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6. The legal, normative and civic system

Chapitre 6 sur 15 · ≈ 15 min de lecture · 43 paragraphes · 12ᵉ des 40 sections de lecture · rechercher dans l’ouvrage

Three principal instruments, distinct in their addressees and in their effects — not a single text with superimposed functions.

The seven functions determine what the chain must accomplish; the three instruments determine according to which norms, through which obligations and with what legitimacy it does so: the Charter lays down the norms, the GAF the operational obligations, the Call the participatory legitimacy. Three principal instruments, distinct in their addressees and in their effects — not a single text with superimposed functions.¶ 1

6.1 Carthage Charter — the normative foundation

The Carthage Charter constitutes the legal foundation of the architecture: the text that parliaments ratify. Its fifteen operational commitments define the institutions, their negative mandates, the rights of affected persons and the amendment procedure. Two clauses do the essential part of the constitutional work. First, a primacy strictly confined to the internal order: as between adherents and over the architecture’s own organs, the Charter prevails; over the Charter of the United Nations, national constitutions or existing treaties, it claims nothing. Second, jurisdiction by consent (P3). The Charter may take three legal forms as adoption progresses — a founding charter for the institutions themselves, a model law for unilateral parliamentary incorporation, and, in time, a multilateral instrument; nothing in the design requires the third form to exist for the first two to work. The naming follows a deliberate tradition: development financing has marked its eras by cities — Monterrey, Doha, Addis Ababa, Sevilla — and this architecture claims that lineage: from Sevilla, which financed, to Carthage, which — if the design holds — counts, prices and adjudicates. Its full text is reproduced in Annex N.¶ 2

6.1.1 The Charter’s fifteen operational commitments

The Charter sets out not wishes but verifiable commitments. Fifteen make it up; each is anchored so far as possible in an existing instrument of international law and translates into an obligation opposable within the architecture.¶ 3

1. The human being at the centre. A system is judged by what it does to the human being, not by what it produces or yields (an echo of the Charter of the United Nations).¶ 4

2. Opposable measurement. What is not measured is not governed: human impacts — health, climate, labour, dignity, digital life — are measured, published and made opposable (Human Impacts Board).¶ 5

3. Dignity and non-discrimination. No person or population is treated as a means; no distinction based on origin, status or capacity governs the protection owed (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights).¶ 6

4. Participation. Affected persons have an effective voice — information, independent counter-assessment, agenda-setting — before the decision, and not after.¶ 7

5. Proportionality. Every consequence — rating, price, adjustment, exclusion — is proportionate to the established harm, and never to the result sought.¶ 8

6. Sustainability and future generations. The interests of the generations yet unborn, with neither seat nor vote, are represented in the measurement and in the decision.¶ 9

7. Data protection. All data relating to persons is processed under identifiable responsibility, minimisation and a right to erasure (data protection by design).¶ 10

8. Reasons. No consequence is produced without a statement of the reasons, the data, the assumptions, the uncertainty and the avenues of correction.¶ 11

9. Redress. For every harm, a forum: any affected person or entity may contest the path that led to the outcome, before an independent body (Humanity Court).¶ 12

10. Non-derogable floors. In times of crisis, a core of guarantees — dignity, non-discrimination, redress — may not be suspended, whatever the emergency.¶ 13

11. Reciprocity. No one is exempt, beginning with the founders and the institutions of the architecture, which accept being measured by the same yardstick.¶ 14

12. Countervailing power. No power without a countervailing power: no institution is above the Charter, none is judge in its own cause, and the Court guards the guardians.¶ 15

13. Competence by consent. The architecture binds only those who consent to it; its binding effect arises from incorporation or accession, not from a claim to universality (principle P3; Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties).¶ 16

14. Non-substitution and continuity. The Charter replaces neither the Charter of the United Nations, nor national constitutions, nor existing treaties: it continues and deepens them, without claiming any external primacy.¶ 17

15. Revision and living text. The Charter is revised under a published amendment procedure; every modification is traced, reasoned and subject to the same guarantees.¶ 18

