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Open draft · Offered to the world

The One Species Compact

A global framework to end manufactured atrocity.

This Compact is unfinished on purpose. It is offered to the world to amend and complete, beginning with the people who have survived what it is written to stop. It begins as a voluntary declaration. A binding treaty would be negotiated separately, with each nation’s express consent.

Read the fifteen articlesPropose an amendment
species, one standard
1species, one standard
steps every atrocity follows
8steps every atrocity follows
articles restraining governments
15articles restraining governments
loopholes closed by name
17loopholes closed by name

Before anything else

What this Compact is not

This Compact takes no right from any person and hides nothing from anyone. It restrains governments. It does not govern people.

Not a world government.

No body created here can make law for a nation, command an army or override a constitution. Signing is voluntary.

Not a limit on anyone's rights.

It removes no freedom of speech, belief, worship, assembly, press or movement from any human being.

Not a tool of control.

It creates no database of people and no monitoring of individuals. Its institutions watch governments, never citizens.

Not secret.

It has no secret annexes and no hidden provisions. Every rule, finding and amendment is published with its reasoning. The only details withheld are those that would endanger witnesses, victims or civilians.

Not aimed at any nation, people or faith.

One standard applies to all, and the United States is held to it first.

Not a replacement for any culture.

It asks no one to give up a heritage, a religion or a national identity.

Not a license for war.

Nothing in it authorizes invasion, regime change or the use of force.

Not a blank check.

The institutions it creates are bound by single terms, public reasoning and outside audit under Article XV.

Any use of this Compact to take rights, to control people in secret or to target a group is a violation of the Compact itself.

Preamble

We are one species. No race, no faith, no nation and no party stands above another.

Every mass atrocity of the last century was built before it was carried out. Somebody taught the hatred. Somebody funded it, armed it and then denied it. Each time the world had the law to stop it and chose not to use it.

This Compact closes that gap. Every government that joins commits to it, and the United States commits first. It protects every people’s identity and forbids any government from turning identity into a weapon.

Identity means heritage, culture, religion or belief, race, ethnicity, nationality, language, tribe, caste, class, political affiliation, sex, gender and any other trait used to sort human beings into groups, whether real or assigned.

“I am a piece of the collective essence of this world that never gives up and needs every other piece to be whole.”
Vincent Cordova

Findings

How atrocity is manufactured

Mass atrocity follows a repeatable sequence, and every step is visible before the killing starts.

  1. A wound is chosen.

    A real historical loss is retold as unfinished business the living must avenge.

  2. "Us" is narrowed.

    Belonging is redefined by blood, soil or correct belief.

  3. A threat is named.

    A neighboring people is blamed for every hardship and cast as a danger to the children.

  4. Children are separated.

    They grow up in different schools and streets, with one story and no contact.

  5. People are renamed.

    Officials and media call the target group animals, vermin or disease.

  6. Moderates are silenced.

    Dissenters inside the group are branded traitors.

  7. Violence is armed and excused.

    Militias, settlers or security forces act, and nobody is punished.

  8. It is denied.

    The state says it is not happening, and a powerful ally repeats it.

Germany in the 1930s, Rwanda in 1994, Serbia in the 1990s and Myanmar in 2017 each followed this sequence. Armed movements without a state, from ISIS to Hamas, have used the same steps.

The Compact treats each step as a point where the world is required to act.

Warning signs

Mechanisms to watch for

These are the observable signals that the sequence is under way. The Early Warning Office in Article II tracks every one of them.

Inside one country

  • Officials or state media describe a people as animals, vermin, disease or a demographic threat.
  • Textbooks and maps are rewritten to erase a people or their history.
  • Laws sort people by ethnicity or faith: separate schools, roads, ID cards or registries.
  • Civilians, settlers or militias are armed by the state or allowed to arm themselves.
  • Attacks on the target group go unprosecuted, case after case.
  • Journalists, aid groups and human rights monitors are expelled, banned, jailed or branded terrorist or criminal organizations without published evidence.
  • Food, water, medicine or movement is restricted for one group.
  • People are pushed from their homes and barred from returning.
  • Dissenters from the leader's own group are labeled traitors.

Between two or more countries

Any three of these together trigger a review under Article V.

