Philip Isly
Remembering Henry Philip Isely
By Eugenia Almand
Henry Philip Isely, 96 years-of-age, passed away in his sleep on 26 June 2012. In addition to having been a founder of the Graduate School of World Problems, from which the Institute on World Problems emerged, Philip, as he was known, is generally acknowledged as having been the primary author, along with four international lawyers, of the Constitution for the Federation of Earth, or Earth Constitution. It was Philip’s hope to disseminate the Earth Constitution widely, so that national governments and people around the world would be able to coordinate together and establish non-military world federation.
With the Earth Constitution, Philip Isely envisioned world citizens creating what he called a maximalist world federation which would be able to adequately address all world problems. Local and national legislative, judicial and enforcement operations would be supplemented, not supplanted, by a strong world federation.
Philip Isely, along with his first wife, Margaret Isely, stepped firmly into the Earth Federation movement in the late 1950’s, when they joined forces with Mary Georgia Lloyd and Thane Read to issue a Call to a new World Constitutional Convention. They began circulating this Call worldwide to prominent people, including to all heads of state. In 1958, they formed the World Committee for a World Constitutional Convention. This organization took root and grew around the world. Preparatory commissions met at various venues to plan the assemblies.
Philip and Margaret Isely, together with others, built the logistics for the World Constituent Assemblies where the constitutional drafts were deliberated and voted upon: Interlaken, Switzerland and Wolfach, (West) Germany in 1968; Innsbruck, Austria in 1977; Colombo, Sri Lanka in 1978-1979 and Troia, Portugal in 1991. At each of these constituent sessions, ideas for the world constitution were deliberated and put upon paper.
The Earth Constitution provides for a Provisional World Parliament to initiate the process of operative World Parliament. Philip Isely was a principal leader in the planning and orchestrating of the first five sessions of the Provisional World Parliament, meeting in countries around the world: 1982, in Brighton, England; 1985 in New Delhi, India; 1987 in Miami Beach, Florida; 1996 in Barcelona, Spain; and in the year 2000, in Qawra, Malta.
Today, the World Constitution and Parliament Association, which Philip Isely helped to found, continues to promote the Earth Constitution as the founded world constitutional document upon which to build world federation. The WCPA continues to promote sessions of the Provisional World Parliament, where the details of implementation of the Earth Constitution are debated and voted upon. The Thirteenth Session of the Provisional World Parliament is next scheduled to convene at the World Unity Convention Centre of City Montessori School, Lucknow, in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India, in mid-December of 2013. We are encouraging this upcoming session to function as a founding ratification convention, with official participation of over 25 states worldwide, as well as official participation of world citizens, building worldwide self-government as our founder Henry Philip Isely envisioned.