General Assembly Resolution #537 “Right to Assemble” (Category: Furtherment of Democracy; Strength: Strong) shall be struck out and rendered null and void.
The General Assembly finds the following:
- GA#27 “Freedom of Assembly” was repealed by GA#536 to facilitate GA#537 “Right to Assemble.” The goal of GA#537, to protect peaceful assembly subject to certain conditions, is admirable and largely achieved by its first four Articles; yet this does not mean that they are perfect, nor does its Article 5 promote efficient use of state resources.
- GA#537, unlike GA#27, establishes no positive right to organise or partake in “non-violent assembl[ies],” only negative rights for their organisers and participants. (Article 1 guarantees that they will not receive “punitive or discriminatory action” by a member state for so organising or participating; Article 2 requires that such assemblies not be “prevent[ed] or hinder[ed]” by “member states nor private entities within them.”) Any ideal legislation on this matter would seek to establish both positive and negative rights to peaceful assembly.
- These negative rights are not unconditional but may be abrogated so that assemblies which involve “harmful activities” may be controlled. However, Article 3 allows only “advocacy of violence towards an individual or group,” “unlawful action” and “advocacy of probable imminent unlawful action” to be deemed harmful activities, while Article 2 allows peaceful assemblies to be broken up solely in order to “prevent[] or curtail[] harmful activities.” This means that many of GA#536’s concerns about when assemblies could be broken up under GA#27 are left unanswered by GA#537: for example, those members where blocking the passage of emergency service vehicles like ambulances is not illegal cannot temporarily break up assemblies to unblock their passage (which puts lives and property at indirect risk in such members), while members cannot generally prevent assemblies that occur in locations or situations demonstrably hazardous to the health of their participants.
- Article 5 of GA#537 has two parts. Article 5a permits members to restrict “non-violent assemblies” that promote “actions or inaction that would constitute: the physical or sexual abuse of an individual or group of individuals, or hatred towards an individual or group” due to their possession of an arbitrary and reductive characteristic. Article 5b compels members who opt not to impose such restrictions to “take all steps necessary to ensure the safety of the individuals targeted by such advocacy.”
- Concerningly, Article 5 concerningly does not define what counts as “hatred,” what precise forms “abuse” can take, and what a “necessary” safety measure is, allowing unscrupulous governments to adopt overly broad definitions and suppress assemblies they merely find distasteful on those pretexts. Nor are members exempt from their Article 5b obligations just because a local police force acts to “prevent or curtail the advocacy” of any “actions or inaction” proscribed by Article 5a on its own, encouraging central government intervention in law enforcement even if all police forces are organised and empowered solely on the local scale.
- GA#440 “Administrative Compliance Act” implicitly requires members to sanction other members that do not satisfy Article 5b, and forbids future resolutions from time-limiting such sanctions or banning their imposition on certain goods. Resolutions that entail such drastic measures for members who refuse to suppress (or else “ensure the safety of the individuals targeted by”) speech that may not even violate their own national laws, let alone other international laws, should not be kept on the books.
- Article 5’s shortcomings are so significant that, in order to avoid such sanctions, a member state which (for instance) chooses to permit an assembly calling for all of its inhabitants who hail from a particular nation to be repatriated there, which can be interpreted as promoting “hatred… motivated by… nationality,” may have to supply guards on a temporary basis to protect those inhabitants’ houses because it will “ensure the[ir] safety.” This may be hard to deliver, given that no resolution requires data disaggregated by national origin to be collected for any reason. But they must somehow still seek to “ensure the safety of [those] individuals” even if some such inhabitants do not want home security, since they may see its provision as necessary for those inhabitants’ safety.
- GA#537 is unwieldy, unfit for purpose and - since this body can neither amend Article 3, insert a new Article explicitly protecting peaceful assembly, nor remove Article 5 only - must be repealed entirely.
The GA therefore repeals GA#537 “Right to Assemble.”