Category: Social Justice & Equity

  • Tell the Truth Campaign: Ensuring Birth Equity as the First Human Right

    Tell the Truth Campaign: Ensuring Birth Equity as the First Human Right

    The Tell the Truth campaign calls on all who claim to improve the world to report their impacts in the context of children entering the world—relative to the rights and conditions they are promised.

    Are organizations truly accounting for the life experiences of the most vulnerable—infants and the animals they will impact? When we evaluate this honestly, we see how today’s ecological and political crises arose: those who appeared to be making progress were, in reality, reinforcing inequality and environmental destruction.

    Exposing the Truth

    We are fact-checking organizations that claim to support justice but fail to account for birth equity and sustainability, including:

    • The Weeden Foundation
    • Mercy for Animals
    • Wikipedia and the Center for Biological Diversity
    • Animal Rights Philanthropist Brad Goldberg

    This process reveals how public interest efforts often use flawed standards that hide their role in worsening the crises they claim to solve. By failing to prioritize birth equity, they reinforce systemic injustice, climate devastation, and political inequality.

    A split infographic compares Current Family Planning with Fair Start Family Planning, listing differences in welfare, equality, and environmental protection for children, while highlighting how practices like legitimacywashing can undermine genuine progress.

    The Core Issue: A Flawed Standard Driving Global Crises

    For decades, nonprofits, media, and business leaders ignored the impact of population growth and inequality, creating a false narrative of progress. Their standards for measuring impact exclude birth equity, ensuring a cycle of privilege for some while disempowering others—especially children of color. This approach has:

    • Undermined climate and racial justice efforts
    • Allowed unsustainable economic growth to masquerade as progress
    • Ensured wealth remains concentrated at the expense of the most vulnerable

    A Necessary Shift: Fair Start as the Overriding Human Right

    Instead of perpetuating injustice, we must reallocate extreme wealth to ensure every child is born into a system of reparations, with access to essential resources, education, and a sustainable environment. This includes:

    • Parenting delay and readiness programs
    • Family planning incentives inversely tied to privilege
    • A shift in policy to prioritize children’s rights as the foundation of justice

    Holding Institutions Accountable

    Fair Start activists, many of whom previously worked in leading nonprofits, are exposing how these organizations profited from systems that violated children’s rights. Legal action is underway, including climate tribunals in Africa, to challenge these harmful practices.

    Challenging assumptions that hurt our future infographic

    Take Action: Tell the Truth

    We urge organizations and individuals to:

    1. Assess and report impacts honestly—How does your work account for birth equity and the rights of future generations?
    2. Support policy reforms that place children’s rights at the center of governance and sustainability efforts.
    3. Admit the truth—continuing to ignore this reality does more harm than good.

    Justice starts with birth equity. It’s time to tell the truth and demand real accountability.

    Click here to Donate to Fair Start Movement Campaign

     

  • Six Truths to Tell About Avoiding Equity Fraud

    Six Truths to Tell About Avoiding Equity Fraud

     

    1.

    To be free, we have to ask political leaders and the wealthiest among us to derive their legal authority and entitlement to wealth from, and condition it on, a showing of how they are measurably empowering into equity each child / new member of our democracies. We can’t get to justice from injustice and universally deconstitutive language that omits how we benefit from a system of inequitable growth that is harming infants and animals. We can’t ensure obligations to ourselves from others by violating the duties we owe to the most vulnerable in our societies.

    What does that violation look like? An extreme example would be animal rights organizations claiming to benefit animals with downstream decoy tactics, while quietly choosing to back inequitable growth that easily undoes the good they claim to do. That requires manufacturing metrics to discount future persons, especially persons of color, and animals.

    If we do not require deriving and conditioning, we start all we do from a position of contradicting our own objective values – values like enjoying moderate temperatures and access to food – by benefiting at deadly cost to others.

    That’s political equity fraud, and at a fundamentally objective level, that overrides any political or legal authority to define it otherwise. That said, we can use existing legal systems to address it, by urging existing law enforcement agencies to track the impacts on all of our capacities to self-determine as children enter the world each day, contrasting those facts with value and impact claims being made by influential entities—the ones exploiting growth, birth positionality, and illegal levels of influence—in that jurisdiction.

    This tracking informs our right to self-defense against undemocratic concentrations of power, those who drive violence by allowing states to use it without having legitimated themselves via child-rights based creation norms first.

    2.

    Not doing this – and consistently using an illegal assessment and reporting standard that avoids it – does more harm than we do good because it degrades the capacity of the earth to support human health, while treating children of color as deserving less resources and more risk, while politically disenfranchising the average person.

     

    Challenging assumptions that hurt our future infographic

    3.

    Admitting the use of that illegal standard in our work to date and structuring changes in reproductive rights to incentivize, and fund the assurance, that no child is born below the threshold of conditions that comply with their rights and equity is the most just and effective thing we can do today. Practically, we get there by parental readiness and delay entitlements, which move us towards the qualitative optimality envisioned by those (in more quantitative and less qualitative/normative terms) by Dr. Chris Tucker and Sir Partha Dasguta.

    If we do not admit failure, and disclose how much of the value we claimed to add to the world has been undone by political inequity, we cannot be included among those who are constituting legitimate / inclusive obligations and a just future. We are continuing a family law system of getting people to think they’re democratic ends when they’re actually being treated as economic means, then getting them to do that to the next generation. We will be decrying this politician or that leader, and dealing with the symptom and not the existential cause.

     

    A split infographic compares Current Family Planning with Fair Start Family Planning, listing differences in welfare, equality, and environmental protection for children, while highlighting how practices like legitimacywashing can undermine genuine progress.

    4.

    If we don’t start with measurable equity for children as they enter the world, and for the animals with whom they will interact, we start with injustice that illegally shifts costs onto and punches down on the most vulnerable.