6.2 Global Accountability Framework — the operational framework

The Global Accountability Framework is the operational framework agreement of the Global Accountability Chain: it binds only its parties and organises the mandates, interfaces, data, financing, controls and common procedures of the seven institutions (sections 5 to 7). It contains or annexes the interface contracts, the data and provenance protocol, the budgetary rules, the audit mechanisms, the crisis protocol, the suspension and correction procedures, the accession and withdrawal rules, the obligations that survive withdrawal, and the mutual recognition procedures. It is deliberately not an eighth institution: it exercises no power of its own, holds no budget, and remains legally subordinate to the Charter. Its constitutional doctrine is that of non-solidarity among institutions — the failure or capture of one must never contaminate the others — and it lives by a published revision cycle, through which interface defects (Section 13) are corrected in the open. Its full text is reproduced in Annex O.¶ 19

6.2.1 The solidarity clause

A cross-cutting commitment gives the whole its collective weight: the solidarity clause. It does not contradict the non-solidarity among institutions laid down above — which forbids one organ from bailing out or contaminating another — for it binds countries, not organs. The adhering countries undertake to recognise and to enforce jointly the consequential acts of the architecture — GIRA ratings, GFEA scales, Border Fairness Mechanism adjustments, judgments of the Court and certifications of the digital authority — and to condition access to their markets on certification. The effect is twofold. Faced with the most powerful actors, mutual recognition leaves arbitrage between jurisdictions no purchase: a platform or an issuer can no longer play countries off against one another, nor absorb the loss of the entire coalition’s market — the very logic of the 2021 coordinated global minimum (§13). Faced with the smallest States, it pools a bargaining strength that none holds alone: the small country borrows the weight of the collective. The clause operates by consent (P3) and takes its binding form in the Carthage Convention (§6.4); it adds no coercive power to any organ taken in isolation — it merely coordinates the enforcement of what each produces within its mandate. Conditioning access is, however, lawful only within limits: mutual recognition and access conditions are exercised on public, objective, proportionate and non-discriminatory criteria — failing which access control degenerates into abuse of a dominant position, as the Court of Justice of the European Union held in 2023 of the power of authorisation of FIFA and UEFA (Court of Justice of the European Union, 2023) —, the same anti-abuse discipline that the Border Fairness Mechanism already applies to trade law (§5.5).¶ 20

The scope of the clause is delimited so as to remain lawful and predictable. The acts covered are exhaustively enumerated — GIRA ratings, GFEA scales, Border Fairness Mechanism adjustments, judgments of the Court, certifications of the digital authority — to the exclusion of all others. Each act is recognised according to its status: final once it has become res judicata, provisional so long as an avenue of redress remains open. Recognition obeys published conditions: regulatory equivalence — a foreign regime producing an equivalent outcome is recognised without duplicative burden —, a review of proportionality and non-discrimination, and a public policy exception allowing an adherent to refuse, with reasons, the recognition of an act contrary to its fundamental constitutional principles. Any affected person or entity has an avenue of redress against a measure of recognition or of access conditioning. A country’s participation may be suspended and withdrawal is orderly, subject to notice, the obligations arising before withdrawal surviving it. In the event of conflict with applicable trade, tax, constitutional or competition law, the clause yields: it prevails neither over World Trade Organization commitments, nor over tax treaties, nor over national constitutions, and is interpreted in conformity with competition law (§5.5).¶ 21

6.3 Call of Carthage — the civic and participatory mechanism

The Call of Carthage is the citizens’ instrument — the architecture’s answer to its own most difficult question: institutions of such ambition cannot be legitimated by experts alone. The Call is a public text whose signature constitutes a consultative adoption — expressly not a legal ratification, which is a matter for parliaments — the signatures being collected under a strict data-protection delegation to an institutional data controller, and a living-text mechanism recording proposed amendments alongside adhesions. It is designed to be capable of expanding into a proposed permanent deliberative body — an Assembly of Peoples, of stratified random composition, endowed with a power of deliberation and of agenda-setting but expressly devoid of any executive or veto function: the mirror, on the demos side, of the Court’s “guard, do not command”.¶ 22

