“At a time when this crisis poses major new challenges to policymakers, I believe that bringing together such a rich panel in terms of diversity and experience will allow us to identify a set of pragmatic, actionable steps on major issues such as financial regulation, global governance, monetary imbalances, development and environment.  One lesson to learn from the crisis is that old recipes are not necessarily the most appropriate ones to solve new problems arising from globalization and increasing interdependence among regions. New solutions must emerge and be driven by new leaders who have demonstrated high potential in their area. I am very pleased to lead this initiative and look forward to the many discussions we will have on this occasion.”

– Fabrice Seiman, Co-President, Lutetia Capital, France.

OBJECTIVE

The Paris Initiative, placed under the High Patronage of French President Nicolas Sarkozy is being launched in order to have a structured brainstorming with young leaders in order to formulate concrete and realistic recommendations supported by civil society and likely to be endorsed by the French Presidency of the G 20 in 2011.

This task force of Young Global Leaders – composed of several ministers and former ministers, NGO founders, corporate executives, university professors and journalists – along with Professor Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, will gather in Paris on 29-30 June, 2010.

They will launch the initiative during talks with Christine Lagarde, Minister of Economy, Industry and Employment of France, Jean-Francois Copé, Majority Leader in the French Parliament, Jean-David Levitte, Diplomatic Adviser and Sherpa to the French President as well as several French CEOs including Maurice Levy, Chairman and CEO, Publicis Groupe, Lars Olafsson, CEO, Carrefour and Henri de Castries, CEO, Axa.

The initiative will initially focus its discussions and recommendations in five policy areas:

1. Financial Regulation (with initial insights provided by YGLs Liz Loyd and Pierre Gentin)
2. Global Risks (with initial insights provided by YGLs Jill Janaina Otto, Erwann-Michel Kerjan and Christopher Jahns)
3. Economic and Monetary Policies (with initial insights provided by YGLs FX de Mallmann and Silvana Koch-Mehrin)
4. International Governance (with initial insights provided by YGLs Governor Enrique Peña Nieto and Mark Leonard)
5. Development (with initial insights from YGLs Boris Nikolic, Kate Roberts and Reuben Abraham)

The participants of the initiative will relay the various ideas in their respective countries to facilitate an international consensus on these proposals. The group will organize a big event at the launch of the French Presidency of the G20.

LEADERS

Thomas Buberl, CEO of Zurich Switzerland, Zurich Insurance, Switzerland

Fabrice Seiman, Co-President, Lutetia Capital, France

Links

List of Participants

Press Release in English

Press Release in French

Idea Submitted by Bud Caddell

Background

In a single day, over 2,000 children are reported abducted here in the US.

That’s almost 800,000 kids a year.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, of the children abducted by strangers and murderers, 75% are killed within the first three hours.

The AMBER alert system was created to help spread the word about an abduction within that 3-hour window.

AMBER Alerts are currently distributed via commercial radio stations, satellite radio, television stations, and cable TV by the Emergency Alert System and NOAA Weather Radio, as well as via e-mail, electronic traffic-condition signs, the LED billboards which are located outside of newer Walgreens locations,[6] along with the LED/LCD signs of billboard companies such as Clear Channel Outdoor, CBS Outdoor and Lamar, and wireless device SMS text messages. (from wikipedia)

As of August 2002, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported that 17 children had been successfully recovered after an Amber alert was issued, including one case in which the abductor released the child after hearing the alert.

In all, the digital methods of alerts are all permission based. You have to sign up to receive the SMS or email. There is, as yet, no method for broadcast of these alerts on the web.

Think about all of the ad space across the web. Adwords, Banner Ads, Text ads, etc.

Think about how a banner can IP locate someone and deliver a customized message.

Think of all the remaindered advertising space across the web. Think of how much of that space is now controlled by Google through their purchase of DoubleClick.

Consider: A child gets abducted near you, and you browse the web, and banner space on your favorite site is, for a short time period (5 seconds, even), replaced with an AMBER alert with contact information.

We may be more apt to ignore that space on the site, but there is still a percentage of people that will see it and will now know of the abduction.

And that will save lives.

Looking For

We need an army of voices, comprised of brands, publishers, and committed people to persuade a company like Google to make time and screen space for this project.

Together we can save a child from danger. We can reunite parent and child, we can avert one of the darkest disasters of our society, and we can stop communities from being ripped apart.

Please help support my idea.

*Open your eyes, but really open them…

Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried, in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
— Winston Churchill, 1947

A precise definition of democratic values is elusive.  Nevertheless, since the adoption of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights in 1948, the international legal system has codified many values that have been labeled as democratic through a series of human rights treaties that are binding on state signatories.