    Without Fair Start reforms, we are operating in a fantasy world where our obligations to others don’t arise from the actual creation of our power relations with them. Instead, they are just dictated from abstract, top-down positions that create the sort of moral inaccuracy that caused the climate crisis.

    What does that punching down look like? Coca-Cola and Fairlife LLC do it. In many more legal filings to come, Fair Start will allege they manufacture numbers in their cost/benefit analysis that discount the value of vulnerable entities, who under various laws cannot be discounted.

    5.

    It is physically impossible to be free, as in self-determining, if we don’t use accurately obligatory language to assure that persons are created, developed, and emancipated in ways that offset equally their capacity to influence political systems, relative to a neutral position or objective standard for evaluation. If we do not invest enough in children to offset their capacity to influence relative to zero, then political representatives and officials are not representative at all, and constituents are not being empowered equally to control the rules under which they must live.

    The creation and entry of others does and should fundamentally shift our obligations and freedoms. Without Telling the Truth, without this inversion of obligation in our language, those entering the world are either not empowered, or we all have no choice but to be subjected to their power and influence – including the degradation of the environment around us.

     

    Inequality info graphic

    6.

    The solution includes using rules to ensure accurate commercial language to slowly democratize and reconstitute what has become an essentially commercialized political system. This can be achieved through a preemptive standard for interpreting domestic constitutions and laws, as well as human rights obligations under instruments like International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to ensure actual and measurable self-determination, through the accurate use of obligatory language ensuring that persons are created, developed, and emancipated in ways that offset equally their capacity to influence political systems equally, relative to a neutral position or objective standard for evaluation.

    TAKE ACTION: FOR ANYONE CLAIMING TO DO GOOD IN THE WORLD, ASK THEM THESE QUESTIONS: 

    How were you accounting for your work being undone, each day, by violations of children’s birthrights as they entered the world? Would you be willing to derive wealth and authority back, and condition it on, ensuring such birthrights? If you could go back and make that change in our political systems, decades ago, to save millions of lives, would you do it? If you claimed to create value that was being undone by basic inequity, would you not be eager to reform that system and align with your claimed values?

     

    Top Down Power and Bottom Up Empowerment infographic

    Click here to Donate to Fair Start Movement Campaign

     

     

  • Urging Leaders of the UN Commission on the Status of Women to Tell the Truth, and Admit Their Death Debt

    Urging Leaders of the UN Commission on the Status of Women to Tell the Truth, and Admit Their Death Debt

    Fair Start Movement activists, who are attending the 69th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, are urging leadership to Tell the Truth:

    The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, illegally  violated the first and overriding human right, the right to an ecosocial fair start in life for all, and as such has done more harm than good because it thereby exacerbated inequity and deadly ecocide, leading to the deaths of millions as the climate crisis accelerates. 

    One fix?

    Leadership should change course, consistent with the policy advice below, and further urge the United Nations Secretary General to back fair starts in life, and measurable political equity, as overriding any system of governance that does not prioritize those things.

    FAIRSTART’S ADVOCACY PAPER FOR CSW69: CENTERING CHILD RIGHTS IN REPRODUCTIVE POLICIES

    Integrating Child Rights into Reproductive Policies: A Fair Start Approach

    The Fair Start Movement advocates for a fundamental shift in reproductive policies, moving beyond traditional frameworks focused solely on fertility rates and contraception to a holistic, child-centered approach. At its core, the Fair Start Movement is committed to ensuring that every child is born into an environment that fosters their well-being, growth, and future success. Aligning with global frameworks, such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Beijing Platform for Action, the Maputo Protocol, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

    Our mission is to ensure that every child is born into conditions that foster their well-being, rights, and future opportunities, granting them the ability to influence their outcomes in a just and equitable society.

    In line with this, FS has initiated petitions before the UN and ACHPR, and has launched a Tell the Truth (TTT) campaign, to bring these changes to the forefront of international legal discourse.

    Reproductive Rights as a Foundation for Child Well-being

    For too long, reproductive policies have been narrowly defined by access to contraception and abortion, neglecting the broader socio-economic realities that shape family planning choices. Fair Start advocates for a paradigm shift from simply reducing fertility rates to creating environments where informed reproductive choices are supported by education, economic security, and child welfare protections as exemplified in our Seed for Future Africa Program across Africa.

    Key Policy Advocacy

    • Governments must prioritize investments in education to empower individuals to make informed reproductive choices.
    • Reproductive rights frameworks should be integrated with child rights protections to ensure intergenerational equity and sustainability.

     

    Child Rights in Reproductive Policies

    Current reproductive policies often ignore the long-term welfare of children born into poverty, conflict, or fragile health systems. To achieve sustainable development, 

    reproductive policies must be framed within a child rights perspective, ensuring that every child is born into conditions that allow them to thrive.

    Key Policy Recommendations

    • Right to Survival and Development (UNCRC Article 6): Ensure reproductive policies are not solely focused on reducing birth rates but also on providing conditions for child survival, growth, and development.
    • Right to Health and Nutrition (UNCRC Article 24): Strengthen reproductive policies to reduce child mortality rates, prevent malnutrition, and promote maternal well-being.
    • Right to Protection from Poverty and Exploitation (UNCRC Articles 26 & 32): Link family planning policies to economic and social protections to break cycles of poverty.
    • Right to Education and Equal Opportunities (UNCRC Articles 28 & 29)

     

    Aligning with Global Frameworks

    Fair Start’s policy advocacy aligns with major international frameworks, ensuring a unified approach to reproductive and child rights policies:

    • Beijing Platform for Action (1995): Calls for universal access to reproductive health services while recognizing the role of socio-economic conditions in reproductive choices.
    • Maputo Protocol (2003): Advocates for women’s reproductive autonomy but must be expanded to include policies that enable delayed fertility for child well-being.
    • AU Agenda 2063: Supports human capital development, gender equality, and social transformation, aligning with sustainable reproductive policies.
    • SDGs (2030 Agenda): SDGs 3, 4, and 5 highlight reproductive autonomy, education, and gender-responsive health policies as integral to global sustainability goals.