6.3.1 Four channels and the referral regime

The Call is not reducible to a symbolic signature. It is exercised through four graduated channels, from the most open to the most binding, each with a defined threshold, addressee and effect; and it is articulated with the architecture through a referral regime that clearly distinguishes four acts too often conflated.¶ 23

The four channels.¶ 24

Accession. Any person or organisation accedes to the Call by subscribing to its principles. Accession is declaratory: it creates no legal obligation, but constitutes the community from which the other channels proceed and makes publicly traceable who carries the demand.¶ 25

The qualified petition. A body of adherents reaching a published threshold — of representativeness as much as of number — places a question on the agenda of an institution of the chain. The petition carries no decision; it requires a reasoned response, published, within a set time limit.¶ 26

Deliberation by stratified sortition. On a question of general interest, a panel of citizens drawn by lot according to a representative stratification deliberates, with access to expertise and to counter-assessment, and then issues an opinion. The opinion does not bind, but the institution addressed must examine it and give reasons for any departure.¶ 27

Institutional transmission. The outputs of the Call — admissible petitions, panel opinions — are transmitted into the architecture through defined channels, with an obligation of consideration and of traceable response. This is the junction point between participatory legitimacy and operational obligation: the Call feeds the GAF without ever substituting for it.¶ 28

Four acts not to be conflated.¶ 29

The report is open to all, with no requirement of standing: anyone who brings a fact or an impact to the knowledge of an institution. It triggers an examination, not an obligation to act, and protects its author.¶ 30

The petition is a qualified collective act: it places a question on the agenda and requires a reasoned response, but refers the matter to no judge.¶ 31

The referral is the formal act that brings a case before the competent body — first and foremost the Court — and opens a procedure capable of producing an opposable decision.¶ 32

Standing is a precondition of referral: recognised for affected persons and entities whose interest is direct and current, it determines admissibility. To report is a right of all; to refer presupposes standing.¶ 33

This gradation — to report, to petition, to deliberate, to refer — avoids two symmetrical pitfalls: participation without effect, and referral without a filter. The citizen enters through the open door of the report; the case reaches the judge only through the guarded door of standing.¶ 34

6.4 Hierarchy, adoption and legal effects

Each instrument, too, has a lineage. The constitutive charters of international organisations exhibit organisational pacts binding institutions inter se — the very form of the GAF. The practice of staged consent in framework treaties and the transposition practice of model laws attest that the three legal forms of the Charter are already at work in everyday practice; the Pact for the Future illustrates a founding and multi-thematic text adopted by global consensus as recently as 2024 — executive, however, and ratified by no parliament, which is precisely the gap that the Charter fills. For the citizens’ instrument, the global civil consultation of the Earth Charter (2000) proved the possibility of a durable moral adoption without legal force; Iceland’s open constitutional drafting (2011) established the possibility of a fundamental text drafted by the crowd — and, by failing at the final parliamentary stage, taught this architecture to internalise ratification within the founding event itself; the practice of citizens’ assemblies, now expanding worldwide, up to the global assembly convened for COP30, reveals the citizens’ instrument maturing from consultation towards permanence — the trajectory that the Call proposes to complete.¶ 35

Télécharger ce tableau (CSV)

The three legal forms of the Charter must not be conflated. A founding charter binds the organisations constituted under it; a model law has no effect so long as it is not enacted, and thereafter operates through national law; a multilateral instrument binds only in accordance with the law of treaties and with its own provisions — entering into a treaty commitment remains, moreover, an exercise of sovereignty (PCIJ, Wimbledon, 1923), and the binding force of an instrument varies with its degree of legalisation, obligation, precision and delegation (Abbott et al., 2000). “Interparliamentary ratification” is therefore a matter of political coordination, unless and until each competent parliament acts under its own constitutional procedure.¶ 36