As an illustration, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is a treaty binding on 171 of 192 member states of the United Nations.   Parties hail from every region of the world and from every continent.  The democratic values enshrined in this important treaty include:

• Right to self-determination (Article 1)
• Right to non-discrimination on the basis of without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. (Article 2)
• Right to gender equality (Article 3)
• Right to life (Article 6)
• Right to be free from torture and cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment (Article 7)
• Right to be free from slavery (Article 8)
• Right to be free from arbitrary detention (Article 9)
• Right to freedom of movement (Article 10)
• Right to due process of law (Article 14)
• Right to privacy and family life (Article 17)
• Right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion (Article 18)
• Right to freedom of expression (Article 19)
• Right of peaceful assembly (Article 21)
• Right to freedom of association (Article 22)

All states that are a party to this treaty are subject to one uniform interpretation of these provisions.  As a result, it can no longer be said that these values must be adjusted for cultural sensitivities.  In fact, twenty state parties to this treaty sit on the Human Rights Committee, a UN body that interprets and evaluates all state parties’ compliance with the treaty.

Furthermore, these values are mirrored in regional treaties and declarations such as:

We believe this initiative should work together with the right of information on public issues initiative and with the leadership group initiative in promoting a new value driven leadership.

Key people & organizations to consider collaborating with:
United Nations
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
World Bank
Transparency International
National Endowment for Democracy
Journal of Democracy
Westminster Foundation for Democracy
World Movement for Democracy

Objectives

I. YGL-Campaign

1) Democratic Values

• Draft principles moving to a wider definition of democracy including not only elections but individual rights, political rights and checks and balances. The objective is not to reinvent political philosophy but remind people of what matters and why it matters and what matters.
• Marketing Campaign through the YGL network.

2) Fight corruption:

• Regulate arms trade/ Regulate/transparency bank account politicians
• One idea campaign for US style transparency requirements for all high level politicians worldwide, possibly under the UN umbrella.

2) YGL Networks:

1. Share best practices (YGL with political experience but others interested in going into politics).
2. Forming an “alert and help” network to find out quickly when people we know who are under prosecution, lobby on the international scene for their safety and release and provide them legal assistance.
3. Support/educating grass roots activists on how to use these tools

• Sharing grass roots success stories to improve the morale of activists in difficult environments
• Share information on newly developed political communication tools (both methodologies and technologies)

Leaders

Issue Champion(s)/Working Group.
Laura Alfaro
Andy Freire (head of Civic Eye)
Jared Genser
Maria Corina Machado
Aleh Tsyvinski
Alvaro Rodriguez Arregui
Eugenio Burzaco
Pierre Gentin

The right to public information means a statutory or constitutional right given to citizens to demand information from the government or governmental organizations and information which is in semi-private domain where government exercises control or actively funds such organisations. The group seeks to create a model Act and a public wiki which would be used for benchmarking the law and the experience of the 85 countries which have various levels of success (and will to succeed) with their respective rights. The initiative has seen some very effective usage in countries where it is implemented with the right design and initiative – to curb corruption, improve efficiency, strengthen democracy, create accountability and makes all public efforts effective towards the welfare of citizens. The group also seeks to create a media buzz worldwide as also advocacy to push for greater accountability of the political and bureaucratic classes towards their citizens.

Looking For:

• Further help in drafting the model Act from legally trained YGLs or other experts
• A sub group which will create a plain English wiki explaining the idea, the basics and the detailed issues around each enforceable item
• Access to relevant GACs and forum members representing institutions for their collaboration and help in advocacy
• Help of media, efforts in social networking, use of WELCOM to in turn spread the message to every citizen of the world
• Connecting with the political class (within the forum and YGL community primarily) to assess their openness to the idea in their country. Political support would make a substantial difference to the effort.

Chairs and Active Task Force Members:

Sandeep Parekh (Chair), Manfred Reichl, Jimmy Wales, John Rehm, Erik Charas, Kazuyo Katsuma, Jin Ping, Jared Ganser, Reuben Abraham, Salvador Paiz, Nilmini Rubin, Brian Behlendorf, Thomas Crampton, 
Mina Al-Oraibi
, Alessandra Galloni
, Osman Boyner, 
CV Madhukar

The ocean provides hundreds of millions of jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars to the world economy, in addition to invaluable and irreplaceable services such as production of oxygen, climate regulation, carbon sequestration, and food. However, climate change, overfishing, and pollution are devastating our oceans at an unprecedented rate, depleting ocean life at a planetary scale, diminishing the ability of the ocean to provide the above essential ecosystem services, and causing loss of jobs and economic losses globally.

A global policy to restore ocean health would reverse the global ocean degradation, restore ocean productivity of goods and services to its maximum, for the benefit ocean life, human health and society, and the global economy.

Leaders

Enric Sala and Kristin Rechberger, National Geographic Society