Declaration of the Co-Authors of the World

To be a co-author of the world means to have the right and a real opportunity to take part in creating the rules that determine your life, affect the lives of other people and shape the world that future generations will inherit. This Declaration establishes a shared commitment to build a society in which the dignity of every person becomes the foundation of decisions, and women and men take part in making those decisions as equals and share responsibility for the common future.

Humanity is entering an age in which the old languages are no longer enough to describe what is happening. Political systems still speak the language of power, economies speak the language of growth, technologies speak the language of speed, but human life itself demands, ever more insistently, a different language: the language of meaning, measure, dignity, conscience, responsibility and spiritual maturity.

We live in a world where humankind has learned to create machines capable of processing colossal volumes of information, but has still not fully learned to take into account the pain of a living person. We have learned to connect continents with digital networks, but we go on dividing people through fear, violence, humiliation, poverty, religious hostility, cultural blindness and political advantage. We have learned to speak of rights, but we are not always ready to accept the duties that make those rights real. We have learned to proclaim equality, but too often we leave invisible those whose life, labor, body, motherhood, aging, care, losses and inner experience have not been laid at the foundation of decisions.

Civilization is like a common house that each generation keeps building from inherited blueprints. Those blueprints decide for whom the doors open, whose voice is heard and on whose shoulders everyday life rests. Too often people close the gaps in these blueprints with themselves: with their health, their time and the renunciation of their own future. The common house becomes fully common when everyone who lives in it has the right to take part in its design.

Today humanity needs a new contract on the very way we see the human being. Its foundation is the living person, who possesses dignity, inner freedom, conscience and the right to take part in the decisions that shape their fate. Together with the inheritance of humanity, each of us receives a task: to understand which part of this world should be continued, which should be changed, and what should be passed on to those who come after us.

A human life is larger than any role it has been assigned. A person can spend years doing everything that is expected of them, gradually growing used to putting off their own life: until the evening after all the tasks are done, until the time when every obligation has been met, until the day when they can finally choose themselves without guilt. They learn to guess expectations, to hold back pain and to measure their worth by how well they have withstood the latest demand. Their ability to keep going is taken as proof that all is well with them. Yet their dignity encompasses their whole life, including the part that belongs to them alone and remains free of the duty to be useful to others.

When the same pain recurs in the lives of people from different countries, cultures and generations, it becomes a question about the design of the common world. What matters is to understand which conditions give rise to it and sustain it. Rules should be judged by the life they make possible and by what they demand of a person.

The new civilizational contract responds to the crisis of Equal Consideration. This crisis arises where human dignity is proclaimed unconditional, but the real circumstances of a person’s life and their voice are disregarded when decisions are made. Care, respect and one’s own time have to be earned by being useful, and a request to change conditions beyond one’s strength is taken as an admission of personal inadequacy.

Women face this crisis when caring for those close to them becomes a duty for which they are expected to sacrifice their own income, development and rest; when pain has to be proven, motherhood turns into an obstacle to a career, and age becomes a reason to devalue accumulated knowledge and experience. A woman is expected to be responsible for the well-being of others while her right to determine the conditions of her own life is restricted. Her labor, knowledge and care contribute to the life of her family and of society, yet her ability to influence laws, working conditions and the distribution of resources remains limited.

Men face this crisis when their worth is measured by earnings, position and the ability to bear a load in silence. The demand to be the support of others turns into a duty to hide their own need for support. Work for the family consumes time with the family, and the fear of losing income forces them to put off caring for their health. The loss of a job or of strength comes to be experienced as the loss of the right to respect, as if the worth of the person himself disappeared along with the ability to provide for others.

This crisis touches the very sense of a right to one’s own life, when a person is afraid of life itself: of falling ill, growing old, becoming a parent, changing course, coming to need help. Each of these changes can turn into a loss of income, respect and support. Even the need for help becomes a reason to be ashamed of oneself.

We commit ourselves to building a world in which a person keeps their dignity in any circumstances, can receive the help they need and can care for others while keeping their own future. The demands made on them must take into account their health, strength and time, and work and duties must leave room for closeness, rest and development. Everyone has the right and a real opportunity to influence the rules that determine their life and the common future.