  • Weapons and money keep flowing after credible findings of atrocity.
  • Governments issue the same denial in the same words, often the same day.
  • One government vetoes or blocks every resolution or investigation aimed at the other.
  • Courts, investigators, UN agencies or witnesses are sanctioned or threatened.
  • Intelligence, targeting data or logistics are shared with the force accused.
  • Officials are instructed to avoid legal words such as "genocide" or "war crime."
  • Transfers are routed through third countries or private contractors to avoid review.
  • Officials or companies in the assisting country stand to profit from arms sales, land, resources or reconstruction.
  • The assisting government restricts protest or reporting about its partner's conduct at home.
  • Legal reviews of the assistance are waived, classified or never carried out.

The cost of silence

If the world does not act

If this is not addressed on the global stage, the record of the last century tells us what follows.

  • It happens again.The world said "never again" after the Holocaust. Cambodia, Rwanda, Srebrenica, Darfur and the Rohingya expulsion came after that promise.

  • Every exemption becomes a precedent.When a powerful nation shields an ally, every other government learns that the rules apply only to the weak, and uses the same excuse.

  • The tools get faster and cheaper.Surveillance, automated targeting and online incitement let a government do in weeks what once took years, with fewer people needed to carry it out.

  • No group stays safe.Machinery built to target one people is still there when power changes hands. The group that is protected today can be the group that is named tomorrow.

  • The displaced keep moving.More than 100 million people are already forcibly displaced worldwide. Every unanswered atrocity adds to that number, and every nation ends up carrying part of it.

  • Children inherit it.A generation raised inside hatred or loss carries it forward, and the next conflict is seeded before the last one ends.

  • Law stops meaning anything.When treaties are ignored without cost, nations stop trusting them and start arming instead.

Doing nothing is also a decision, and it has been made many times. This Compact exists so that it is not made again by default.

Core principles

Six principles govern every article

One species.

Every human being has equal worth. No law, curriculum or official statement of a signatory may say otherwise.

Identity is protected, never weaponized.

Heritage, culture, faith, race, nationality, language, politics and every other identity belong to the people who carry them. No government may use any of them, or any new category it invents, to justify harming another people.

Responsibility follows acts and power.

Guilt attaches to the individuals who order, fund, incite or commit. It never attaches to a population, a faith or an ethnicity.

One standard.

The same rules apply to allies and adversaries, and to states and armed groups alike.

Prevention is a duty.

The 1948 Genocide Convention obliges states to prevent as well as punish. The duty begins when a serious risk is known.

Access is the test.

A government with nothing to hide admits independent investigators and journalists.

The Compact

Fifteen articles

Article I

Education at the species level

Every signatory teaches its children that they are human first, and teaches it alongside their own heritage.

  1. Common origin. State-funded schools teach, from the first years, that humanity is one species of equal worth.

  2. Heritage alongside. Schools teach the child's own history and culture, and the history and culture of neighboring peoples. No people is erased from maps or textbooks.

  3. No dehumanization with public money. State-funded curricula, state media and official statements may not portray any group, defined on any basis, as subhuman, as vermin or disease, or as collectively guilty. They may not call for a people's removal or destruction.

  4. Outside eyes. Every three years an independent panel, including members from outside the country, reviews curricula and publishes its findings.

  5. Contact. Signatories fund shared schooling, exchanges and joint projects for children of groups in conflict.

  6. Limit of this article. It governs what governments fund and say. It grants no power to censor private speech, the press or religious practice.

Article II

Early warning, independent investigation and the presumption of concealment

The world acts on evidence gathered by people who answer to no accused government.

Part A. Early warning

  1. Early Warning Office. Signatories fund an independent office that rates atrocity risk in every country, signatory or not, against the eight steps in the Findings. Ratings and methods are public.

  2. Evidence is preserved. A standing archive collects video, satellite imagery, documents and testimony with a documented chain of custody, ready for any court.

  3. Truth-tellers are protected. Officials, soldiers and journalists who expose atrocity planning receive protection and, where needed, asylum in signatory states.

Part B. Refusal of independent investigation and presumption of concealment

  1. Duty of access. Every signatory shall permit timely, independent, and impartial investigation of credible allegations of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, or systematic persecution, subject to necessary protections for civilians, witnesses, and legitimate security concerns.

