Annex N — Carthage Charter

Annex 14 of 17 · ≈ 19 min read · 138 paragraphs · section 36 of 40 · search the book

This annex reproduces the Carthage Charter in full — the first of the three instruments of the Humanity Compact (see Table 14 and §6.1). The Global Accountability Framework draws from it the enforceable obligations; the Call of Carthage carries its legitimacy. The status note below specifies its legal scope. The text is reproduced as it stands, with no binding force of its own in the present work.¶ 1

Draft founding text for global accountability grounded in rights, evidence, prevention and redress¶ 2

Consolidated draft V2 — incorporating the anchoring in the Charter of the United Nations, the definitions and the clause of compatibility with international law.¶ 3

“The humanity of an institution is measured less by what it promises than by what it prevents its own power from forgetting.”¶ 4

Note on the status and use of the text

This Charter is proposed as the founding text of the Humanity Compact. It sets out the principles, rights, guarantees and limits with which any instantiation of the Global Accountability Chain and of the cross-cutting loop of prevention and alert must comply. It creates, of itself, no tax, no universal jurisdiction, no financial obligation and no supranational authority.¶ 5

Its legal effects depend on the form adopted: a constitutive charter of participating organisations; a model law incorporated by a jurisdiction; a contract or pilot protocol; or, in time, a multilateral convention. In every case, jurisdiction proceeds from consent and from the applicable law. The Charter claims an internal primacy over the bodies created under its authority; it claims no primacy over the Charter of the United Nations, national constitutions, existing international obligations or the rights of third parties.¶ 6

Graduated legal architecture

DRAFT CHARTER¶ 7

Preamble

We, the Parties acceding to this Charter,¶ 8

Noting that public and private decisions, monetary and financial policies, value chains, digital infrastructures, technologies and environmental risks produce effects beyond the borders and the generations that take part in their formation;¶ 9

Recognising that a decision may be lawful, rational and consistent with a domestic mandate while producing effects that are not fully integrated into that mandate, and that the existence of harm does not suffice, in itself, to establish exclusive causation, fault or a claim;¶ 10

Observing that the international system is dense in norms, data, institutions and financing, but that evidence, uncertainty, the statement of reasons and the avenues of correction are often lost between the measurement of an effect, its qualification, the decision on a consequence, its financing and redress;¶ 11

Affirming that dignity, non-discrimination, participation, the statement of reasons, data protection and redress cannot be entrusted to the conscience of the decision-maker alone, but must be inscribed in the structure of the decision;¶ 12

Recognising the need to anticipate reasonably foreseeable cascade risks without transferring to the forecaster the power to decide or converting uncertainty into false certainty;¶ 13

Determined to organise a functional, relational and procedural accountability, compatible with sovereignty, consent, subsidiarity, institutional pluralism and the applicable law;¶ 14

Reaffirming their attachment to the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, in particular sovereign equality, the peaceful settlement of disputes and the international cooperation provided for in Article 1, paragraph 3, and in Articles 55 and 56 thereof, and situating themselves in the continuity of “We the peoples of the United Nations”;¶ 15

Guided by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and by the International Covenants of 1966 on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights;¶ 16

Recalling, by way of inspiration and without prejudging the state of positive law, the principle of the prevention of transboundary harm and the obligation of due diligence, as expressed in particular by the 1992 Rio Declaration and by the 2001 work of the International Law Commission;¶ 17

Taking note of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and of the 2025 Compromiso de Sevilla, and placing themselves in the lineage of the Monterrey, Doha, Addis Ababa and Sevilla conferences on financing for development;¶ 18

Adopt this Charter as the normative foundation of the Humanity Compact.¶ 19

Title I — Purpose, scope and institutional doctrine

Article 1 — Purpose of the Charter¶ 20

1. This Charter establishes the foundation of rights, guarantees, decision principles and limits applicable to the institutions, networks, protocols and pilots of the Humanity Compact.¶ 21

2. It seeks to render cross-border and intergenerational effects visible, reasoned, proportionate, foreseeable where reasonably possible and contestable before an identifiable forum.¶ 22

3. It creates no automatic consequence. The measurement of an effect entails neither fault, nor pricing, nor financing, nor sanction, nor jurisdiction, absent a distinct basis.¶ 23

Article 2 — Definitions¶ 24

1. For the purposes of this Charter:¶ 25

— “cross-border or intergenerational effect” means a material, financial, social or environmental consequence of a decision or of a policy, borne beyond the jurisdiction or the generation that adopted it;¶ 26

