Annex P — Call of Carthage

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This annex reproduces the Call of Carthage in full — the third of the three instruments of the Humanity Compact (see Table 14 and §11.6). Where the Carthage Charter (Annex N) sets out the principles and the Global Accountability Framework (Annex O) the operational obligations, the Call carries civic mobilisation and agenda-setting: an advisory instrument, without executive power or binding force. The text is reproduced as it stands.¶ 1

To make the effects of global decisions visible, foreseeable where possible, reasoned and contestable¶ 2

Consolidated draft V2 — places the Call in the continuity of “We the peoples of the United Nations”, specifies the four channels of participation and the guarantees of register integrity.¶ 3

“Responsibility begins with visibility, is built through statement of reasons, and is fulfilled when correction remains possible.”¶ 4

Note on the status of the Call

The Call of Carthage is the open-accession instrument of the Humanity Compact. It is neither the Carthage Charter, which sets the normative foundation, nor the Global Accountability Framework, which organises the obligations and procedures of participants. It constitutes a public invitation to recognise a problem, to support a working method, to open the evidence and to test solutions.¶ 5

Signing the Call does not mean approving the creation of seven organisations, accepting a tax, acknowledging a liability, relinquishing a national competence or acceding to a jurisdiction. The signature expresses support for the principles of accountability, prevention, participation, scientific rigour and gradual experimentation.¶ 6

The three instruments of the Humanity Compact

PROPOSED OFFICIAL TEXT¶ 7

Call of Carthage

Decisions have changed scale. Responsibility has not yet followed.¶ 8

A monetary policy, a technological standard, a digital infrastructure, a value chain, a trade decision or a climate crisis can produce effects far from the place where they are decided. These effects propagate across markets, States, firms, communities and generations. They sometimes alter the choices of those who took part neither in the initial decision nor in the definition of its mandate.¶ 9

The international system is not empty. It has institutions, data, expertise, standards, funding and settlement mechanisms. But these capacities often remain fragmented. An effect may be measured without being qualified, acknowledged without response, financed without identifiable responsibility, or handled without the affected persons being able to know the reasons, produce an independent counter-assessment and obtain a review.¶ 10

We reject two simplifications. The first consists in turning every external effect into a fault and every affected actor into a creditor. The second consists in holding that a decision complying with a domestic mandate exhausts every question of responsibility. A decision may be legitimate within its own framework and nevertheless produce effects that must be made visible, anticipated where reasonably possible, explained and discussed.¶ 11

We call for the construction of a global accountability that rests neither on an omniscient authority nor on the goodwill of decision-makers alone. It must be inscribed in functions, interfaces, evidence, limited mandates, stopping rules and avenues of redress.¶ 12

We place ourselves in the continuity of “We the peoples of the United Nations” and of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This Call creates no competing order: it stands under the Charter of the United Nations and extends, on the side of peoples, the lineage that runs from Monterrey and Addis Ababa to Sevilla — each generation adding the stratum that the previous one could not lay.¶ 13

We support the idea that an accountability architecture must be functionally complete, relationally explicit and procedurally sound: the necessary functions must be covered; every holder of power must answer before an identifiable forum; evidence, uncertainty, objections and rights must survive the passage from one link to the next.¶ 14

We also support a preventive accountability. Where a material risk of cascade is reasonably foreseeable and a window for action remains, information must be able to reach decision-makers, the parties concerned and preparedness mechanisms. The alert must neither govern in their place nor create an automatic consequence; it must compel examination, statement of reasons, preparation and learning.¶ 15

We recognise that the functions proposed by the Humanity Compact may be exercised by existing institutions, networks, protocols, new bodies or combinations of these forms. We do not make the number of institutions an objective. At equivalent guarantees, the lightest, most pluralist, most reversible solution, and the one least exposed to capture, must prevail.¶ 16