  2. Presumption of concealment. When credible, independently corroborated evidence of serious violations exists, and a government deliberately obstructs or refuses reasonable independent investigative access without adequate justification, a rebuttable presumption of concealment shall arise.

  3. Burden of explanation. The government concerned shall provide a documented explanation for its refusal and offer reasonable alternative means of independent verification. Unsupported assertions of national security or sovereignty shall not automatically defeat the presumption.

  4. Immediate protective measures. Refusal under these conditions shall trigger enhanced independent monitoring, preservation of available evidence, urgent humanitarian access requests, and review of arms transfers and other assistance that could contribute to the alleged violations.

  5. No automatic finding of criminal guilt. The presumption of concealment shall not independently establish that an atrocity crime occurred or that any individual is criminally responsible. Such determinations require the applicable legal standards and procedures.

  6. Protection against misuse. Every determination shall be supported by documented reasons, subject to independent review, and open to challenge through a transparent process that protects confidential witnesses and sensitive evidence.

  7. Prevention takes priority. No government may use the absence of a final judicial determination as a justification for failing to take lawful, proportionate measures to prevent a serious and credible risk of atrocity.

  8. Independent determination and timely review. A presumption of concealment shall be determined by an impartial investigative panel operating under Article XV, using published evidentiary standards. The government concerned shall receive written notice, an opportunity to respond, and access to an expedited independent review. Where credible evidence indicates an imminent threat to civilian life, lawful and proportionate protective measures shall not be delayed pending completion of that review. Every determination and its supporting reasoning shall be made public, subject to necessary protections for witnesses, victims, and sensitive evidence.

Article III

Arms, aid and trade

No signatory arms or funds a force that is committing atrocity crimes, and no ally is exempt.

  1. No weapons for atrocity. Arms transfers and security aid stop to any force credibly found to be committing genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes.

  2. Independent finding. The finding is made by a body insulated from political appointees and is published with its evidence.

  3. Individuals, not populations. Sanctions name the officials, commanders, financiers and militia leaders responsible. Food, medicine and humanitarian aid to civilians are never cut.

  4. Profit is disclosed. Companies report profits from sales to any party under review. Knowingly supplying a force after a finding brings civil liability to those harmed and a time-limited, reviewable exclusion from public contracts. Companies can be prosecuted where domestic law allows, and executives remain personally liable under Article IV.

  5. Automatic and reversible. Restrictions take effect on the finding. They lift only on verified change in conduct.

Article IV

Individual accountability

The people who order, fund and incite atrocity answer for it personally, whatever office they hold.

  1. Office is no defense. Official position is no defense to genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes or direct and public incitement to genocide, and no bar before international criminal courts, as the Rome Statute provides. National courts are different: existing law can still shield sitting leaders there. Signatories therefore agree, as a new commitment among themselves, not to claim immunity for these crimes in one another's courts.

  2. Extradite or prosecute. Every signatory either tries a credibly accused person in its own courts or hands that person to a court that will. For the United States, proposed Executive Order 2029-01 would carry this out, within existing extradition treaties and statutes.

  3. Enablers are investigated. Anyone who knowingly funds, arms, directs or incites these crimes is investigated for complicity or conspiracy. The test is knowledge plus material contribution. Opinion and advocacy alone are not crimes.

  4. Armed groups are covered. Leaders of militias and non-state forces are held to the same standard as leaders of governments.

  5. Children are victims first. A child taught or forced to hate is treated and rehabilitated. The adults who recruited or indoctrinated that child are prosecuted.

  6. Due process. Every accused person is presumed innocent and tried in open court with counsel. The accused is present at trial except in narrow cases set by law. No death sentence may be imposed for any crime under this Compact, and no one is handed over to face one.

Read proposed Executive Order 2029-01

Article V

Collusion between governments

A government that knowingly arms, funds or shields another government's atrocity shares responsibility for it.

The legal basis already exists. The Genocide Convention makes complicity punishable in Article III(e). The international law of state responsibility holds a state liable for knowingly aiding another state's unlawful act.

  1. Joint responsibility. A signatory that knowingly provides weapons, money, intelligence or diplomatic cover to a force committing atrocity crimes shares responsibility under the law of state responsibility. Whether a particular government did so is decided on the evidence in each case.

