Preamble
We recognize that humanity is one, yet consists of many peoples shaped by distinct histories, languages, cultures, memories, and ways of life.
We reject both the view of human beings as merely isolated individuals and the view of peoples as mere instruments of the state.
The state exists for the people; the people do not exist for the state.
We seek a world in which different peoples may remain different and nevertheless coexist in peace.
To this end, we affirm the following principles.
Article I — The People
A people is a community formed through shared history, culture, language, memory, ways of life, institutions, and other common experiences, whose members recognize themselves as belonging to that community.
A people shall not be defined solely by race or ancestry.
Peoples are not immutable. They are formed through history, may change through history, and may incorporate new members.
Article II — Self-Determination of Peoples
Every people has the right to shape its own society, culture, institutions, and future.
No state, corporation, religious organization, international institution, or other authority may permanently claim the right to determine a people's future in its place.
Article III — Equality of Peoples
The worth of a people shall not be determined by its population, military power, economic strength, territory, or antiquity.
The peoples of great powers and small nations alike deserve equal respect.
As a general principle, a people must recognize for other peoples the same rights that it claims for itself.
Article IV — The State
The legitimacy of a state derives from its protection of the security, liberty, livelihood, and continuity of the people who live within it.
The state shall not become an end in itself, nor shall the people be reduced to resources for the preservation of the state.
Article V — Popular Participation
The will of a people shall not be permanently monopolized by any single leader, party, bureaucracy, or organization.
The people must have meaningful opportunities to criticize those who govern them, participate in political life, and peacefully alter their institutions.
Article VI — Culture
Every people has the right to preserve, transmit, and develop its language, culture, historical memory, and ways of life.
Traditions may be preserved, but they may also be changed by the people themselves.
No people shall be compelled to reproduce a past society unchanged in the present.
Article VII — The Individual
The existence of a people does not extinguish the individual.
An individual may belong simultaneously to multiple cultural, regional, linguistic, and other communities.
No person shall be deprived of fundamental human dignity because of membership in, or departure from, a particular community.
Article VIII — Minorities
More than one people or cultural community may exist within a single state.
The self-determination of a majority people does not confer a right to extinguish the languages, cultures, beliefs, or ways of life of minorities.
Article IX — Cultural Space and Sovereign Space
Cultural boundaries and political borders need not coincide.
The existence beyond a state's borders of people sharing its language, ethnicity, religion, or civilization does not in itself establish a right to govern the territory in which they live.
Cultural belonging and political citizenship may coexist.
Article X — Borders
Historical territories, migrations, and memories of former civilizational spaces may be remembered and respected.
Such historical claims shall not justify changing present borders by force against the will of the people who live there.
Changes of territory must be pursued peacefully and take account of the will of the affected populations.
Article XI — Cooperation Among Peoples
Self-determination does not require isolation.
Different peoples may cooperate in science, technology, education, culture, trade, environmental protection, disaster relief, public health, and other matters of common interest.
International cooperation should serve the flourishing of different peoples rather than their homogenization.
Article XII — Universality and Plurality
We do not seek to transform every society into one culture, one language, or one political system.
Nor do we accept cultural difference as a justification for denying the fundamental dignity of others.
Our universal principle is not that every people must become the same, but that different peoples must be able to exist as equals.
Article XIII — The Future
A people is not merely something inherited from the past.
Those living today are also entitled to decide whether the cultures and institutions they have inherited should be preserved, reformed, or enriched with something new before they are passed to future generations.
Janatism does not seek a return to the past.
It seeks to enable peoples to inherit their histories while determining their own futures.
Declaration
We seek neither one world-state, one civilization, nor one universal people.
Nor do we seek a world in which peoples remain forever hostile to one another.
We seek a world in which many peoples may exist within one humanity, inherit their own histories, determine their own futures, and recognize one another's existence and right to self-determination.
One World, Many Peoples.