     

    The Fair Start Movement’s Advocacy: UN Petition, ACHPR Petition, and the TTT Campaign

    The Fair Start Movement is actively working to bring systemic change through various advocacy platforms, including our UN petition, ACHPR petition, and the recently launched TTT campaign.

    The UN petition led by the Fair Start Movement calls for the integration of child rights into global policy frameworks, with an emphasis on addressing the long-term impacts of the climate crisis on future generations. The petition urges the UN to prioritize child welfare, ensuring that the rights of the future generation are safeguarded, especially in the face of environmental degradation and climate-related harm. It highlights the need for climate reparations to support communities most affected by environmental destruction, guaranteeing that future generations inherit a world capable of supporting their rights and opportunities.

    Similarly, the ACHPR petition, presented to the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, calls for the integration of climate justice into policy frameworks across Africa. It stresses the need for African governments to advocate for child rights and demand reparations given the impact of climate change in Africa. This must be done in order to mitigate the effects of environmental damage on children, especially the future generations in order to have the opportunity to grow, thrive, and enjoy basic rights, free from the consequences of climate-induced harm.

    The Tell the Truth (TTT) campaign is Fair Start Movement’s latest campaign, focused on raising global awareness about the need for accountability and justice in the face of the climate crisis.  

    What Fair Start Is All About

    At the core of the Fair Start Movement is the belief that every child should be granted a fair start in life, free from the constraints of systemic inequalities. We criticize any political standard that fails to prioritize child rights, particularly policies that perpetuate cycles of disadvantage. The standard we criticize is anything that does not use child rights to constitute nations with such investment in each child that there are equal offsets of each child’s capacity to influence outcomes relative to zero, or 0, 1, 2,……0. 

    In other words, political legitimacy should be based on ensuring that every child is equipped with the means to influence their future, starting from birth.

    The Deadly Lie: Privatizing Freedom and Political Legitimacy

    World leaders privatized freedom in the birth-creation of political relations after 1948 by conflating the act of having and not having children under a singular umbrella of autonomy, rather than treating the former as requiring political equity for the child. This hid the nature of freedom by privatizing the creation of political relations. And it led to 

    the measuring, assessing and reporting of public interest outcomes based on standards meant to take oneself out of one’s birth and development context, ensuring children of color were treated as deserving less and placing them at increased risk. This was the hiding, linguistically, of birthright white supremacy and massive death debt with a fraudulent assessment and reporting standard that inverted political obligation, hiding the need for nations to invest equitably in each child just to have basic authority over citizens – to be “representative.”  

    Leaders conflated the two by defining power narrowly as the violence of the state, rather than any form of human influence, so one would be free to terminate pregnancies without law enforcement blocking you, only to now die in a heat wave because one had no influence over climate policy, and could not afford air conditioning. 

    As Zaharah poignantly states:

    “How dare you? In this inequality and climate injustices that have harmed us from the global south, our children are dying and have no accountability, using a top-down system that isolated victims from the global south. The wealth you enjoy was made from the innocent blood of poor people from the global south. You will not escape blame, and it will pass into your children because your children are born in the luxury that was taken from us.”

    This sentiment reflects the reality that wealth accumulated at the expense of the Global South has left many children dead, with millions more at risk of dying from inequality and climate injustices. We must adopt and support an Afrocentric model while dismantling the top-down systems that perpetuate these inequalities.

    A Call to Action

    The Fair Start Movement calls on governments, policymakers, and global institutions to radically transform reproductive policies by embedding child rights at their core. This transformation is not just a matter of political or social reform—it is a moral and legal imperative that ensures the survival, growth, and development of every child.

    We demand a departure from outdated, population-control driven narratives and call for a shift toward child-centered policies that prioritize equitable investments in every child’s future. It is time for nations to acknowledge their responsibility to invest in each child from the moment of conception, ensuring that every child is afforded the opportunity to influence their own future and thrive in a world free from systemic inequalities.

     

    Additional Advocacy Talking Points for CSW69: Integrating Child Rights into Reproductive Policies & Promoting Delayed Fertility

    Reproductive Rights Must Evolve Beyond Contraception and Abortion

    • Historically, reproductive rights policies have focused primarily on access to contraception and abortion without ensuring long-term socio-economic sustainability.
    • A more holistic approach is needed—one that integrates child rights, economic security, and education policies into reproductive health frameworks.
    • Key advocacy point: Shift the narrative from “reducing fertility rates” to “creating enabling environments for informed reproductive choices and child well-being.”

    The Case for Delayed Fertility as a Policy Priority

    • Studies show that delayed fertility (having children at a later age when socio-economically stable) leads to better health, educational, and economic outcomes for children and parents.
    • Policies should focus on empowering women and families to make reproductive choices that align with their aspirations and economic security.
    • Key advocacy point: Governments must invest in education, employment opportunities, and financial security for women to enable informed family planning decisions rather than just controlling fertility rates.

    Child Rights Politics: Centering Children in Reproductive Policies

    • Current policies focus on reproductive choices without considering the long-term welfare of children born into poverty, conflict, or fragile health systems.
    • Child rights frameworks (such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child – CRC) should be integrated into reproductive policies to ensure that every child is born into conditions that allow them to thrive.
    • Key advocacy point: The shift toward child rights-based reproductive policies ensures that family planning policies contribute to intergenerational well-being, not just short-term fertility management.