— “incidence” means an observed or measurable variation attached in accounting terms to an identified transmission mechanism, prior to any conclusion as to causation, fault or claim;¶ 27

— “bounded partial attribution” means attribution expressed in published ranges and restrictions, accompanied by stopping rules where identification is not tenable;¶ 28

— “alert” means a reasoned notification of a reasonably foreseeable cascade risk, describing scenarios, thresholds, uncertainties and options, having neither the force of an order nor that of a presumption of fault;¶ 29

— “case file” means the versioned set of data, assumptions, models, uncertainties, objections, dissents, decisions and signatures transmitted between the functions;¶ 30

— “function” means an institutional capacity necessary to the chain — to measure, qualify, price where applicable, adjust, finance, certify, adjudicate — independent of where it is housed;¶ 31

— “affected party” means a person or entity materially undergoing, or liable materially to undergo, an effect or a consequence falling within this Charter;¶ 32

— “redress forum” means an independent body, wherever it is housed, competent to review the jurisdiction, the procedure and the guarantees of an act of the architecture.¶ 33

2. These definitions are without prejudice to more protective definitions under the applicable law and are further specified, where appropriate, by the Global Accountability Framework.¶ 34

Article 3 — Two-loop architecture¶ 35

1. The Global Accountability Chain organises the treatment of an observed or sufficiently measurable effect, from evidence to redress.¶ 36

2. The Preventive Accountability Loop organises anticipation, the detection of a cascade risk, the qualification of the alert, its notification, the reasoned response, any anticipatory action and ex post evaluation.¶ 37

3. The preventive loop is cross-cutting. It does not constitute a mandatory eighth institution and confers no original power of decision on the producer or the qualifier of the alert. Its institutional configuration remains a hypothesis subject to evaluation by pilot, compared with a federated solution based on existing bodies.¶ 38

4. The two loops share a versioned case file preserving the data, assumptions, models, uncertainties, dissents, decisions and revisions.¶ 39

Article 3 bis — Source of obligations and non-presumption of constraint¶ 40

1. No provision of this instrument, no output produced by a function of the chain and no algorithmic or institutional qualification creates, of itself, an obligation with respect to a State, an organisation, an undertaking or a person not legally bound by it. Any binding effect shall expressly indicate its legal vehicle, its addressee, its scope, its date of applicability, the forum of review and the enforcement regime.¶ 41

2. Participation in a reference standard, in a consultation, in a public register, in a simulation or in a pilot in shadow mode amounts neither to an acknowledgement of responsibility, nor to consent to a jurisdiction, nor to acceptance of a tax, a compensation or a border adjustment. Binding effects arise only from consent, from incorporation or from a jurisdiction validly established under the applicable law.¶ 42

3. The qualification of an act as binding prejudges neither its justiciability nor its enforceability. These two properties are identified separately in the legal passport of the case file.¶ 43

Title II — Rights, guarantees and participation

Article 4 — The human person at the centre, dignity and non-discrimination¶ 44

1. Every function, method and consequence shall be assessed in the light of its effects on the dignity, the rights, the capabilities and the living conditions of the persons and populations affected.¶ 45

2. No person or population may be treated as a mere means in the service of an institutional, financial, technological or political objective.¶ 46

3. No distinction based in particular on origin, nationality, sex, age, disability, economic situation, migration status, administrative capacity or bargaining power may reduce the guarantees owed, save for a differentiation that is objective, necessary, proportionate and intended to correct a relevant inequality.¶ 47

4. Distributive impacts shall be identified by category of agent before any aggregation liable to render them invisible.¶ 48

Article 5 — Information, participation and independent counter-assessment¶ 49

1. Persons and entities liable to be materially affected shall receive, in good time, intelligible information on the subject matter, the methods, the principal assumptions, the uncertainties and the consequences contemplated.¶ 50

2. They shall have an effective opportunity to submit observations, data, a counter-assessment and objections before any substantial consequence, save in cases of strictly defined urgency followed by prompt review.¶ 51

3. Where an asymmetry of capacity compromises equality of participation, an independent mechanism may finance the counter-assessment, without that financing purchasing assent or controlling the content of the analysis.¶ 52

4. Participation replaces neither constitutional competences nor the applicable legal procedures; it informs them and renders them contestable.¶ 53

