and problematic definitions, such as:

• defining any ‘place of religious community’ as a site of religious significance to be protected in perpetuity, which will include culturally insignificant houses with shrines where community worship may take place, preventing owners of the house from altering the religious nature of the house in the future even if their own religious views have changed;

• defining any grave ‘of people associated with […] a religion’ as a site of religious significance to be protected in perpetuity, which would render the grave of any deceased practitioner of an active religion forever untouchable, even for law enforcement purposes such as recovering evidence in a murder;

Dismayed that member nations are required to protect "foundational place, or places, of a religion" in perpetuity, which could lead to people declaring the establishment of a religion to immediately gain international protections for their person and property against even the most reasonable of societal demands;

Troubled that sites of religious significance established through invasion may be completely desecrated by member nations regardless of their current importance to the adherents of the religion at present;

Further troubled that the resolution does not fully prevent member nations from applying blanket access restrictions to sites of religious significance, defeating the purpose of protecting these sites in the first place;

Confused by unclear wording in the resolution, such as ‘[a]busing [sic] one's private property rights in the pursuit of gaining the legal right to protect or maintain a site of religious significance’, which could lead to vastly different interpretations by member nations and not result in the intended effect that the clause wanted;

Concluding that the member nations of the World Assembly should repeal a flawed resolution; hereby:

Repeals General Assembly Resolution #522, “Protecting Sites of Religious Significance.”

Co-authored by Verdant Haven.

General Assembly Resolution #491 “Rights of the employed” (Category: Civil Rights; Strength: Strong) shall be struck out and rendered null and void.

The World Assembly,

Commending the efforts of GA 491 "Rights of the employed" in enumerating several rights of workers,

Concerned, however, that sloppy writing and easily foreseeable consequences have transformed this well-intentioned resolution into a heavily flawed piece of legislation that imposes substantial unintended costs and directly undermines its own agenda,

Troubled that the resolution requires that workers prove to their employers the necessity of their breastfeeding in the workplace, a condition which is both obviously problematic and flies in the face of the legislation's stated purpose,

Disturbed that the resolution mandates a private area in the workplace "reserved for the sole purpose of breastfeeding" for workplaces subject to the mandates of clause E(3), a costly and unrealistic burden on small businesses and workplaces that cannot practically accommodate such a requirement,

Elaborating that the above mandate also establishes a substantial incentive for firms to avoid hiring female labor in direct contravention of the intentions of this resolution and WA labor law, especially given the absence of any non-discrimination hiring protections applying to breastfeeding in this resolution,

Confounded that the resolution requires at least eight weeks of leave for adoption, despite older children generally needing no special caregiver attention,

Adding that this mandate incentivizes business-minded governments to unduly burden adoption of older children to the detriment of adoptees, adopting families, and foster care systems,

Recognizing that extant WA law covers the two main policy objectives of this resolution, parental leave and retaliation, to a far greater degree, with:

1. GA 503 "Protecting Legal Rights of Workers" ensuring that workers are not retaliated against for seeking legal enforcement of their rights; and

2. GA 527 "Protected Working Leave" providing for far broader parental and other leave;

Reminding that several extant resolutions, including GA 35 "The Charter of Civil Rights", GA 91 "A Convention on Gender", and GA 457 "Defending the Rights of Sexual and Gender Minorities" more than adequately cover discrimination based on gender identity, gender expression, or sexual identity, and

Convinced that a heavily flawed, overreaching, and largely redundant piece of legislation has every reason to be repealed,

Hereby repeals GA 491 "Rights of the employed".

Whereas free and fair trade is good, be it enacted as follows:

1. In this resolution,

   1. general customs area refers to an area in which customs authority is exercised by a nation or nations with a common external trade policy without substantial internal trade barriers;

   2. customs area refers to a general customs area entirely subject to World Assembly law;

   3. resolution means extant WA resolution;

   4. member means WA member; and

   5. trade area means an area created by bilateral or multilateral treaty between customs areas in which they accord to each other special trade preferences.

2. Each customs area must accord to every other customs area a most-favoured trade preference, unless such preferences are:

   1. necessary for establishment of a particular industry or economic development in a nation with low standards of living,

   2. extended only to co-members of a trade area or customs area, or

   3. permitted by this resolution.

3. The value ascribed to imported goods shall be based on the value of the goods imported, or of like goods, if they were sold in normal trade under competitive conditions in normal quantities. If such information is not available, members must make a best guess of that value on available information.

4. Customs areas may not enforce quantitative restrictions, ie quotas, on imports from or exports to any other customs area, unless:

   1. export restrictions are temporary and in proportion to the need to relieve a serious ongoing or upcoming shortage of food or vital goods,

   2. needed restrictions are imposed for the purpose of evaluating or enforcing compliance with regulations not discriminating on origin also applying to like domestic goods,

   3. import restrictions are needed to safeguard the health or safety of domestic agriculture or to remove a temporary domestic surplus of a like good, or

   4. such restrictions are to protect national treasures of substantial cultural value, conserve exhaustible natural resources, or comply with resolutions.

5. Unless a quota is imposed, no member may require an import licence for goods from another member. Quotas on a good, when allocated, may not discriminate against supplying member nations, unless otherwise agreed to by the quota imposer and the major supplying member nations. All import licences shall be publicly available.

6. When a good is imported into a customs area at a price lower than normal market prices of like goods (ie dumping), the area may impose a tariff in the amount necessary to adjust the imported good’s price to a normal market price, after showing to the Wacc the occurrence of dumping, likely material damages to internal industry, and that the former clearly causes or will cause the latter.

7. After a good enters a customs area lawfully, no internal regulations or tax may be applied in a manner which discriminates against the origin of that good relative to other like goods.

   1. Members shall ascribe the origination of a good to the general customs area in which the good was last substantially transformed, excluding operations carried out for transport, preservation, storage, marketability, simple assembly, or mixture.

   2. Members may require origination marks on imported goods, so long as such marks do not reduce the value or increase the cost of such goods materially. Customs areas may not assess penalties for failure to make such marks prior their import.

8. This resolution notwithstanding, members may make trade restrictions:

   1. to forestall a balance of payments crisis provided that members maintain such restrictions only to the extent necessary to defend their balance of payments and speedily recover their financial position,

   2. on arms, ammunition, or other materials used in military procurement directly or indirectly,

   3. in time of war or, subject to resolution, for protection of vital security interests,

   4. if required by resolution to enforce trade sanctions against a nation not compliant with WA law,

   5. exercising powers granted or enforcing restrictions required by prior resolution, or

   6. exercising regulatory powers granted by resolution over a specific good or well-defined class of goods which bear substantially similar properties that are unrelated to their marketability or use.

9. This resolution does not cover intellectual property or transfers of hard currency. Any tariff or quota imposed must first be posted publicly, specifying the goods covered with the quantities restricted or tax assessed. Penalties ascribed for a customs offence must be in proportion to the offence's harm. Declarations on issues arising from this resolution may be requested from the Wacc; no penalty for non-compliant activities taken with good faith reliance on such declarations may be imposed; the Independent Adjudicative Office may rescind such declarations.