  2. No "we did not know." A published finding puts every government on notice of the allegations and the evidence. It does not by itself prove that a supporting government knowingly took part in a crime. No government may later claim it was never warned, and support continued after notice is weighed as evidence of knowledge.

  3. Collusion review. The Office reviews every government materially supporting a party under finding. It publishes the list of supporters, what each supplied and when. Any three collusion signals together trigger a review.

  4. Officials answer personally. Officials of the assisting government who approve the support after a finding fall under Article IV.

  5. No veto shield. As a political commitment, signatories on the UN Security Council pledge not to veto credible resolutions to stop mass atrocity. This builds on the France-Mexico initiative and the ACT Code of Conduct, which more than 100 states have backed. It leaves the UN Charter's voting rules in force.

  6. A blocked Council is not the end. If a veto stops action, signatories promptly support the General Assembly's existing debate on that veto, due within 10 working days, and support a case at the International Court of Justice where it has jurisdiction.

  7. No attacks on the referees. Signatories do not sanction, threaten or defund courts, investigators, UN agencies or witnesses for doing their work.

  8. Plain language. No signatory instructs its officials to avoid a legal term in order to avoid the duty that comes with it.

  9. Follow the profit. Signatories disclose every contract, land deal, resource concession and arms sale that gives their officials or companies a financial stake in the outcome.

  10. Citizens can enforce it. Each signatory gives its own citizens standing to sue in its courts when their government breaks this article.

Article VI

Repair and the next generation

Stopping the violence is half the work. The other half is making sure the hatred is not inherited.

  1. Truth on the record. After any atrocity, an independent commission establishes what happened and publishes it.

  2. Survivors made whole. Survivors receive reparations and the right to return home.

  3. The history is taught. Signatories teach what was done, including what their own governments did or enabled.

  4. Young people are brought back. Children and youth raised inside the hatred receive education, counseling and contact with the people they were taught to fear.

  5. No official denial. Officials of a signatory do not deny an atrocity established by a competent court.

Article VII

No weaponized labels

A group is judged by what it does, never by what a government calls it.

Governments have branded their critics and victims as terrorists or criminals to silence them. Apartheid South Africa did it to the ANC, and Nelson Mandela stayed on a US watch list until 2008. No agreed global definition of terrorism exists, so each government writes its own list. Article VIII supplies one.

  1. Acts decide. A group that deliberately attacks civilians commits atrocity crimes whatever its cause, and Article IV applies to it. A group that documents, protests, delivers aid or defends itself within the laws of war is not a criminal organization.

  2. Evidence is published. Any signatory that designates a group as terrorist or criminal publishes a summary of the evidence and the specific acts alleged.

  3. Independent review. A standing international Designation Review Panel hears challenges from any designated group. It is modeled on the UN Ombudsperson who reviews listings under the Security Council's Al-Qaida and ISIL sanctions.

  4. No automatic recognition. Signatories do not enforce another government's designation until the Panel or their own courts have reviewed the evidence.

  5. Protected work. Journalism, human rights documentation, legal defense, medical care and humanitarian aid can never be the basis for a designation.

  6. No collective labels. A designation of an armed group never extends to the civilian population it claims to represent.

  7. Abuse is a signal. Designating witnesses, aid groups or dissenters without published evidence is tracked by the Early Warning Office and counts toward review under Article V.

Article VIII

One definition of terrorism

Terrorism is defined by the act, and the definition applies to whoever commits it.

The world has avoided this for a generation. A comprehensive UN treaty on terrorism was proposed in 1996 and has been stalled ever since on two demands. Some states want liberation movements exempted. Others want their own armed forces exempted. Each side wants the word to mean only its enemies.

  1. The definition. Terrorism is the deliberate killing, maiming or hostage-taking of civilians, or the deliberate destruction of what civilians need to survive, done to intimidate a population or to coerce a government or international body. This follows the wording of the 1999 UN convention on terrorist financing.

  2. No exemption for states. The definition covers governments, militaries, intelligence services and their proxies exactly as it covers armed groups.

  3. No exemption for causes. Occupation, grievance, faith, liberation and national security are not defenses. No cause makes the deliberate targeting of civilians lawful.

  4. Resistance is judged by its conduct. Armed action against military targets, carried out within the laws of war, is governed by those laws and is not terrorism because a government says so.