    Linking to Global Commitments: Aligning with Beijing Policy, Maputo Protocol, AU Agenda 2063, and SDGs

    1. Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995)
    • The Beijing Platform for Action remains a landmark policy framework that recognizes women’s reproductive rights as human rights.
    • It calls for universal access to reproductive health services and highlights the role of socio-economic conditions in reproductive choices.
    • Key advocacy point: CSW69 should advocate for full implementation of Beijing’s commitments, with an emphasis on integrating child rights and delayed fertility as part of women’s reproductive empowerment.
    1. The Maputo Protocol (2003)
    • The Maputo Protocol (Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa) guarantees women’s rights to reproductive health, autonomy, and access to safe abortion in specific cases (rape, incest, or when the pregnancy endangers health or life).
    • Article 14(1) states that women must have the right to control their fertility and access family planning services.
    • Key advocacy point: While Maputo advances reproductive rights, its implementation should extend beyond contraception and abortion to include economic policies that enable women to delay childbirth if they choose, ensuring child well-being and intergenerational equity.
    1. African Union’s Agenda 2063
    • Agenda 2063, Africa’s long-term strategic framework, emphasizes human capital development, gender equality, and social transformation.
    • The Aspiration 6 of Agenda 2063 calls for an Africa where development is people-driven, relying on the potential of its women and youth.
    • Key advocacy point: Sustainable reproductive policies must align with Agenda 2063’s focus on education, economic empowerment, and gender equality—ensuring that family planning policies are designed to uplift both women and future generations.
    1. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
    • SDG 3 (Health), SDG 4 (Education), and SDG 5 (Gender Equality) all highlight the need for reproductive autonomy, access to education, and gender-responsive health policies.
    • The ICPD 1994 framework emphasized reproductive rights beyond contraception, advocating for health equity, maternal support, and economic empowerment.
    • Key advocacy point: The CSW69 discussions should align with global goals and commitments, ensuring that reproductive policies support women’s empowerment and child well-being holistically.

    Addressing Potential Criticism and Challenges

    Risk of Restricting Reproductive Freedom

    • The shift towards child rights-based reproductive policies and delayed fertility must not be used to restrict access to contraception or abortion.
    • Advocacy focus: Policies should be framed as expanding reproductive choices, not imposing delays on fertility through coercion.

    Economic and Policy Feasibility

    • Delaying fertility requires strong social and economic policies, including affordable healthcare, education, and job opportunities.
    • Advocacy focus: Governments must invest in infrastructure that enables reproductive autonomy, rather than focusing solely on birth rate policies.

    Avoiding Population Control Narratives

    • Some policymakers might misinterpret delayed fertility as a population control strategy.
    • Advocacy focus: This is not about controlling population but about ensuring sustainable reproductive choices and child well-being.

    Key Child Rights Issues we can include in CSW69 Advocacy and How to Make Them Relevant

    Child rights must be central to reproductive policy discussions because policies that affect fertility and reproductive choices directly impact the well-being, rights, and future of children. Below are the key child rights issues that should be included in the CSW69 advocacy, along with their relevance to the discussion on delayed fertility and reproductive policies.

    1. Right to Survival and Development (UNCRC Article 6)

    Relevance:

    • A child’s right to life and healthy development is directly linked to maternal health, prenatal care, and economic stability of parents.
    • When reproductive policies focus solely on reducing birth rates, they overlook the quality of life for children born under precarious conditions.
    • Delaying fertility can ensure that children are born when parents are physically, emotionally, and financially stable, improving survival rates and reducing child malnutrition and preventable diseases.

    Advocacy Point:

    • Reproductive policies must not only provide access to contraception and abortion but also ensure that every child born has the conditions needed for survival, growth, and development.
    1. Right to Quality Health and Nutrition (UNCRC Article 24)

    Relevance:

    • When young mothers (especially adolescents) have children before they are financially and emotionally ready, it increases child mortality rates and malnutrition.
    • Studies show that children born to older, economically stable mothers have better health outcomes and access to healthcare.
    • Unsafe abortions due to restrictive reproductive policies also lead to orphaned children or children left in unstable care systems.

    Advocacy Point:

    • Governments must strengthen reproductive policies to ensure that family planning services support women in choosing when to have children based on health and well-being factors.
    1. Right to Protection from Poverty and Exploitation (UNCRC Articles 26 & 32)

    Relevance:

    • Children born into poverty are more likely to experience malnutrition, lack of education, child labor, and trafficking.
    • Delayed fertility allows families to break cycles of poverty, ensuring that children have better access to education and resources.
    • Young mothers, especially teenage girls, are often forced into economic vulnerability, leading to child marriage, sexual exploitation, and human trafficking.

    Advocacy Point:

    • Governments must integrate reproductive policies with economic and social protection policies to ensure that children born into any family have financial stability and security.
    1. Right to Education and Equal Opportunities (UNCRC Articles 28 & 29)

    Relevance:

    • Early and unplanned pregnancies often interrupt girls’ education, pushing them into economic dependency and limiting their ability to provide for future children.
    • Children of economically stable, educated parents are more likely to stay in school and achieve their full potential.
    • Adolescent pregnancy is linked to school dropouts, creating a generational cycle where both mother and child face educational barriers.

    Advocacy Point:

    • Reproductive policies must prioritize delaying fertility to ensure that women and girls complete their education before becoming parents.
    • Governments should expand school-based reproductive health programs that combine contraception access with economic and career development programs for young girls.
    1. Right to a Family and Social Protection (UNCRC Article 27)

    Relevance:

    • Many children born into unstable environments experience neglect, abuse, and separation from their families due to economic struggles or unprepared parenting.
    • Orphanages and foster care systems are overburdened, and lack of support for struggling families contributes to the cycle of poverty.
    • Reproductive policies should not only prevent unplanned pregnancies but also support families in raising children in safe and stable environments.

    Advocacy Point:

    • Governments must align reproductive policies with child protection policies, ensuring that children are born into environments where they have access to stable family structures and social support systems.
    1. Right to Participation and Decision-Making (UNCRC Article 12)

    Relevance:

    • Reproductive policies often focus only on adult decision-making without including young people’s perspectives on their own reproductive futures.
    • Young people should have a say in family planning policies, especially in regions where early marriage and adolescent pregnancy are common.
    • Cultural and societal expectations often prevent young girls from exercising their reproductive rights freely.

