Minutes of the Future Justice Commission Meeting of the World Future Council
Bonn, 20 – 23 June 2013
Saturday, 22 June 2013
Chairs: Sándor Fülöp and Hafsat Abiola (had to leave after 30mins)
Honorary Councillors:
Councillors: Ana María Cetto, Scilla Elworthy, Anda Filip, David Krieger, Rama Mani, Pauline
Tangiora,
Management Board: Jakob von Uexkull
Policy Advisers: Cyril Ritchie
Youth Advisers: Kehkashan Basu
Staff: Fiona Bywaters (minutes taker), Ingrid Heindorf, Catherine Pearce, Alice Vincent and Alistair
Whitby (commission staff) and Rob van Riet.
1
Introduction by Sándor Fülöp
(see work programme document for more details)
Work area 1: Ombudsperson for Future Generations
(see powerpoint for more details)
a) Achievements 2012-2013
 Nairobi Side Event at the UN Governing Council, next event in Geneva (4-5 July).
 Redesign of Future Justice website.
 High level advocacy work with the UN and report.
 Secured 2 year funding for the program.
b) Challenges Ahead
 How do we want to elaborate our work with UN DESA? How can we reach out more to the
legal community, perhaps via crimes against future generations work?
 Our social media work has been praised by UN staff, how to pursue further and to what end?
 Funding for the 12 principles and promotion of intergenerational solidarity.
c) Comments
 Pauline: we should not say “expert speakers” but “learned speakers”. Asked also why we are
so focused on UN collaboration. Pauline suggested the involvement of WILPF (Women's
International League for Peace and Freedom) and possibility to use their ECOSOC
accreditation.
 Rama: Could crimes against future generations be the new impetus? Could there be
collaboration with Anda/IPU? By developing our crimes work we should also respond to
crises and real events – identifying and calling them crimes against future generations.
Suggest to identify future just policy makers – parliamentarians and government
representatives, and draw upon examples to show what a new kind of governance would
look like and how we can push for it.
 Scilla: Need to rethink our ‘dull’ phrasing/terminology and rethink terms such as
“intergenerational solidarity” and “ombudsperson for future generations” in order to reach
the younger generations. We should spend our time attracting this young constituency.
Need for publications and work in their language. They want examples (of what are crimes
against FG - i.e. hoovering the ocean floor, toxic dumping)
 Cyril: The last year has proven the value of close work with UN institutions. Fully supports the
continuation of this collaboration.
 Jakob: suggested the term of ‘guardian’ over ‘ombudsperson’ when talking to young people.
The UN is a standard setter in terms of international norms
 Anda: recommended exploring the forum of young parliamentarians.
Alice: a mandate or an institution to protect future generations at the UN opens a positive
pandora's box: it becomes a global norm, it will send a strong signal to the national levels.
Even just us discussing it at the UN level - lends legitimacy and encouragement to national
work. Progress/success for us was the DESA initially wanted to mainstream the proposal
and now they are seriously considering new mandate and institutions
Work area 2: Alternative Indicators: BRAINPOol Progress Report
(see powerpoint for more details)
a) Achievements 2012-2013
 Reports WP1 and WP2 on beyond GDP indicators and alternative indicators.
Comments:
 Jakob: We need to emphasize disaggregation between economic and non-economic growth.
 Rama: questioned how much time is spent on the BRAINPOol project. Suggests we should
time the publication of results which give an alternative perspective (e.g. true costs of
growth) with release of official GDP figures
 Alistair: Clarified this is a full-time project until March 2014 but wishes to continue the work
within a broader remit and on a global level.
b) Looking forward
 Currently working on WP3 and 8 action research projects. Also preparation of a ‘overcoming
barriers’ report for September 2013. A 2 day knowledge brokerage workshop is planned
and a final conference is likely to take place in February 2014 in Amsterdam.
Comments:
 Pauline: questioned our targeting of politicians over young people.
 Scilla: suggestion of contacting the Chancellor Office of each state and Alistair responded by
asking Councillors for potential contacts. This was supported by Rama. Scilla also
suggested endorsement by a senior figure such as Stiglitz or Amartya Sen (through Emma
Georgina Rothschild). Other suggestions included Fitoussi.
 David: enquired about interconnection between indicators and future justice.
 Ana: suggested extension of the project outside of Europe. An excellent partner would be
ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) and Ana knows the
director.
 Rob: offered his experience/advice of spreading the parliamentary handbook to assist
Alistair.
 Alistair finished with an appeal to Councillors for interested contacts and accepted Rob’s
offer.
Work area 3: Zero Project - Rights of Persons with Disabilities
(see powerpoint for more details)
a) Achievements 2012-2013
 Long-term partnership with the Essl Foundation
 Disability rights section on our Policy website (www.futurepolicy.org/enable.html)
 Opening of Geneva office of WFC on human rights day
 Publication of the Zero Project Report 2013 focused on Employment
 Second Zero Project Conference in Vienna
 Side event at the 22nd session of the Human Rights Council
b) Next steps and challenges
Next steps:
 New important partner is the European Consortium of Foundations on Human Rights and
Disabilities.
 Side event together with the OHCHR at the UN Conf. of State Parties in July 2013 to highlight
economic empowerment.
 Concentration of research on policies advancing accessibility – core of the UN Convention
and we received already invitation to present preliminary results to the CRPD Committee in
Sept. 2013.
 Third Zero Project Report and Conference in 2014.
 Expand the futurepolicy.org website.
Challenges:
 How to fund a strategy to spread best policy?
 How to promote the setup a parliamentarian disability network?
 Is the OHCHR a UN agency of potential interest to all our programmes – do Councillors have
made good experiences and recommend liaising with them?
Comments:
Rama suggests the Essl Foundation should fund the strategy to promote best policy since they
are the project coordinator. Reminds that it is important to highlight issues which regard
the world’s poorest, eg in her country people have not even a wheelchair (!). Navi Pillay, the
current HCHR, has been very courageous – the OHCHR is a UN agency we should definitely
work closer with (except for its Legal dept).
Scilla suggested considering military veterans and mentioned the UK’s “Help for Heros” who
work with veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. She also mentioned to follow-up on our
connection to China and its huge foundation by proposing to co-host a conference there.
 Anda informed the group that the IPU wishes to make their website disability friendly. She
suggested making disability the FPA focus.
 Jakob mentions the economic situation of baumax, the company behind the Essl Foundation,
and that it is unlikely that they can fund follow-up work. On FPA, we have failed in 2013 to
secure support for it from the UN Secretariat of the Convention on the Rights of Persons
with Disabilities. In general, he was however very glad about all what we already achieved
in this field.