Article 6 — Data protection and digital integrity¶ 54

1. All data relating to persons or to groups shall be processed under identifiable responsibility, in accordance with the principles of lawfulness, purpose, minimisation, security, accuracy and limited retention period, and with the rights of access, of rectification and, where the law so permits, of erasure.¶ 55

2. Transparency does not require the publication of all raw data. It requires that the affected parties and the forum of review be able to know and to contest the reasons, the method and the scope of the decision.¶ 56

3. Legitimate secrets, security, financial stability and privacy may justify restricted access, secure data rooms, ranges or independent audits; they cannot justify absolute opacity.¶ 57

4. Digital systems that produce or transform evidence shall be documented, versioned, auditable and subject to identifiable human responsibility.¶ 58

Article 7 — Statement of reasons, transparency and evidential statuses¶ 59

1. No official alert, qualification, consequence, allocation or redress decision shall be issued without a statement of the reasons, the data used, the assumptions, the uncertainty, the relevant dissents and the avenues of correction.¶ 60

2. Verifiable facts, programme results, simulations, design proposals, normative commitments and legal interpretations shall be identified as such and made subject to distinct burdens of proof.¶ 61

3. Any substantial modification of a method, a model, a threshold or a definition shall be traced, dated and reasoned. It shall not apply retroactively to the detriment of a party, save on an express legal basis and with a reinforced guarantee.¶ 62

4. Insufficiency of evidence blocks the consequence without rendering the effect or the grievance non-existent.¶ 63

Article 8 — Redress and the right to review¶ 64

1. Any person or entity materially affected by an act of the architecture may contest the jurisdiction, the procedure, the evidence, the qualification, the proportionality, the dissemination of an alert, a conflict of interests or the absence of a statement of reasons before an independent forum.¶ 65

2. The redress forum may be administrative, contractual, arbitral, national, regional or specialised, according to the applicable law. The redress function is necessary; its institutional housing is not presumed to be unique.¶ 66

3. The forum reviews legality, procedure and compliance with the guarantees. It does not substitute itself for the scientific or political function, save where the law confers that competence upon it.¶ 67

4. Remedies shall favour, as the case may be, correction, remittal, suspension, a fresh statement of reasons, temporal limitation and appropriate reparation.¶ 68

Title III — Discipline of evidence, prevention and consequence

Article 9 — Measurement, attribution and preservation of uncertainty¶ 69

1. Effects shall be measured in accordance with methods defined in advance, open to criticism and proportionate to the risk of the decision.¶ 70

2. Measurement shall distinguish the observed incidence, the counterfactual, the transmission mechanisms, internal vulnerabilities, offsetting benefits, transfers, net loss, equity and legal breach.¶ 71

3. Where point identification is not tenable, attribution shall be partial, bounded or suspended. The bounds, restrictions and stopping rules shall be published.¶ 72

4. Non-additive components shall be preserved separately. No register of flows, of stocks, of welfare or of distribution shall be added to another without explicit methodological justification.¶ 73

Article 10 — Informed prevention and contestable alert¶ 74

1. Where a material risk of cross-border or intergenerational harm is reasonably foreseeable, where its mechanisms are plausible and where a window for action remains, the competent institutions shall organise its anticipation, its detection, its qualification and its notification.¶ 75

2. The alert shall describe the scenarios, exposures, horizons, thresholds, uncertainties, competing models, distributive effects and mitigation options. It constitutes neither an order, nor a presumption of fault, nor a financial consequence.¶ 76

3. The competent addressee shall acknowledge receipt and give reasons for the manner in which the alert was examined, the elements accepted or contested, the options retained or set aside and the date of the review.¶ 77

4. The dissemination regime shall take account of the right to information and of the risk of panic, of a run, of stigmatisation or of self-fulfilling prophecy. Any restriction shall be reasoned, subject to review and re-examined.¶ 78

5. Each alert shall be the subject of an ex post evaluation bearing in particular on timing, false positives, false negatives, actionability and the effects proper to the communication.¶ 79

Article 11 — Proportionality and determination of the admissible consequence¶ 80

1. The passage from measurement to a consequence is never presumed. The correct outcome may be closure, monitoring, a recommendation, a capacity measure, prevention, solidarity by consent, an efficiency correction or a legal remedy.¶ 81

2. Every consequence must be founded on a competence, sufficient evidence, a legitimate purpose and a statement of reasons. It must be necessary, suitable, the least restrictive among the solutions reasonably available and reversible where an irreversible measure is not indispensable.¶ 82

