Are killing-free societies possible? Evidence suggests that by working with committed organizations, leaders and individuals like you we can signficantly reduce and eventually eliminate human killing. This goal belongs to everyone, across political, religious or ethnic affiliations. The development of truly civil societies, and nothing less than the future of humankind, depends on our joint success.

Join us today:
  • Take our survey on how we can work together to end killing now,
  • Download a free book to gain additional insights into creating killing-free societies, or
  • Email us your ideas.

    • Human Cultural Rights: a Nonkilling checklist, by Francisco Gomes de Matos

    The checklist below is open-ended.You are asked to contribute to it by adding other items and justifying your additions. Note that INTER is parenthesized so as to indicate that both CULTURAL and INTERCULTURAL RIGHTS are being considered.

    The listing reflects no order of importance. The items are meant to be thought-provoking.

    We KILL a person,a group, a community CULTURALLY when we

    DEPRIVE him/her/them of his/her/their right to maintain/preserve/protect/support/promote/develop their culture

    DEPRIVE him/her/them of his/her/their right to express and share their cultural heritage

    DEPRIVE him/her/them of his/her/their right to participate in public cultural movements having such aims as Culture of Peace/Nonviolence/Nonkilling

    EXCLUDE him/her/them from participating in discussions about cultural policies within organizations,groups to which they belong

    MAKE FUN OF, RIDICULE, or HUMILIATE him/her/them because of his/her/their cultural ways of being and interacting,thus violating HUMAN CULTURAL DIGNITY

    COMMIT serious violations of Cultural Rights such as fobidding him/her/them to exercise his/her/their right to CREATE (forms of artistic expression, for instance, in different contexts and media )

    SPREAD/INDUCE ETHNOCENTRIC IDEAS IN THE LITERATURE ON CULTURE(s), especially in materials aimed at Cultural Awareness/Orientation

    CAUSE him/her/them to experience traumatic Intercultural schock when he/she/they experience a new culture (as exchange students, for example)

    Accordingly, let's do our best to live up to our CULTURAL and INTERCULTURAL RIGHTS and RESPONSIBILITIES. The latter dimension should be probed, too. Maybe a dual listcould result from this activity? As Human Cultural and Crosscultural Beings, let's humanize the ways we treat one another culturally and crossculturally. A nonkilling approach to this can help build this much-needed universal transformation.

    WHEN, in a negotiation (diplomatically, in business relations, etc),we impose ideas,views,solutions, rather than seek conciliatory, mutually-satisfying alternatives

    WHEN we deliberately disregard the integrated nature of LANGUAGE and CULTURE and treat the two systems as if separate, rather than interdependent

    Marti Ford, Dean of the School of Indigenous Education, Red River College, Winnipeg, Canada sent these two additions (September, 14, 2009):

    WHEN we remove them from their ancestral lands

    WHEN we force them to accept our culture

    Before closing, a special request:

    Please use the Checklist for preventive purposes, that is, for enhancing ways of sensitizing persons, groups, communities, organizations to the need to reduce, avoid such deplorable acts of killing culturally. By doing that, you will contribute to the movement aimed at implementing CULTURAL AND INTERCULTURAL RIGHTS NONKILLINGLY.



    Francisco Gomes de Matos is an applied peace linguist from Recife, Brazil; Co-author of the chapter "Toward a Nonkilling Linguistics" (Toward a Nonkilling Paradigm, Honolulu, 2009), basis of the Course "Nonkilling Linguistics" at Wikiversity's School of Nonkilling Studies. Professor Emeritus, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco; Co-founder and currently President of the Board, Associação Brasil América. He can be reached at fcgm@hotlink.com.br