  5. Dissent is never terrorism. Nonviolent protest, strikes, boycotts, journalism, legal advocacy and humanitarian aid fall outside the definition in every case.

  6. One test for every list. A designation under Article VII must allege specific acts that meet this definition.

  7. Finish the treaty. Signatories reopen the stalled UN negotiations and commit to concluding a comprehensive convention on this definition within two years.

  8. Every victim counts. Victims of terrorism receive the same recognition and remedy whether the attacker was an armed group or a state.

Article IX

Freedom to speak, create and dissent

Every person has the right to speak, create, believe, experience, live and dream, as long as it does not hurt another. Nothing in this Compact gives any government power over that right.

  1. No power over individual expression. No article of this Compact authorizes a government to censor, filter, license or punish what a person says, writes, believes or creates.

  2. The Compact binds governments, not people. Its limits on speech apply to what governments themselves say and fund. The one exception is direct and public incitement to commit genocide, which the 1948 Genocide Convention already makes a crime. The Compact creates no other speech offense.

  3. Criticizing a government is not a crime. Signatories repeal laws that punish criticism of the state, its leaders, its military, its flag or its official religion. This includes sedition, insult, lese-majeste, "false news" and "extremism" laws used against critics.

  4. No prison for words. Signatories release people jailed for peaceful speech, reporting or protest.

  5. No quiet punishment. Governments do not take a person's passport, job, license, benefits or citizenship for what that person says.

  6. No shutdowns. Governments do not cut internet or phone service, or ban reporting, to hide events from their own people or the world.

  7. Silencing is a signal. Criminalizing criticism of the government is tracked by the Early Warning Office. A government that fears its own people's words is showing what it intends.

Article X

Technology

This article regulates what governments and companies do with machines. It does not regulate what people say.

  1. No state troll farms. Governments do not run fake accounts, bot networks or covert influence campaigns against any group, at home or abroad.

  2. Show how the machine works. Large platforms disclose how their systems choose what to amplify and who paid to boost it. Independent auditors can inspect those systems in countries the Early Warning Office rates at high risk.

  3. No takedown orders. This article creates no duty to remove lawful speech and no power for any government to demand it.

  4. No tools of persecution. Spyware, facial recognition and biometric databases are not sold or transferred to a government under an Article III finding.

  5. No registries of people. Governments do not build databases that sort residents by ethnicity, faith or politics.

  6. No forged reality. Governments do not create fabricated video, audio or images to deny an atrocity or to invent one.

  7. A human decides. No machine makes the decision to use lethal force without a human being who answers for it under Article IV.

Article XI

Starvation, siege and the witnesses

Cutting off what people need to live is an atrocity, and so is attacking the people who witness it.

  1. No starvation as a weapon. Signatories do not block food, water, fuel, medicine or shelter from a civilian population. The Rome Statute already lists starvation of civilians as a war crime.

  2. Aid gets through. Humanitarian convoys and workers are given safe passage. Blocking them triggers Article III.

  3. Hospitals and schools are protected. Under the existing law of armed conflict, hospitals have special protection and schools are civilian objects. Either can lose protection only in narrow cases of military use, and precaution and proportionality always apply. Signatories commit to that law in full and add a stronger pledge: they will not put hospitals or schools to military use.

  4. Witnesses are protected. Journalists, medics, aid workers and human rights monitors are never targets. Killing or jailing them is tracked as a signal of concealment.

Article XII

Erasure without killing

A people can be destroyed while most of its members are left alive, and the Compact treats that as atrocity.

  1. No forced assimilation. Governments do not ban a people's language, faith, names or customs, or force children into schools built to strip them away.

  2. No taking of children. Children are not removed from their families or communities to be raised as another people.

  3. No control of births. Forced sterilization and forced prevention of births within a group are prohibited, as the Genocide Convention already provides.

  4. No destruction of memory. Holy sites, cemeteries, archives, libraries and schools of a people are not destroyed or seized.

Article XIII

The displaced

People driven from their homes keep their rights, including the right to go back.

  1. Shelter. Signatories admit and protect people fleeing atrocity and share that responsibility among themselves.

  2. No return to danger. No one is sent back to a place where they face persecution, as the 1951 Refugee Convention requires.