This Declaration affirms three foundations of such a future: dignity, Equal Consideration and shared governance.

Together they define a new civilizational model of the shared design of the world. Putting it into practice requires joining inner renewal with the change of institutions, conscience with the force of law, the development of the economy with the measure of human life, the power of technology with responsibility for its use.

A person possesses dignity by virtue of their very existence. It belongs to them before their first achievement and remains after the loss of strength, income, social position or the ability to care for themselves. Someone who today can only accept help has the same human value as the one who gives it. Age, origin, sex, beliefs and life circumstances make up the diversity of our experience; dignity remains the common foundation of how we treat one another.

We recognize everyone’s right to a life of their own: to bodily integrity, safety, education, work, love, rest, creativity and participation in common endeavors. Freedom of conscience includes the right to profess a religion, to change one’s beliefs, to follow a secular worldview and to seek meaning in one’s own way. Belonging to a family, a people, a culture or a spiritual community must leave a person room for independent judgment and choice.

A woman possesses human rights in their entirety. She has the right to choose motherhood, a profession, service, creative work, leadership and her own combination of life paths. A man has the same freedom to care, to feel, to seek help, to raise children and to define his own way of being strong. The differences between people reveal themselves through their real lives and free choices; everyone keeps the right to outgrow the expectations with which the world met them.

Care for oneself and responsibility toward others come together in mature reciprocity. In such a relationship one can love while keeping one’s own voice, give while keeping the right to recover, and need help while keeping one’s self-respect. Those who support others are themselves among the people who should be cared for. The common world becomes a home when there is room in it for the whole of human life, including its vulnerability.

Equal Consideration means the mandatory consideration of the real parameters of human life when systems are designed and decisions are made. Its starting measure is simple: the consequences for the life of a woman and for the life of a man are of equal significance, and the differences in their circumstances require exact examination.

Every rule has a human price. A work schedule determines how much time is left for children, sleep and recovery. A medical protocol affects whose pain is recognized and what help a person will receive. The terms of access to education, income and leadership widen or narrow the possible future. The quality of a decision should therefore be judged together with the life it creates for those who will be bound by it.

Where male experience is taken as the common measure of human life, Equal Consideration requires a revision of the rules that takes women’s reality into account. That reality must enter decisions in its entirety: through the specifics of health and the life cycle, including menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, recovery after childbirth, perimenopause and menopause; through paid and unpaid labor, care, age, safety, economic independence and the right to direct one’s own life. Women differ in experience, needs and beliefs. Their participation must open room for this diversity.

Decisions that affect human life require attention to the experience of the people themselves, knowledge gathered in good faith, and a readiness to revise conclusions when errors or new circumstances are discovered. Human dignity precedes any measurement and remains the foundation of how we use the knowledge we have gained.

For us, to take a person into account means to make their experience, needs and life circumstances the foundation for making and changing decisions. We commit ourselves to finding out who bears the load, who has access to opportunities, whose experience is disregarded and which conditions need to change. The world must learn from the life it is trying to design. Recognizing dignity obliges us to change the rules that devalue it.

A shared life requires shared responsibility, and shared responsibility requires the right to take part in decisions. We recognize women and men as equal co-authors of the social order. Their participation must take the form of access to knowledge, resources and leadership, and of the ability to set the agenda, make decisions, challenge them and secure redress for harm done.

We call Synarchat the new civilizational model of the shared design of the world, founded on dignity, Equal Consideration and the shared governance of women and men. In this model, women and men have equal institutional weight and share responsibility for the consequences of their decisions. Its measure is real authority, access to influence and accountability to people. The right to a voice must extend into the right to determine the common future.

We affirm this principle for civic, state, economic, scientific, educational and spiritual institutions, and we commit ourselves to putting it into practice wherever we make decisions or can influence how they are made. Women must take part, as equals with men, in making laws, running organizations, distributing resources, creating knowledge and setting moral reference points. Where their participation is limited, recognition of equal dignity requires revising the rules of access to authority. Vocation, training, competence and moral responsibility are judged by the same criteria, with equal opportunities to follow the corresponding path.