3. An inequity, a vulnerability, a global loss and a violation of the law are not interchangeable. Solidarity does not amount to an acknowledgement of responsibility; responsibility does not automatically amount to pricing.¶ 83

4. Pricing, adjustment, exclusion or sanction may not be decided on the sole basis of an aggregate rating or of a preventive scenario.¶ 84

Article 12 — Sustainability, future generations and non-compensable floors¶ 85

1. Decisions shall take account of deferred, cumulative and irreversible effects on future generations, ecosystems, public capacities and essential infrastructures.¶ 86

2. The interests of future generations shall be represented by identifiable methods, bodies or procedures, without artificially attributing to them a single preference.¶ 87

3. Non-derogable prohibitions and non-compensable exclusions prevail over the pursuit of efficiency. The minimum guarantees of information, of hearing, of statement of reasons, of counter-assessment and of redress may not be set aside by a mere cost-benefit calculation.¶ 88

4. Conflicts between rights, guarantees, principles and objectives shall be identified explicitly. Among the lawful solutions, the least restrictive, the most reversible and the best reasoned solution shall be preferred.¶ 89

Title IV — Powers, institutions and artificial intelligence

Article 13 — Functions before institutions, negative mandates and interfaces¶ 90

1. Functions shall be defined before the choice of where they are housed. An identifiable and accountable institutional capacity is required for each necessary function; a distinct organisation is required only where the separation affords a demonstrable protection.¶ 91

2. Each duty-holder is defined as much by what it may do as by what is forbidden to it. The measurer neither qualifies nor determines the consequence; the qualifier does not modify the evidence; the funder does not control the base; the certifier does not decide by algorithm; the redress forum does not govern in the place of the decision-makers.¶ 92

3. Each interface shall transmit a case file comprising the provenance, the assumptions, the uncertainty, the objections, the authorised and forbidden decisions, the responsible signature, the period of validity and the condition of return to the preceding link.¶ 93

4. Where guarantees are equivalent, the lightest architecture prevails. Functions may be merged, federated or housed by existing institutions where conflicts of interest and risks of error remain contained.¶ 94

Article 14 — Independence, checks and balances, conflicts of interest and financing¶ 95

1. No institution shall be judge in its own cause, above the Charter or exempt from the review it applies to others.¶ 96

2. Appointments, removals, budgets, incompatibilities, declarations of interest, recusals, audits and reporting channels shall be organised so as to limit political, financial, technological and informational capture.¶ 97

3. The bodies of measurement, of qualification and of redress shall not be remunerated by reference to the number of ratings, prices, sanctions or case files activated.¶ 98

4. Revenues generated by a consequence shall not directly finance the body that produced the measurement or the qualification on which it is founded, save through an independent mutualised mechanism and an audited firewall.¶ 99

5. The founding institutions and the principal funders shall submit to the same obligations of measurement, of transparency and of redress as the other participants.¶ 100

Article 15 — Artificial intelligence, resilience and crisis¶ 101

1. Artificial intelligence may assist collection, analysis, comparison, anomaly detection, simulation and documentation. It receives no original power of decision.¶ 102

2. No official alert, financial consequence, mandatory allocation, final certification or judicial decision may be triggered without identifiable human validation and a statement of reasons entered in the case file.¶ 103

3. Critical systems shall use, where proportionate, several models, independent audits, adversarial tests, containment mechanisms and degraded-operation plans without artificial intelligence.¶ 104

4. In a crisis situation, accelerated procedures shall rest on fixed mandates, pre-established thresholds, a limited duration, automatic expiry and review. Urgency creates no permanent powers.¶ 105

5. Dignity, non-discrimination, minimum access to redress and the prohibition of a fully automated high-impact decision constitute floors that may not be suspended by the mere invocation of urgency.¶ 106

Title V — International legal order, consent and evolution

Article 16 — Relations with the Charter of the United Nations and international law¶ 107

1. Nothing in this Charter shall affect the rights and obligations of acceding parties arising under the Charter of the United Nations. In the event of a conflict between the commitments undertaken under this Charter and the obligations arising under the Charter of the United Nations, the latter shall prevail, in accordance with Article 103 thereof.¶ 108

2. This Charter shall be interpreted and applied in harmony with the applicable international law, in particular the law of treaties, human rights, immunities and the law of international organisations. It creates no new obligation borne by non-acceding States or third parties.¶ 109