    Advocacy Point:

    • Governments must involve youth voices in reproductive policy development, ensuring that adolescent reproductive health policies are rights-based and inclusive.

    Integrating Child Rights into Reproductive Policies: What Needs to Change?

    To bridge the gap between reproductive rights and child rights, the following policy changes are also necessary:

    1. Shift the Focus from Population Control to Child Well-being
    • Traditional reproductive policies focused on controlling birth rates rather than ensuring that every child born has access to a secure future.
    • CSW69 should advocate for a rights-based approach that prioritizes the child’s quality of life, not just reproductive restrictions.
    1. Strengthen Economic and Social Protection Policies for Parents
    • Delaying fertility must be supported by strong economic policies such as:
      ✔ Paid parental leave
      ✔ Childcare subsidies
      ✔ School reintegration for young mothers
    • Governments must integrate reproductive health services with economic empowerment programs.
    1. Expand Legal Protections for Young Mothers and Their Children
    • Policies must ensure that young mothers have access to education, job training, and financial support.
    • Laws must protect children born from unplanned pregnancies from discrimination and economic hardship.

    Key Advocacy Message for CSW69

    • Reproductive policies must move beyond fertility control to focus on child well-being.
    • Delaying fertility should be a choice, supported by social and economic policies that protect both mothers and children.
    • Child rights must be integrated into reproductive health discussions to ensure intergenerational equity and sustainability.
    • Governments must invest in reproductive education, social protection, and legal frameworks that allow families to thrive.

    Please consider making a contribution through Donate. Together, we can create lasting change to save next generation

     

  • What is Total Liberation by Telling the Truth? Take Action.

    What is Total Liberation by Telling the Truth? Take Action.

    One way to change mindsets is to show someone what they thought and said in the past was objectively wrong, and in ways that likely harmed others.

    Work on antiracism shows this.

    The core problem driving ecological and political overshoot is a system of political obligation that requires compliance with legal systems without actually empowering constituents to be ecosocially self-determining in a measurable way, relative to a restorative and democratic baseline. 
    Top Down Power and Bottom Up Empowerment infographic
    That enriches some, while killing many.

    Fair Start is counsel in a lawsuit against Coca-Cola / Fairlife LLC trying to set deviation from that standard or baseline as what it first and fundamentally means to “harm” others. 

    We think the United Nations Secretary General should admit to using the same illegal standard, a standard that obligates subjects without empowering them.

    We are urging the Secretary General and other officials  to admit that their and all governmental authority, as well as the entitlements to wealth they protect, derive from and are conditioned on empowering those he and other officials claim to represent, and that without prioritizing Fair Start as the first human right, he has no authority. If he does not tell the truth, he will be using a fundamentally illegal standard for assessing and disclosing costs/benefits, value claims, and imacts, similar to what Coca-Cola has been using. 

    Governments can’t avoid climate liability by redefining conceptions of things like fraud, political legitimacy, or equity, and what it means to benefit at deadly cost to others. As we show here, there are objective measures for these things.

    A split infographic compares Current Family Planning with Fair Start Family Planning, listing differences in welfare, equality, and environmental protection for children, while highlighting how practices like legitimacywashing can undermine genuine progress.

     

    Fairness comes first. Governments and the concentrations of wealth and power that influence it have no authority or entitlement to create a failed system that kills millions of people and then use that system to measure the harm as a means of hiding their liability

    The Secretary General is the highest symbol of representative government, and if he makes clear the need for Fair Start reforms, change will follow. He can avoid equitywashing, or what is really constitutive reparations fraud, and join a community of truly obligated persons trying to constitute a just future. 

    The Secretary General should start by admitting that he benefited from an equitywashing system that illegally violated children’s birthrights and did more harm to the UN’s values, goals, and impacts than he did to further them.

     

    Challenging assumptions that hurt our future infographic

     

    By doing so, he can move towards the legitimacy of a neutral standard where some do not benefit at deadly cost to others, hiding harm to infants and animals on at least eight levels. 

    Admitting failure, and communicating an obligation to future children that overrides any obligation to governments and wealth-holders, is a linguistic act of constituting a better future.

    Please consider making a contribution through Donate. Together, we can create lasting change to save next generation

    Urge the Secretary General to do so here: Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General: Telephone – (212) 963-7160 | Fax – (212)-963-7055.

  • What is Birth/Political Equity and Why Can’t We Be Free Without It?

    What is Birth/Political Equity and Why Can’t We Be Free Without It?

    The Cambridge Dictionary defines “equity” as the “value of a company, divided into many equal parts owned by the shareholders, or one of the equal parts into which the value of a company is divided.”

    But why do companies and shareholders have the authority to own equity at all? There is also – earlier on – the equity one has in one’s democracy, or the share one has in their political system that makes one relatively self-determining or free, as opposed to being determined by others.

    Generally, citizens receive their shares at birth, which vest when one becomes emancipated, and can vote. 

     

    Two panels compare family planning types. Left: diverse family illustration with bright colors, labeled Fair Start family planning with positive points. Right: grayscale crowd in a city, labeled Economic growth-based family planning with negative points.

    And because persons are generally considered politically equal, a rule that means each person gets one vote, one’s share of their democracy, first and foremost depends on the number of other individuals in it. That is why many thinkers have been concerned with the way growth dilutes the average person’s share, a fact hidden by formulas like representative ratios that are not based on empowering those subject to the law by treating them as equally empowered, relative to a neutral standard.

    But growth does not really account for other key factors that account for the equity, or level of influence, one has over one’s political system. What if that system has created macro changes in the environment so that persons are influenced, say by heat waves, against their will? What if one has a share, but because of structural racism and birth-based economic inequality, it really is not an equal share?

