The Human Right to Peace
Spanish International Law Experts demand on Extension of the UN-Charter

The Spanish Society for the Advancement of the International Human Rights Law adopted in October 2006 the “Luarca Declaration on the Human Right to Peace”, which represents the result of many meetings of Spanish intellectuals and professors of international law and international relations in the years 2004-2006.

The Association is currently organizing regional meetings in Africa, North and South America, Asia, and Europe and the Arab world. In March 2007 a consultation will take place at the Palais des Nations to coincide with the fourth session of the Human Rights Council. The purpose of these meetings is to take into account the approach of different cultures in relation to the human rights to peace, and to focus on the mutual relationship between peace and human rights.

The international prohibition of aggression contained in article 2, paragraph 4, of the UN Charter may also be viewed from the aspect of a human right to peace. War as an instrument of national policy must be outlawed. Preventive or preemptive wars must never be allowed again. Among the so-called third generation rights, the right to peace is paramount, because, unless humanity enjoys peace, it cannot exercise its first and second generation rights, namely its civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.

On 12 November 1984 the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 39/11 annexing the Declaration on the Right of Peoples to Peace, which reaffirms “that the principal aim of the United Nations is the maintenance of international peace and security” and the “aspirations of all peoples to eradicate war from the life of mankind and, above all, to avert a world-wide nuclear catastrophe”. By virtue of operative paragraph 2, the declaration proclaims “that the preservation of the right of peoples to peace and the promotion of its implementation constitute a fundamental obligation of each State.” In paragraph 3, the declaration “demands that the policies of States be directed towards the elimination of the threat of war, particularly nuclear war, the renunciation of the use of force in international relations and the settlement of international disputes by peaceful means.”