We ask that corpora, methods, models, assumptions, limits, errors and negative results be open to adversarial challenge. A global architecture becomes legitimate neither through the sheer scale of its ambition nor through the moral quality of its language. It becomes so when it agrees to account for its own power, to be compared with simpler alternatives, and to be corrected or abandoned if it does not produce the value announced.¶ 17

We invite States, international institutions, central banks, parliaments, cities, universities, researchers, firms, civil organisations and citizens to support a gradual programme: open the evidence; harmonise definitions; finance counter-assessment; organise alerts in experimental mode; conduct comparative pilots; obtain independent legal opinions; and publish the results.¶ 18

Finally, we call for dignity, non-discrimination, participation, sustainability, statement of reasons, data protection and redress to be placed back within the very structure of decisions that produce effects beyond their borders.¶ 19

We do not ask for adherence to a completed architecture.¶ 20

We call for responsibility to be made testable.¶ 21

The twelve commitments of the Call

1. Recognise displaced effects. Admit that territorially legitimate decisions may produce material effects on persons, economies or generations located outside their decision scope.¶ 22

2. Distinguish intention, effect and responsibility. Refuse to infer fault automatically from harm, or the absence of responsibility from compliance with a domestic mandate.¶ 23

3. Make evidence accessible. Publish or make auditable the data, assumptions, methods, models, uncertainties, versions and limits that ground important claims.¶ 24

4. Protect the adversarial process. Guarantee effective access to information, to participation, to counter-assessment and to redress, including for actors with low capacity.¶ 25

5. Prevent without governing by forecast. Organise the alert and the reasoned response where cascade risks are reasonably foreseeable, without transferring the decision to the producer of the scenario.¶ 26

6. Separate conflicting roles. Prevent a single entity from measuring, qualifying, pricing, collecting, financing and adjudicating without justified and verifiable firewalls.¶ 27

7. Preserve uncertainty at the interfaces. Transmit provenance, assumptions, objections, dissents and stopping conditions, and not merely a score or an amount.¶ 28

8. Refuse automaticity. Never turn a measurement, a rating or an alert into a financial, commercial or legal consequence without competence, evidence, proportionality and redress.¶ 29

9. Use AI under human authority. Allow artificial intelligence to assist analysis, never to receive originary authority over high-impact decisions.¶ 30

10. Compare before institutionalising. Test the existing process, light protocols, federated networks and integrated architectures on the same case files and indicators.¶ 31

11. Publish limits and negative results. Make refutability, independent evaluation and the right to simplify or to abandon into conditions of the project.¶ 32

12. Begin with consented pilots. Proceed through shared data, simulations, shadow prices, advisory mechanisms and reversible experiments before any binding effect.¶ 33

What the signature means

The four channels of participation

The Call is not only a signature: it opens four channels, whose thresholds, time limits and guarantees are detailed by the citizen participation guide and incorporated, where applicable, by the Global Accountability Framework (§6.3 of the present work).¶ 34

Integrity of the channels. One person, one signature; verification proportionate to the effect sought; detection and publication of automated or coordinated campaigns; transparency of the funding of collection campaigns; and thresholds of geographical and category diversity, so that agenda-setting is not captured by the most powerful mobilisation. The whole remains advisory, save express incorporation by the Global Accountability Framework.¶ 35

Who may accede, and in what form?

Categories of accession

Levels of commitment

Institutional accession form

Individual accession form

Governance of the Call and integrity of the register

The register of signatories must be public, versioned and auditable. Every institutional accession states the capacity of the signatory, the basis of competence, the level of commitment and any reservations.¶ 36

Personal data not necessary for publication are protected. Electronic addresses, identity documents and verification information are not published.¶ 37

No signatory may be presented as supporting an institution, a pricing, a consequence or an outcome that it has not expressly accepted.¶ 38

Withdrawal from the register is possible upon verified request. The withdrawal is dated and does not retroactively erase earlier public versions where their retention is necessary to documentary integrity, subject to applicable law.¶ 39

