The unfair composition of the Security Council is largely acknowledged. The principal defects are the anachronistic privileges of the five permanent members of the Council and the Council's insufficient representativeness.

The mandate entails a generous synthesis of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. The title requires the expert to be truly independent, keep an open mind, conduct his/her research objectively and without ideological prejudices, listen to all sides of an argument and seek the opinion of all stakeholders. The essence of an independent expert is not merely his/her expertise - which must be considered a given - but the faculty of thinking outside the box, while rigorously respecting the terms of reference laid down in the resolution establishing the mandate, and observing the code of conduct of rapporteurs.

The Independent Expert is persuaded that recognition of peace as a human right will promote a democratic and equitable international order and that national and international democratization will reduce conflict, since peoples want peace. It is Governments that stumble into war.

Representative democracy betrays the electorate when laws have no roots in the people but in oligarchies. Studies on the concept and modalities of direct democracy are therefore becoming more topical

Democracy is not the end product, but the means to the end, which is the enjoyment of human rights by all.

Bearing in mind that "the market" is not an invention of capitalism but that it has existed for thousands of years in many different societies, social justice logically requires that the profits resulting from the operation of markets and infrastructures created by society be equitably shared within societies and in a larger context within the human family.

Peace is not the silence of cemeteries, but the song of social justice.