    Equity matters because it gives us some control over the systems in which we live, and that equity depends on the number of people with whom we share those systems, the disparities in the resources each of us may have, and things like the way we impact the physical environment around us.

    If one does not have equity in the political system, it’s hard to understand how they are free, or relatively self-determining. And there are hard parameters for what the amount of equity each of us deserves.

    Establishing a preemptive standard for self-determination, and political obligation 

    One way to consider birth/political equity, or what might also be called relative self-determination and autonomy, is to contrast it with the concept of population in the field of policy, a concept used by some to disenfranchise many.

    Partha Dasgupta is a brilliant theorist who has assessed optimal world population ranges. But, how do these persons actually relate to one another? What is the quality of those relations? How do we decide? 

    Fair Start’s main value-add to the world is to say that we should only bring kids into certain birth and development conditions, and that if we did that, the future would be better. And when we say “should,” we are the only organization in the world that has shown the “should” overrides all else because who we should be comes before what we do.

    Our first hurdle in ensuring that “should” is to overcome the idea that having kids is just about the freedom of the parents. It’s also about the freedom of the child and the community they form. And that second freedom is unique because all authority to govern and to own wealth derives from the inclusion of those subject to the governance or wealth as free and equal persons, with one person/one vote or equal self-determination. But by 1968, governments had taken equity out of reproductive rights systems, so that inclusion never occurred. Instead, economic growth became the standard. 

    Freedom was taken out of context, and the creation of power relations was privatized using an illegal – exclusive from self-determining political processes – standard. Challenging that standard can be controversial. In fact, one former ally organization removed content referring to this approach over traditional considerations of population, through the lens of reproductive autonomy, around the time of their receiving a significant grant. 

    One way to tell this story involves abortion. The illegal standard, even by the most liberal assessments, treats terminating a pregnancy as autonomy for the woman, even if she dies months later in a climate crisis heat wave, because she could not afford air conditioning, could not influence her political system to save herself, and did not have levels of trust to access her neighbor’s air conditioning, and was positioned that way because under fake “efficiency” standards she was treated as an economic input, etc. She was never free because she was never empowered, and in that situation, there is little reason to follow the rules.

    So just as Dasgupta has theorized optimal numbers, we can assess optimal qualitative relations, which we would practically create (whatever we do for equity after the fact) by ensuring no child is born beneath a particular line (or threshold: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice-intergenerational/ ). That line, in many ways, represents the border of human freedom, and we could implement it in current policy measures by preempting baby bonds and similar legislation, using AI to set the line around a host of parameters that try to zero out harm, including the harm of taking the value of autonomy out of one’s political equity. 

    Here are many useful measures to inform how we draw the line:

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  • Urging Financial Support and Reparations for Amboseli School Girls

    Urging Financial Support and Reparations for Amboseli School Girls

    Dear Supporters,

    As part of the Tell the Truth campaign, Fair Start is making a special appeal this week. Amboseli is calling on the United Nations to recognize birth equity as the first human right. Now, we need your help to take action.

    From our friend Dickson Lekina:

    I write to you with an urgent plea on behalf of the schoolgirls of Amboseli, Kenya. These bright young women face financial barriers that threaten their access to education. Without support, their futures hang in the balance.

    We seek immediate funding for school fees to ensure their education continues uninterrupted. Additionally, reparations are needed to address the injustices they have endured, helping them heal and build brighter futures.

    By standing with these girls, we uphold the fundamental right to education and gender equality. Your support can break cycles of hardship and empower them to reach their full potential.

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    With gratitude,
    Dickson Lekina

  • Authority and Wealth Must Empower — Not Harm — People

    Authority and Wealth Must Empower — Not Harm — People

    Deal with the cause, not the symptom. 

    Those who claim to create market value, have an impact upon public interest, and exercise governmental authority must account for the inequity and inequality that exists today. The same way shareholders hold equity in a company, voters and citizens should hold equity in a democracy. Unfortunately, this becomes less true as resources are funneled ever upward and the gulf expands between rich and poor. We see it playing out in real time.

    Many of us have had the best intentions. We have made charitable donations to groups we believed in. We have put a portion of our incomes toward causes we felt were necessary to improve life on Earth.

    Those of us who believed the internet might build positive coalitions and give humanity common cause have been sorely disappointed and disillusioned. In the Twentieth and Twenty-First centuries, leaders have consolidated power and have become increasingly less humane and more authoritarian. They have assumed entitlements they had no right to, which among other factors has fundamentally led to the multitude of crises humankind faces today.

    We believe that systems of benefit driven by growth economies are built on direct and indirect violations of the poorest people in the world today. The neoliberal approach taken by the wealthy orchestrators of the consumerist global economy will monetize everything down to the least blade of grass while completely ignoring and lying about homelessness, starvation, torture, and genocide. Let’s build a golf resort in Gaza, shall we?

    Without addressing some of these fundamental issues, we cannot reach our ideal of a just future through equity in birth and development. Nonprofit and animal rights organizations need to get honest with themselves. Their actions have hardly backed up their PR campaigns.

    It’s time to admit that humans are human and are inclined to hoard resources, but this is a tendency we must curb. Until we recognize and acknowledge that every person born has a fundamental right to a fair and equitable start in life, we will not solve our most desperate and dire issues.

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  • Women Care Groups Leading Afrocentric Model in Saving the Next Generation

    Care group model helped Seed for the future project to identify and sensitize the real voiceless young women from the grassroots communities in Africa and pilots done in Uganda, Nigeria, Kenya and Tanzania as Coalition and its growth to other countries and regions that were harmed over the years of wealth distribution injustices.

    This work has roots in the first forms of democracy and can drive decolonization of wealth to liberate many in measurable ways. The United Nations failed to ensure sustainable and equitable family systems, which is now killing millions as the climate crisis unfolds.

