Our contributor Ruslan Asad has written a proposal for a Constitution of a United Caucasus. This idea comes from a large tradition of thinkers of every nationality of the region who dreamed of the unity between the peoples of the Caucasus. An early attempt at this unity was the short lived Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic in 1918.
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I believe in order for the nations in Caucasus to solve their problems and conflicts, we as a new generation should be interested in integrating into bigger structures, which value wisedom and morality and are greater than we are. Those possible structures are the Caucasus House or the EU. Integration amongst each other in order to create a Caucasus House (or Union) and the integration into the EU do not contradict each other. Therefore as a member of new generation, I am proposing the following ideological and moral guidelines. Making use of this opportunity I am also calling on other individuals from the Caucasus to come up with their views on integration models and present them publicly.
"Our constitution is moral, pragmatic, incorporates the vision of Freedom and Cultural Diversity and strives for universal values of freedom indicated in Universal Human Rights Declaration of United Nations.
Our constitution is moral because:
- We the people of Caucasus (Armenians, Georgians and Azerbaijanis; ethnic minorities and majorities; IDPs and refugees) believe in the idea of uniting our efforts for solving our common problems: economic monopolization, undemocratic governance, corruption, unfair distribution of wealth and economic benefits, ethnic/territorial conflicts.
- · We the people of Caucasus believe that for solving the above mentioned problems we need to be part of a bigger structure which gets its moral and ideological roots from the universal value of Freedom, which creates platforms and makes ideas bigger than these nations individually but uniting these nations around one Caucasian identity.
· - We the people of the Caucasus recognize the right for an individual to have simultaneously religious, ethnic, national, regional, family identities. We believe that any type of identity can be chosen based on moral and rational ideas.
Our constitution is pragmatic because:·
· We the people of Caucasus are committed to the implementation of our ideas, values of human rights at grassroots, regional and national level.
· - We are committed to listening to the problems of our nations through a parliamentary political system that welcomes all the ideas of its citizens and creates conditions for discussing different ideas coming from different constituencies.
· - We are committed to holding free and fair elections, to creating a political space with equal opportunities for all the competing political institutions (parties, NGOs, physical and legal entities).
· - We are committed to coming together as nations of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia and to sit at the table of peace, mutual understanding and freedom to discuss our existing conflicts, solve them and offer alternative policies, initiatives for our future generation.
· - We are committed to creating free trade environment which will encourage our middle class, tradesman to trade their products easily with each other and develop the welfare system of our nations.
· - We are committed to initiating agreements on equal distribution of natural resources (Armenia’s copper, Georgia’s water, Azerbaijan’s oil) and Human Resources of these nations which are capable of bringing innovation to our businesses, industries, education, political administration and democratic civil society.
· - We are committed to recognize the rights of ethnic minorities and different groups for administrative and legislative representation in Government.
The Constitution of the Caucasus Union is the founding document of our Union which our nations take pledge not to change unless the people of the Caucasus decide so by bringing their amendments to parliament, organizing nationwide debates and referenda.
We are committed to protecting and abiding to the Constitution as our major guideline, letter of honor and dignity. We will always change our actions, attitudes; shape our politics according to the constitutional provisions and wisdom. We promise that we will not change the constitution based on our needs and desire, but will change our needs and desires based on the values of our constitution. Struggle for Freedom is not a matter of rational choice; this is also about passion and emotions of freedom.
Step by step towards our goal, towards our home and Union!"
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