  3. Right of return. Displaced people may return to their homes and recover their property. Emptied land is not handed to others.

  4. No stateless people. No government strips citizenship from a group to remove its members.

Article XIV

The right to refuse

Atrocity needs people willing to carry it out, so the Compact protects those who refuse.

  1. Orders are no defense. Following an order to commit an atrocity crime does not excuse it. This has been settled law since Nuremberg.

  2. Refusal is protected. Soldiers, police and officials who refuse an unlawful order are not punished, and signatories give them refuge if their own government retaliates.

  3. Training is required. Every armed force of a signatory teaches the duty to refuse unlawful orders.

Article XV

Independent institutions

The bodies this Compact creates answer to the evidence and to no government.

  1. Who serves. Members of the Early Warning Office and the Designation Review Panel are chosen by a committee of retired international judges, drawn from every region. No sitting government official may serve.

  2. One term. Members serve a single fixed term and cannot be reappointed, so no one rules with an eye on renewal.

  3. Pooled funding. Signatories pay assessed dues into one fund. No government may earmark, withhold or condition its share over a finding it dislikes.

  4. Recusal. No member takes part in a finding about their own country.

  5. Open reasoning. Every finding is published with its evidence and method. Classified material is reviewed in confidence and summarized publicly.

  6. Removal only for cause. A member is removed only for misconduct, by a supermajority of the selection committee.

  7. Outside audit. An independent audit of both bodies is published every year.

Loophole closures

Every escape route, closed by name

Every escape route used in past atrocities is closed by name.

"They are our ally"

Friends are exempted from rules applied to enemies

No ally exemption anywhere in the Compact

National security waiver

An executive waives arms restrictions on its own say

No waiver of Article III after a finding

"We did not know"

Supporters claim ignorance of what their aid enabled

A published finding puts every government on notice, and support continued after notice is weighed as evidence of knowledge

Proxies and contractors

Violence is carried out by militias, settlers or private firms

A state answers for any force it arms, funds or tolerates

Third-country routing

Weapons and money pass through an intermediary

The original supplier and the intermediary are both responsible

Private media front

Hate broadcasting runs through a nominally private outlet

State funding, licensing or ownership by officials brings it under Article I

"It is our religion, heritage, security or ideology"

Incitement is presented as faith, tradition, self-defense or political doctrine

Belief, culture and lawful defense are protected. Direct and public incitement to genocide is not

Word games

Officials avoid legal terms so no duty is triggered

Duties begin at serious risk, not at a legal label

Denied access

Investigators and reporters are kept out

Unjustified refusal despite corroborated evidence raises a rebuttable presumption of concealment and triggers protective measures

Attacking the court

Judges and investigators are sanctioned or threatened

Barred under Article V

Collective punishment

Whole populations are sanctioned or starved

Sanctions name individuals. Humanitarian aid is never cut

Withdrawal

A government quits the Compact to escape it

Obligations survive for all acts committed while a member

Selective enforcement

Rules are applied to rivals only

An annual public scorecard covers every signatory, the United States included

An unlisted category

A group is targeted on a basis the rules did not name, such as politics or class

Protection covers any basis used to sort people into groups, listed or not, real or assigned

The criminal label

Critics, witnesses or victims are designated terrorist or criminal organizations to silence them

Article VII: published evidence, independent review, no automatic recognition abroad

The speech-crime pretext

A government jails critics under hate-speech, extremism or false-news laws and claims the Compact requires it

Article IX: the Compact grants no power over individual expression, and criticizing a government is never a crime

Captured referees

A powerful state stacks or defunds the body that judges it

Article XV: judge-selected members, single terms, pooled funding, recusal

Our own books first

The United States’ own record

A nation asking the world to sign this has to open its own books first.

The United States held human beings in slavery. It removed Native nations from their land and took their children into boarding schools built to erase them. It barred Chinese immigrants by law in 1882 and imprisoned Japanese Americans in 1942. It has armed and shielded governments that committed atrocities, and its own forces have committed abuses in war.

  1. Say it plainly. The United States acknowledges this record in its own curricula and official statements.

  2. Open the archives. Records of US support for abusive governments are declassified on a fixed schedule.

  3. Same scorecard. The United States is rated by the Early Warning Office and reviewed under every article on the same terms as any other signatory.