The same principle applies to the internal governance of religious communities. Recognizing the sacred value of human life obliges us to see in a woman a full bearer of conscience, knowledge and spiritual vocation. A teaching addressed to women and men shapes their understanding of duty, freedom and purpose. We therefore recognize the equal right of women to take part in understanding, transmitting and embodying that teaching, including spiritual education, the interpretation of doctrine, ordained ministry and religious leadership up to the highest governing offices. Recognized dignity must have real force where authority is distributed.

Each of us keeps their own faith and worldview. Our agreement concerns the treatment of people and the arrangement of our shared life. We recognize the right to differ and accept shared responsibility for one another’s dignity, freedom and safety. Spiritual conviction is joined with a readiness to answer for the consequences of one’s own teachings and actions.

Power requires special responsibility precisely because its decisions continue in the lives of others. Everyone who makes decisions that affect the lives of others is obliged to listen to objections, to explain the grounds for their choice and to revise the decision when errors or harm come to light. The wider the influence of a person or an institution, the greater their duty to take the consequences into account, to remove obstacles to people’s participation in decision-making and to create conditions in which everyone can openly voice disagreement without fear of punishment. Human dignity sets a limit to the convenience of power. The test of these principles begins with the rules we set for ourselves.

We extend these principles to relations between peoples as well. A human life keeps the same value on both sides of a border, whatever the language, origin or faith. Peace requires protection from aggression, an end to violence, accountability for harm done and conditions for a safe return to life. The right of those who have suffered harm to protection and justice lies at the foundation of reconciliation. Every step toward reconciliation must take into account their will, their readiness and their safety.

The memory of what has been endured can become responsibility for what we pass on. Every people has the right to keep its history; every child has the right to build a future free of inherited enmity. We accept the duty to resist the turning of people into targets because of the group they belong to, and to preserve human dignity even in deep conflict.

Our responsibility reaches beyond the present day. We commit ourselves to taking into account the consequences of our decisions for the Earth, for the living world and for the living conditions of future generations. Technologies, markets and institutions must be judged by the possibilities of life they open and by the price they impose on others. The growth of human capabilities requires an equal growth in the capacity to answer for their use.

We, the signatories of this Declaration, accept dignity, Equal Consideration and shared governance as the principles of our own lives, work, teaching, public speech and relations with people. We commit ourselves to revising practices that devalue human life, to removing obstacles to the full participation of women in decision-making, to taking into account the consequences of our actions and to repairing harm done. Wherever we set rules, distribute resources or lead a common endeavor, these principles become the foundation of our decisions and of our accountability to people.

The right to dignity remains with everyone, including a person who thinks differently or who today can only accept help. Our abilities to act differ. Responsibility must be proportionate to a person’s real power, resources and circumstances. The shared design of the world presupposes an organization of care and labor in which participation leaves people the strength for life itself.

We accept this responsibility with an understanding of the value of what humanity has already created and of the right of the living to continue its work. Our inheritance holds the courage of people who widened the limits of the possible, knowledge won through long searching, and the care thanks to which life went on in the hardest of times. To preserve this inheritance means to give it a form capable of protecting the dignity of those who live today.

What we today call our decisions, every child will one day call the world. Into this world will come a girl who has yet to learn how much her voice means, and a boy who has yet to understand how much humanity strength can hold. We want both to grow up with the certainty that their lives are part of the plan for the common future and that its design is open to their participation.

A person must keep a life of their own within the life they share with others. The right to love and to begin again, to grow older and still matter, to create what is shared and to remain oneself must find support in the design of society. We join the right to such a life with a freely accepted responsibility for one another.

We accept a shared commitment: wherever the design of life depends on us, human dignity will determine the design of the rules. The world we inherited continues in our decisions and in how we treat one another. With this choice our authorship begins.

Author of the Declaration of the Co-Authors of the World

Marina Sukhomlinova, Founder and President of Womafreesm, architect of a new infrastructure for women’s influence.

The initiator is The World Organization of Women Nations Womafreesm Inc. The organization builds a global infrastructure of women’s influence, turning women’s experience into data, legal action and new rules. The Declaration sets out the philosophical foundation of a shared design of the world open to the participation of women and men.