Non-Compliance in the General Assembly






Non-Compliance in the General Assembly
How to Cheat International Legislation

Written by Maowi




(Europeia - August 22, 2019) - The General Assembly (GA) is the chamber of the World Assembly (WA) in which international legislation concerning an enormous range of topics is drafted, debated, and voted upon. Of late, one particular issue has been the subject of many heated discussions in the GA community: that of non-compliance with passed resolutions.

In essence, the GA is a roleplay institution: ambassadors from WA member nations are sent to review and feed back on proposals, which mostly takes place in the GA forum. However, a kind of out-of-character compliance occurs automatically upon the passage of a resolution through changes in your nation's statistics. Each GA resolution has both a category and either a strength or an area of effect. These determine which statistics are to be changed, and by how much, which appears to make the assumption that every member nation comes into immediate and effective compliance with a passed resolution. Of course, there has been many a grumble over the GA's interference with nations' carefully crafted statistics over the ages - and several players attempt to circumvent this effect by having different nations in the WA in in-character and out-of-character contexts, or else by creating nations specifically to represent their main nation in the WA. A notable example is seasoned GA author and General Secretariat member Bears Armed, who submitted his GA resolutions under his puppet nation Bears Armed Mission. These out-of-character statistics changes are therefore easy to ignore. So how about in-character compliance?

The GA does have a few passed resolutions regarding the enforcement of compliance. General Assembly Resolution (GAR) #390 establishes the Compliance Commission to investigate and establish evidence for claims of non-compliance; GAR #440 - the Administrative Compliance Act - imposes fines on non-compliant member nations in order to attempt to coerce them into compliance; and the recently passed
GAR #466 establishes judiciary procedures for the prosecution of non-compliant member nations or non-compliant entities within them. These resolutions would appear to suggest that in-character non-compliance is indeed possible, although the fines imposed under GAR #440 are to be "in no case less than what will reasonably coerce compliance from member states," and so rather hefty: a member nation would have to be firmly set against a GA resolution to be willing to submit to such sanctions.

Nevertheless, there are many who argue that in-character non-compliance should not be an option at all. The problem is that roleplaying outside of the GA forum rarely, if ever, takes account of the WA, and since being subject to fines is not something that is at all relevant to discussion inside the GA forum, it is a simple matter merely to ignore the measures imposed by the above resolutions and therefore roleplay the non-compliance without the punishment. Such casual disregard for passed resolutions serves only to detriment the state of the GA: in removing all incentives to seek the creation of better legislation and to repeal resolutions of sub-optimal quality, it encourages apathy. A far better approach is that of so-called "creative compliance" - that is, finding a way to follow the letter of the law in a manner that avoids following the clearly intended spirit of the law. This stimulates the drafting of legislation to be as tight and as free from exploitable loopholes as possible.

Earlier in this article, I referred to recent discussions (to put it mildly) about non-compliance among frequenters of the GA. The NationStates Core of Catholics (the Core) is a group of Catholic WA members - well-known members include United Massachusetts and Auralia, both GA authors - dedicated to the promotion of Catholic values in the WA. In a recent dispatch, they proclaimed their opposition to GAR #286, Reproductive Freedoms, encouraging their members and the wider GA community to refuse to comply with the said resolution. Their statement caused particular controversy in The North Pacific (TNP), where a prominent resident indicated support for the group (although he later withdrew his signature from the Core's resolution). On August 9, TNP's government issued a response condemning the Core's approach to Reproductive Freedoms and asserting their belief that a healthier way of engaging with the GA is through attempting to repeal unfavourable resolutions. The resolution in question has been proven to be notoriously difficult to repeal, having survived a huge number of regular repeal attempts; the GA appears to lean strongly pro-choice on the subject of abortion and Reproductive Freedoms offers little compromise on the topic. Another, somewhat humorous, response came from GA author Tinfect, who created an organisation she called the Member's Assembly for International Accountability, or The MAFIA. Signatories to The MAFIA's establishing document agree to comply with all passed GA resolutions, as well as to enforce sanctions against non-compliant member nations. Perhaps this is a step towards a GA in which roleplaying non-compliance can come with roleplaying consequences. But right now, the GA has nothing anywhere close to a roleplaying structure in which the effects of non-compliance cannot be easily ignored. No, for now, the only way to achieve an engaged, meaningful GA is through compliance with all passed resolutions, whether you like them or not.

 
This is super interesting - thank you!
 
Interregional affairs play too little of a role in our regional discourse, so I think this is a very vital article. And excellently delivered, as always from you.
 
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