The present document therefore treats the “Carthage Charter” as a framework programme bringing together three coordinated but legally distinct texts: (i) a Constitutive Pact creating the organisations and the internal order of revision; (ii) a Carthage Model Law for fiscal, border, certification and permanence provisions at the national level; and (iii) a Carthage Convention for treaty obligations, jurisdiction, privileges, entry into force, reservations, amendment and withdrawal. The framework designation and the political lineage are preserved; the legal effects are not conflated.¶ 37

6.5 Conflict rules and amendment procedure

Around these three principal instruments orbit subordinate instruments, not counted within the “+3” and which are no more than modalities of its implementation: the constitutive statutes of each institution, the Carthage Model Law, the data and interoperability protocol, the mutual recognition and enforcement protocol, the solidarity protocol, the crisis protocol, the Court’s rules of procedure, the pilots protocol and the citizen participation guide. The hierarchy is strict: the Charter prevails over the GAF, which prevails over the subordinate instruments; the Call produces binding effect only to the extent that the GAF incorporates it. Conflicts are resolved accordingly — a demand of the Call contrary to the Charter is inadmissible; a modification of the GAF not transposed into the subordinate instruments remains without effect upon them — and every revision follows the amendment procedure of the Charter.¶ 38

Separating structure from parameters. An architecture whose revision is as demanding for a scale as for a mandate condemns itself to immobility. The Montreal Protocol resolved this by the adjustment of its Article 2, § 9: the schedules for substances already controlled are tightened by qualified decision, with automatic effect for all parties and without fresh ratification, whereas the addition of a substance requires a ratified amendment. The Charter of the United Nations provides the inverse demonstration: its Chapter XVIII subjects any amendment to ratification by two-thirds of the members, including the five permanent members of the Security Council — its substance has never been revised in eighty years. The rule adopted is therefore twofold. Mandates, competences, negative mandates and guarantees are modified only by amendment, under the procedure of the Carthage Charter. Quantitative parameters — GFEA scales, GIRA thresholds, BFM coefficients, taxonomies and case file formats — are revised by qualified decision with automatic effect, published and reasoned, accompanied by an objection period and by the option, for the party that refuses it, to withdraw from the module concerned without affecting the others.¶ 39

6.6 Collision rules between rights, principles and interests

Why a collision rule. Dignity, consent, non-discrimination, proportionality, equity, sustainability, participation and redress may converge in the abstract and come into conflict in a concrete decision. The architecture must not conceal these trade-offs in a technical formula or in an aggregated rating. Every substantial collision must be identified, reasoned and submitted to review.¶ 40

Limited hierarchy. The framework does not posit a universal hierarchy of all values. It nevertheless recognises four levels. First, non-derogable prohibitions and non-compensable exclusions prevail over the pursuit of efficiency. Second, minimum procedural guarantees — information, the opportunity to be heard, reasons, counter-assessment and redress — cannot be set aside by a simple cost-benefit calculation. Third, among the lawful solutions, the least restrictive and most reversible measure is preferred. Fourth, residual distributive trade-offs are made public, accompanied by dissenting opinions, and are revisable.¶ 41

Four recurrent collisions. The consent of a State does not automatically replace the participation of affected persons; conversely, direct participation does not confer on every group a general veto absent from the applicable law. The sovereign equality of States does not suffice to determine the representation of populations. Historical responsibility is not to be conflated with present contributive capacity. The protection of future generations cannot be invoked without documenting the immediate burdens imposed on present populations.¶ 42

Decision test. Every decision that arbitrates between principles must specify: the rights and interests in conflict; the persons on whom each option falls; the less restrictive solutions examined; the distribution of costs and benefits; the legal basis; the duration; the review mechanism; and the manner in which affected persons were able to produce a counter-assessment. The absence of such reasons bars passage to the next link.¶ 43

@incollection{yaiche_hc_chapitre_6,
  author    = {Yaïche, Nizar},
  title     = {6. The legal, normative and civic system},
  booktitle = {The Humanity Compact},
  year      = {2026},
  version   = {2.3},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.22746533},
  publisher = {Zenodo},
  url       = {https://humanitycompact.org/ouvrage/chapitre-6/}
}

Ouvrage de Nizar Yaïche, ancien ministre des Finances de la République tunisienne. Qui est l’auteur ?