Collegium International

International Ethical, Scientific and Political Collegium, also called Collegium International is a high-level group created in 2002.

The International Ethical, Political and Scientific Collegium is committed, according to its founders "to respond intelligently and forcefully to the decisive challenges facing humankind". An appeal calling for the Collegium's establishment was made public in February 2002 in New York and its membership was officially presented on 2 April 2003 in Brussels before the European Parliament.

Collegium members and associate members, signatories of the Appeal, are scientists, philosophers and present and former Heads of State and Government.

Co-chaired by Michel Rocard, a former Prime Minister of France, and by Milan Kucan, who at the time of the Collegium's founding served as President of the Republic of Slovenia, the group's members include:

The film-producer Sacha Goldman serves as the Collegium's Secretary General.

The Collegium states its concerns in the Preamble to the Declaration of Interdependence:

Alerted by the dangers that threaten the equilibrium of the world and the future of humanity, the members of the International Ethical, Political and Scientific Collegium have identified four principal reasons as the origin of these dangers.

The first is a lack of orientation, vision or ethical practices in the exercise of political, economic, media, and technological power by those who hold it. Neither States nor multinational corporations nor other holders of effective power appear to express this vision. The United Nations identified the objectives to be achieved in order to respond to the major challenges of the new century; however, its normative function is weakened by the fragmentation of competences, between the various international organizations, and by the absence of an integrated mechanism, such as a world human rights jurisdiction, which would control the effective and indivisible application of all fundamental rights, whether civil, political, economic, cultural and/or social.

This ethical weakness is all the more serious given that there is an increasing deficit of responsibility: as globalization occurs, power is concentrated, but responsibility becomes diluted. Today, effective power is disseminated between economic, political, media, social, cultural, intellectual and religious players, without clearly predetermining the conditions and means of their responsibility with regard to the peoples and citizens concerned.

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