Our Inspiration
Dr Jagdish Gandhi, an educationist and visionary who believed
that the World Judiciary is the Last Hope for Humanity’s Survival
Dr Jagdish Gandhi
(10 Nov 1934 – 22 Jan 2024)
Founder Convenor of the ICCJW & Founder, City Montessori School
The International Conferences of Chief Justices are the brainchild of Dr Jagdish Gandhi, Founder-Manager of City Montessori School (CMS), Lucknow. Dr Jagdish Gandhi was a visionary and far-sighted person who made incessant efforts to make the vision of One World into a reality. His courage and fighting spirit against all odds and impediments in the path of realisation of his vision, bound by sound reasoning, is exceptional.
He firmly believed that, along with imparting quality education to children, concrete steps should be taken to inculcate in young, impressionable minds the ideas of world unity, based on the concept of oneness of religion and oneness of humanity, to germinate in their hearts the feeling of love and understanding.
The World Today
Dr Jagdish Gandhi believed that the world’s problems were multiplying faster than the efforts to contain them. Global warming and climate change, nuclear proliferation, lawlessness and terrorism, civil and ethnic wars and the danger of a third world war were matters of global concern, besides poverty, hunger, disease, drugs, money laundering and many others. These problems required global solutions.
Rule of Law
Dr Gandhi understood that although international law was based on covenants, conventions, treaties and agreements among nations, but had no binding effect. It was, therefore, imperative to have a World Parliament, duly constituted by reasonably represented peoples and nations of the world, expressly granting it the sanction to enact universally applicable international law or world law, by whatever name called. It would only be then that such a law would be respected and have a binding effect. The rule of law throughout the world was of paramount importance in the era of globalisation.
Strengthening the UNO
In its nearly eight decades of existence, the UN has seen more people die in numerous wars around the world than died in both world wars combined. One was reminded of what Jan Tinbergen, the 1969 Nobel Laureate in Economics, said, “Mankind’s problems can no longer be solved by national governments. What is needed is a World Government. This can best be achieved by strengthening the United Nations system.”
In the present world scenario, it has become necessary to suitably amend the U.N. Charter to make it a democratic and duly representative world body, to make it a more effective body for preventing wars, resolving international disputes, countering terrorism, and conservation and protection of the environment, ensuring nuclear disarmament and evolving enforceable world law, to ensure world peace and prosperity and a safe future for humanity, especially for children.
Global governance and empowering the International Court of Justice
Convinced that perhaps the choice before all who inhabited this earth would be whether the unification of humankind would happen only after unimaginable horrors precipitated by humanity’s stubborn clinging to old patterns of behaviour, or would it happen by an act of consultative will, there came up the serious question of whether world unity and world peace would be possible by strengthening the United Nations system or by establishing a new world order that would initiate global efforts to conserve the environment, to outlaw and eliminate all weapons of mass destruction and address the problem of terrorism, thus safeguarding the future of humanity, especially of the world’s over 2.5 billion children and those yet-to-be born.
Besides, for the interpretation of International/world law and for adjudicating disputes and dispensing justice, it would be necessary to strengthen the International Court of Justice and to extend the jurisdiction thereof to all nations.
World Judiciary — Humanity’s Last Hope
On behalf of CMS students representing the world’s children, Dr Jagdish Gandhi wrote many letters to Dr Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General of the UN, requesting that the Children’s Right to a Safe Future be recognised and included in the UN’s Declaration of Rights of the Child. The former Secretary General chose to reply (vide letter dated 16th July 2001) to one of his letters (dated 29th June 2001) in which he had also congratulated him on his reappointment. However, no concrete step was taken in this direction.
Having appointed itself as the custodian of the welfare of the world’s children, born and yet-to-be born, CMS has decided to approach the Chief Justices of the World and solicit their support in favour of the children’s cause. The children’s last hope rests with the world judiciary, for Judges are the only authority who are trusted and respected by all, the masses as well as the classes. As the conscience keepers of mankind and as the custodians of the welfare of humanity’s silent masses, it is the moral duty of the world judiciary to come out of their Courts and to deliver a powerful public pronouncement on the urgent issue of global governance.
Since the minds of the judges are conditioned towards justice and also because they are capable of facilitating the establishment of a new world order as their views and pronouncements would act as a mandate from the people to advise world leaders on the vital issue of saving humanity and ensuring a safe future to world’s children and also those yet unborn, Dr Gandhi implored the World Judiciary to impress upon world leaders, the need to bring about ‘enforceable International (World) Law’ binding on all countries and peoples of the world either by reform of the UNO to create a body – a World Parliament for enacting such world law or by a new global governance structure. He also believed that it was also expedient to empower the International Court of Justice by extending its jurisdiction.
Dr Gandhi was certain that the voice of the united World Judiciary could not be ignored by other sections of the world, how-so-ever powerful. He was hopeful that the world judiciary would unite for the sake of humanity’s survival and for safe future for children and generations to come.
In line with this thought, under his visionary leadership, City Montessori School, Lucknow, has been organising the International Conferences of Chief Justices of the World every year since 2001. So far, 1520 Chief Justices, Judges, Heads of States, and other eminent dignitaries from India and abroad have participated in this global conference.