    The United Nations in 1968 finalized a paradigm of privacy isolating us from each other in the act of trying to constitute – through having children – equitable future relationships. This was done because a few wealthy families had a disproportionate impact on the standard and wanted to avoid covering the cost to children’s rights, and to benefit from the growth-based investments not having to invest in kids would ensure. This was done even though the act of having kids is more interpersonal than personal, and by ensuring isolation and subjectivity, the UN set in lace the collective action problem of inequity as not having an equal and influential share in determining the rules one lives under, and thus halting the unwanted influence others have over you.

    The UN not telling this truth is killing innocent persons, skewing the baseline for live-saving climate loss and damage funding, including the preemptive nature of birth and developmental equity, the prioritization of certain claims, the amounts owed, and how the funds must be used.

    What should have been done and can still be done today to fix this? One can create social contexts that overcome the collective action problem and break the veil of subjectivity, ones that invert entitlements (as was done to address famine), so that mothers and would-be mothers can all see how having kids and creating new members of the community will impact all and the future. In short, the use of a social context leads to the discerning of objective values we all share and are hidden by the UN process, and as such delay, the moving of resources from the wealthy to impoverished, relocating in some cases, smaller families, etc. – and this can all be expedited with child and future child savings accounts around which collective action can be based.

    Small and less consumptive white families in wealthy nations will model and assist in funding the change. Delay, readiness, redistribution, share equity to get to autonomy, nature, etc. – these are the terms of a truly universal and intergenerational social contract.

    Humans can only constitute the future through the language of obligation and the linguistic creation of power relations, and the fundamental mistake we all seem to be making is that our obligation is inverted: It would be physically impossible to be free unless we see ourselves as first obligated to persons who will parent, rather than first ruled by those at the top of the influence pyramid, e.g. officials, the wealthy, CEOs, celebs, etc., because all entitlement to influence – and ensure criteria other uses to assess what is true and valuable – derives from the governed and their primary equitable positioning. The latter should only have influence to the extent the creation of others ensures measurable (eight metrics as least) equity.

    Whereas the United Nations and its members exploited isolation and birth and developmental positionality to fill factories and shopping centers with workers and consumers, this collective process will fill town falls, surrounded by nature, as the life of self-determination – not exploitation as economic units by in an economy that first requires democracies defined by measurable equity to be regulated – that justifies governance.

    For example, the United Nations has recently recognized the right to a healthy environment, but on the day the General Assembly did so it was quickly undoing the right with subtle family policies that did more harm to the environment and the humans and nonhumans that comprise it than the UN was doing good. 

    The family policies work by giving would-be parents a sense of autonomy that ignores all the interpersonal impacts of having kids, one that ensures inequity and growth.

    What the UN did is common. Most claims of public benefit are inaccurate because the key values/variables claimed (whether it is protecting animals, children, democracy, etc.) are actually hidden in/ absent from the premise (who we should be, which precedes what we should do) and being undone, but in ways humans have trouble perceiving because the changes move so slowly. The recognition of a right is a charade unless the UN enables crowd-sourced implementation of a right to the creation of power relations consistent with the right to a healthy environment.

    These are facts, ones which enriched some at deadly and impoverishing cost to many, as the hiding/absence infects our thinking and conversations, making us unable to connect situations like redlining and urban heat in the U.S. to deforestation and poverty in Africa. In both situations the aligned values of nature and equity are absent from the first necessary premise of who we should be, and even the most ardent activists cannot see it.

    Donations or reparations that are instead treated as one of many forms of influence (use of contact networks, prestige, civil disobedience, one’s skills, etc.) that logically are first obligated towards creating and maintaining the system that physically creates and maintains just power relations, which can be measured. Prioritizing our various forms of influence – above taxes or recognizing any entitlements to own wealth – makes us part of a system where we constitute or treat others as we would like to be treated – one which mimics the sort of entitlement change that has significantly reduced famines. Doing so includes the key values/variables in the premise of who we should be. One is either moving in the direction of being part of such a system or a threat to it – there is no middle ground. Those who choose to use their influence to back a system that does not include others as empowered equals, whatever they say, are harming equity.

    It seems care groups are doing from below what written constitutions could not do from above – actually empower people with self-determination in a measurable way. The situation of women lacking basic needs in their lives causes physiological torture and force them to get early married, teenage pregnancy and gave birth too many children in the act of looking for the basic needs. Women cannot stay with basic needs; they are vulnerable if a younger woman lacks basic needs might end up doing negative things.

    Global north wealth people, foundations and companies harmed women from the global south and her child’s future. Would it be wrong for a young woman with little wealth or income intending to become a mother to demand birth equity resources – resources that simply ensure a level playing field for her child and thus offset the harm from a wealthy family that externalized the deadly environmental and social costs of its wealth upon the child she wished to have?

    What if that family exploited that birth inequality and growth to not only harm her future child, but ensure that child would be likely to work for little money for the wealthy family and their children? What if the young woman were black, and whose child would have 9/10th less wealth than white kids because they would be black, and the white family she asked could afford to share by choosing to have fewer children?

    Start by stopping the harm and demanding climate restoration though birth equity as human right. Then start paying them back in the most effective through Care group model in the spirit of doing these reparations in decentralized form in transparency and accountability in responding to climate crisis and human rights and provide quick results in a short period of time. In paying to plan to keep the children’s women will have a safe environment.

    The Care Group model, with its emphasis on identifying and sensitizing the marginalized and voiceless young women in grassroots communities, has been instrumental in addressing the long-standing injustices caused by wealth distribution disparities. These disparities have pushed women in these communities into a cycle of deprivation, leading to early marriages, teenage pregnancies, and excessive childbirth as they seek to fulfill their basic needs. This situation not only inflicts physiological torment on these women but also makes them susceptible to engaging in negative activities in their quest for survival.

