We Are One Species.It Is Time Our Laws Said So.

In 1948 the world made a promise and wrote it into law. We know it by two words: never again.

1. 1975–79 · Cambodia

   Then came Cambodia.

2. 1994 · Rwanda

   Then Rwanda, where an estimated 800,000 people were killed in about a hundred days while governments argued over what to call it.

   800,000

   people killed, est.

   ~100

   days

3. 1995 · Srebrenica

   Then Srebrenica, where more than 7,000 men and boys were murdered inside a zone the United Nations had declared safe.

   7,000+

   men and boys, inside a UN-declared safe zone

4. 2003– · Darfur

   Then Darfur.

5. 2017 · Rohingya

   Then the Rohingya.

We did not lack the law. We did not lack the evidence. We lacked the will to apply one rule to everyone, including our friends and including ourselves.

Today I am publishing the first draft of something meant to change that. It is called The One Species Compact, and it begins with the simplest truth I know. We are one species. No race, no faith, no nation and no party stands above another.

We already know, because we have done nothing many times.

There is one more thing, and people in power should think hard about it. No group stays safe. Machinery built to target one people is still standing when power changes hands. The group that is protected today can be the group that is named tomorrow.

Doing nothing is also a decision. It has been made over and over, and human beings paid for it with their lives.

This is a first draft, and I mean that. Its legal references still need review by international-law specialists, and I say so on the page. It has honest limits, and they are written into it. The most powerful governments may refuse to sign. An agreement that rules out force cannot compel anyone. Critics will say elected governments should answer to their own courts and voters, not to international bodies, and that argument deserves a real answer.

But the most important reason it is unfinished is that I should not be the one to finish it. No campaign should. No single nation should.

The people who have lived through what this document is written to stop must write themselves into it.

Survivors and their descendants come first, from every conflict and from every side. Their amendments are considered before any others. Every version will be published with what changed, who proposed it and why. Four commitments can be strengthened but never weakened: one species of equal worth, acts over labels, one standard for all, and freedom of expression.