Day one

What the United States does on day one

The United States does not wait for the world. A president can do the following without a new treaty.

  1. Enforce the law already on the books. The Leahy Law, Section 502B and Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act, and the Arms Export Control Act already restrict aid to forces that commit gross abuses or block humanitarian relief. They are applied to every recipient, with the findings published.

  2. Sign proposed Executive Order 2029-01. The United States extradites or prosecutes credibly accused war criminals, including its own officials, under existing treaties and statutes, and asks Congress for any authority still missing.

  3. End the veto shield. The US ambassador to the United Nations is instructed not to veto credible resolutions to stop mass atrocity.

  4. Tell the truth. The State Department publishes atrocity determinations based on evidence, for allies and adversaries alike.

  5. Stop punishing the referees. The United States lifts sanctions and threats against international courts, investigators and witnesses.

  6. Open the books. Defense contractors disclose profits on sales to any party under review.

  7. Fund species-level education. Federal law bars Washington from writing curriculum, so this is done through voluntary grants to states and districts that teach common humanity alongside heritage.

  8. Invite the first signatories. The Compact is opened to every nation as a voluntary declaration. A treaty built on it would be negotiated separately and sent to the Senate, where it needs a two-thirds vote.

Honest limits

The strongest objections

This Compact will be attacked on six grounds, and each deserves a straight answer.

Free speech.

The First Amendment protects even hateful speech unless it incites imminent lawless action (Brandenburg v. Ohio, 1969). The US version of Article I therefore reaches only government speech, government funding and true incitement.

Sovereignty.

Many governments will call outside curriculum review an intrusion. The answer is that signing is voluntary and every signatory is reviewed the same way.

The powerful will not sign.

The United States, Russia, China and Israel reject the International Criminal Court's jurisdiction. The Compact starts with the willing, as the landmine ban did, and builds pressure from there.

Politicization.

An early warning office could be turned against disfavored states. The safeguards are published methods, one standard and the annual scorecard.

Sanctions can backfire.

Pressure sometimes hardens a regime and rallies its public. That is why Article III targets named individuals and protects civilians.

A president cannot do it alone.

Executive actions can be reversed by the next president. Lasting force needs Congress and a two-thirds Senate vote.

Critics will also argue that elected governments should answer to their own courts and voters, not international bodies. Supporters reply that domestic systems rarely prosecute their own sitting leaders.

The terrorism definition in Article VIII will draw fire from both directions. Major military powers will say the laws of war already govern state forces and that "state terrorism" blurs the law. States that back liberation movements will object that the definition gives armed resistance no exemption. Applying one rule to both is the reason the article exists.

Article IX leaves one question open on purpose. Some democracies, Germany among them, criminalize hate speech or Holocaust denial between private persons, and the United States does not. The Compact neither requires nor forbids those national laws. It forbids using them, or any law, to punish criticism of a government.

Your turn

How the world completes this

No campaign and no single nation can finish this document. It becomes legitimate only when the people it protects have written themselves into it.

  1. Survivors first. Survivors of atrocity and their descendants are invited through their own organizations, from every conflict and every side. Their amendments are considered before any others.

  2. Every side in the room. People who disagree with each other, and with this draft, are invited on equal terms. A standard shaped by one side of any conflict is not one standard.

  3. Who else is asked. International lawyers, historians, educators, faith leaders, veterans, journalists, technologists and young people are asked to test every article.

  4. Everything in the open. Each version is published with what changed, who proposed it and why. Rejected amendments are published with the reason.

  5. What cannot be removed. Four commitments may be strengthened but never weakened: one species of equal worth, acts over labels, one standard for all, and freedom of expression.

  6. No exemptions by amendment. No amendment may exempt a named country, government, group or cause.

  7. A living text. After adoption the Compact is reviewed every five years, with survivors seated in the review.

Send an amendment or your testimony

Survivors, descendants, scholars, soldiers, students. Every voice is read.

onespecies@vincentcordova.com

Sources and cite-check

This is a working draft. Legal references in it (the Genocide Convention, the Leahy Law, Foreign Assistance Act sections, Brandenburg, the veto-restraint initiatives and the terrorism treaty history) are pending a cite-check against the primary texts. Corrections are welcome at the address above.

Research consulted while drafting

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