3. The architecture complements existing organisations and regimes — the United Nations, specialised agencies, international financial institutions, regional agreements — cooperates with them and seeks recognition of equivalence. It constitutes neither a competing order nor a means of circumventing the competent fora.¶ 110

4. Invocation of this Charter may justify neither a measure contrary to a peremptory norm of general international law, nor the disregard of a binding decision of the Security Council.¶ 111

Article 17 — Reciprocity, consent, non-substitution and revision¶ 112

1. This Charter binds only those Parties that consent to it, and to the extent of the legal, contractual or institutional instrument by which they incorporate it.¶ 113

2. It replaces neither national constitutions nor existing international obligations, applies subject to Article 16, does not affect the rights of third parties and claims no external primacy.¶ 114

3. The Parties shall promote subsidiarity, recognition of equivalence and assistance to low-capacity jurisdictions. They shall avoid the architecture being applied solely to the least powerful actors.¶ 115

4. Withdrawal is possible on conditions published in advance. The obligations of confidentiality, of preservation of evidence, of data protection and of the handling of pending redress proceedings shall survive withdrawal where the applicable law so permits.¶ 116

5. Every amendment shall be published, reasoned, versioned and made subject to the same guarantees of participation, of competence, of evidence and of redress. Amendments reducing a non-derogable floor or extending powers require a reinforced procedure.¶ 117

6. A periodic review shall assess the need to maintain, simplify, merge or abolish the functions and institutions. The Charter must be able to recommend that no new institution be created or that an existing institution be dissolved.¶ 118

ADOPTION CLAUSE¶ 119

By acceding to this Charter, the signatory Party agrees to apply its principles and guarantees within the field defined by its instrument of accession, to publish the limits of that commitment and to take part in its independent evaluation. Accession amounts neither to automatic acceptance of all the candidate institutions of the Humanity Compact, nor to recognition of any future consequence, nor to a waiver of the applicable constitutional or jurisdictional competences.¶ 120

Design and interpretation note

1 What the Charter does

It transforms the principles of the present work into institutional obligations formulated in a verifiable manner.¶ 121

It incorporates the three completenesses, the interfaces, the negative mandates, the stopping rules, non-automaticity and prevention.¶ 122

It protects institutional flexibility: the function is mandatory where it is necessary; a new organisation is not.¶ 123

It distinguishes rights, procedural guarantees, decision principles and normative objectives.¶ 124

It makes the openness of evidence, the statement of reasons, counter-assessment and redress structural requirements.¶ 125

2 What the Charter does not do

It does not create a global tax, a universal authority or a compulsory jurisdiction for non-acceding parties.¶ 126

It does not turn every externality into fault or every inequity into compensation.¶ 127

It does not make the 7+3 mandatory and does not impose seven distinct organisations.¶ 128

It does not give HuIB, GIRA or an AI the power to set substantive policy.¶ 129

It does not claim that a general legal duty to prevent monetary spillovers already exists.¶ 130

3 Relationship between the three instruments

4 Correspondence with the fifteen earlier commitments

5 Points to be submitted for external legal validation

The exact list of non-derogable floors and their legal basis under each form of adoption.¶ 131

The scope of the right to erasure where obligations to preserve evidence exist.¶ 132

The standards of proof applicable to alerts, provisional measures and financial consequences.¶ 133

The compatibility of mutual recognition, border adjustment and solidarity arrangements with trade law, tax law and the law of immunities.¶ 134

The regime of reservations, of withdrawal, of the survival of obligations and of the enforcement of decisions.¶ 135

The representation of affected populations and of future generations without creating indefinite competences.¶ 136

The distinction between administrative redress, arbitration, existing jurisdictions and a possible specialised jurisdiction.¶ 137

The precise articulation with Article 103 of the Charter of the United Nations and with binding decisions of the Security Council, under each form of adoption.¶ 138

@incollection{yaiche_hc_annexe_n,
  author    = {Yaïche, Nizar},
  title     = {Annex N — Carthage Charter},
  booktitle = {The Humanity Compact},
  year      = {2026},
  version   = {2.3},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.22746533},
  publisher = {Zenodo},
  url       = {https://humanitycompact.org/ouvrage/annexe-n/}
}

A book by Nizar Yaïche, former Minister of Finance of the Republic of Tunisia. Who is the author?