2005 VIENNA DECLARATION OF THE GERMAN WORLD ALLIANCE
Vienna, September 29. 2005
The German World Alliance (GWA)/Deutsche Weltallianz (DWA) is an international network of national and regional organizations and individuals in various countries. The GWA/DWA was founded in Washington, D.C., USA on September 21, 2002 as a non-governmental organization (NGO) with the mission to give persons who identify their cultural, linguistic or ethnic heritage as German a common political voice vis-à-vis governments, the media and the public. In conformance with its goals, the GWA/DWA composed a declaration at the 2005 Annual Meeting in Vienna in which it calls on governments worldwide to:
1.) Speak out against any form of ethnic, social or economic discrimination against Germans in the spirit of the Human Rights Charter of the United Nations,
2.) Encourage the survival and maintenance of the German cultural heritage, in particular the German language in each of their own countries,
3.) Promote the interest in German culture and an objective portrayal of history in educational instruction through publications, films and other media,
4.) Advocate that the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia recognize that the German expellees and their descendants have a right to their homelands and restitution of their property confiscated in 1945, and that they create a legal framework for this,
5.) Make use of their bilateral communications, particularly with Slovenia, to support the constitutional recognition of the German minority there.
The Twentieth Century was a century of horrific Aethnic cleansings@ which tore open deep chasms between peoples. The participants of the GWA/DWA Annual Meeting 2005 hope that the Twenty-First Century will go down in history as a century of understanding.