Where public expression exposes a signatory to serious risk, confidential support is possible: the public register then mentions only what has been expressly authorised, and the secretariat refrains from any disclosure that would expose the person or the organisation.¶ 40

The funding of the secretariat of the Call, conflicts of interest, verification criteria and the rules for moderating contributions are published.¶ 41

Roles of the secretariat of the Call

Public questions and answers

Does the Call demand the creation of a world government?¶ 42

No. It demands that the necessary functions be covered and accountable. They may be exercised by existing institutions, networks or protocols.¶ 43

Does signing mean accepting the 7+3?¶ 44

No. The 7+3 is a candidate instantiation. The signature supports the principles, the opening of the evidence and the comparative pilots.¶ 45

Does the Call create a debt of source countries towards affected countries?¶ 46

No. Incidence, causality, net loss, equity, solidarity and law must be established separately.¶ 47

Does the Call call into question the independence of central banks?¶ 48

No. It proposes that cross-border risks be capable of analysis and of receiving a reasoned response; it transfers neither the mandate nor the decision.¶ 49

Will artificial intelligence decide?¶ 50

No. It may assist analysis, never receive originary authority over an official alert, a financial consequence or a remedy.¶ 51

Does the Call compete with the United Nations?¶ 52

No. It places itself in the continuity of “We the peoples of the United Nations” and under the Charter of the United Nations; in the event of conflict, United Nations obligations prevail, as the Carthage Charter expressly provides in its Article 16.¶ 53

What does a qualified petition concretely trigger?¶ 54

The placing of a question on the agenda of an institution of the chain and the obligation of a reasoned response, published within a fixed time limit. Never a decision, a financial consequence or a presumption of fault.¶ 55

Why Carthage?¶ 56

Carthage symbolises an ancient crossroads between continents, exchanges, law, power and interdependence. The name confers no particular competence on any State or city.¶ 57

Is the project scientifically validated?¶ 58

Not as a whole. It contains a theory, provisional descriptive results, specified models, simulations and a programme of external validation.¶ 59

What is the first concrete action?¶ 60

Open the corpora, form independent teams, launch a comparative pilot and finance the counter-assessment of the affected parties.¶ 61

Proposed launch road map

Criteria for the success of the Call

The geographical and institutional diversity of the signatories, rather than their number alone.¶ 62

The proportion of signatories who contribute to a datum, a replication, a counter-assessment or a pilot.¶ 63

The publication of substantive objections and of responses, without suppression of dissents.¶ 64

The capacity to attract source and recipient actors, powerful and vulnerable.¶ 65

The transformation of symbolic support into pre-registered and evaluable programmes.¶ 66

The capacity of the movement to recognise that a proposal must be simplified or abandoned.¶ 67

Short version — one page

Decisions have changed scale. Responsibility has not yet followed.¶ 68

Public policies, financial flows, technologies, value chains and digital infrastructures produce effects beyond the borders and the generations that take part in their formation. The international system has many institutions, but still insufficiently connects measurement, qualification, prevention, consequence, financing and redress.¶ 69

The Call of Carthage invites the construction of a global accountability grounded in rights, evidence, prevention and contestation. It does not turn every harm into a fault, does not demand a world government and does not entrust the decision to artificial intelligence.¶ 70

We call for opening data and methods; distinguishing intention, incidence, causality, equity and law; protecting participation and counter-assessment; organising contestable alerts; separating conflicting roles; preserving uncertainty at the interfaces; comparing architectures; and beginning with consented, reversible and evaluated pilots.¶ 71

Signing the Call does not mean approving a tax, a court or seven new institutions. It means supporting a requirement: where a decision displaces its effects beyond its mandate, those effects must be capable of being made visible, reasoned, foreseeable where reasonably possible, and contestable.¶ 72

We do not ask for adherence to a completed architecture.¶ 73

We call for responsibility to be made testable.¶ 74

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

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