    It’s crucial to recognize that global wealth imbalances have often harmed women in the global south and jeopardized the future prospects of their children. In light of this, is it unjust for a young woman with limited wealth or income who aspires to become a mother to demand birth equity resources? Birth equity resources seek to level the playing field for her child and redress the harm caused by externalizing the environmental and social costs of wealth accumulation onto her child.

    What if a wealthy family, responsible for this externalization, not only perpetuates birth inequity but also ensures that her child is likely to work for minimal wages for their family and heirs? Moreover, what if this young woman is black, knowing that her child will inherit significantly less wealth than white children due to racial disparities, and the white family she approaches could easily alleviate this disparity by choosing to have fewer children?

    The path towards rectifying these injustices begins with halting the harm and advocating for climate restoration as a fundamental human right through birth equity. Simultaneously, it entails repaying the debt owed to these marginalized communities effectively, and the Care Group model provides a promising avenue for achieving this. By implementing reparations through this decentralized approach, we ensure transparency and accountability in responding to both the climate crisis and human rights violations. This method also delivers rapid results in a short timeframe, creating a safe and conducive environment for the children these women wish to raise.

    In essence, urging wealthy individuals, foundations, and corporations from the global north to adopt the Care Group model in their family reforms. Reparations efforts are a means of addressing historical injustices, restoring dignity and opportunity to marginalized women, and fostering a more equitable and sustainable future for all. It’s a call for collective responsibility and action to rectify the imbalances that have perpetuated suffering for generations.

    The care group model directly promotes decentralization with decolonization of collective action to problems through talking to each other in democratic system unlike the nuclear families in the global north, and also demoralizes non-human decolonization Animals to have freedoms.

    How will the Care group model help future families?

    • The Global North countries model on family planning endorsed by the United Nations simply isolates parents and parents-centered decision making resulting in errors in the global south model and Care group emerged to fix this error.
    •  The isolation has caused a terrible climate crisis and inequality in today’s generations.
    •  Care group modeling will allow Parents- children discussing and prioritizing when producing children based on their family planning reformation of policies that allow children all rights according to children’s UN convention.
    •  Will enkindle in all families with the sense of socialization and promoting working together in nuclear families.
    • Care groups use rules that protect vulnerable voiceless women and children through investing in them and conserving animal freedoms in protecting nature to prevent crises present.

    Why the Care group model?

    1. A Community-Based Approach: The Care Group model is fundamentally community-based. It involves the formation of small, local groups of women who share similar life experiences and challenges. These groups serve as a support network for one another and work collectively to address common issues. In the context of reparations and family reforms, these groups would be a vital resource for affected women. They provide a platform for women to share their stories, access information, and collectively advocate for their rights.

    2. Education and Awareness: The Care Group model places a strong emphasis on education and awareness. Trained community health workers or facilitators play a crucial role in disseminating information on a range of topics, including reproductive health, childcare, nutrition, and financial literacy. In the context of reparations, these facilitators can help women understand their rights and the resources available to them, empowering them to demand equity and justice.

    3. Skill-building and Empowerment: Beyond education, the Care Group model focuses on skill-building and empowerment. Women in these groups can learn practical skills such as income generation, which can help them become financially independent. Reparations efforts can incorporate skill-building programs to equip women with the tools they need to secure a better future for themselves and their children.

    4. Advocacy and Collective Action: The Care Group model encourages collective advocacy and action. Women in these groups can come together to voice their concerns and demands. In the context of reparations, these groups can be powerful advocates for justice, demanding accountability from those responsible for historical injustices and seeking restitution for the harm caused.

    5. Monitoring and Evaluation: The Care Group model also includes a robust system for monitoring and evaluation. This ensures that the programs and initiatives being implemented are effective and responsive to the needs of the community. In the context of reparations, this means that the impact of reparations efforts can be closely tracked, and adjustments can be made as needed to ensure they are achieving their intended goals.

    6. Sustainability: One of the strengths of the Care Group model is its focus on sustainability. By building the capacity of women within communities, it creates a lasting impact that extends beyond the duration of any specific program. In the context of reparations, this means that the benefits and support provided to women can have a lasting and positive effect on their lives and the lives of their children.

    7. Partnership and Collaboration: The success of the Care Group model often relies on collaboration with local organizations, governments, and NGOs. When applied to reparations, partnerships can help ensure that resources are mobilized effectively, and a coordinated effort is made to address climate injustices and promote birth equity.

    Coalition is aware of how environmental leaders are responding to the climate crisis and one of them suggested that their birth benefited them at the cost of others and working together to bring children into the world and avoid the problem that is arising from their errors.

    None of the leaders want to participate in this conversation of saving the next generation, they are just ignoring because of supremacy.

    Care groups can fix these crises, if environmental leaders can adopt and participate in the Care group model in responding to climate crises in a decentralized system of operation.

    the Care Group model offers a comprehensive and community-centered approach to addressing the needs of marginalized women and their children in the context of family reforms and reparations for future socialization in families working together in addressing the climate crisis. It leverages education, empowerment, advocacy, and sustainability to create lasting change and promote birth equity and climate justice. Care groups focus on the vulnerable and how entrants impact the entire group to children above threshold therefore reversing the exploitation into growth to save the next generation.

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  • Women Leading in Climate Restoration and Family Planning

    Women care groups are responding to the climate crisis present today and using the Fair Start model at grassroots level following the norms of different cultures. Women care groups model was initiated in Uganda by the Rejoice Africa Foundation as the only tactic in responding to the climate crisis, family planning policies and reformation of children rights to help in birth equity and reparations to reach the most beneficial frontline indigenous women in remote areas. Africa is a continent with many ethnicities and different cultures and care groups work as a model to help in upholding cultures in different ethnicities. Our partner, Rejoice Africa Foundation is using women care groups on our joint project, Seeds for the Future.

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