Who Really Runs the World? The Chabad Investigation Part 5 of 9

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Part 5 — Are They Actually Trying to Put It Into Law?

Opening — Now We Follow the Word “Legislation”

At the end of Part 4, I told you there was one word I couldn’t ignore anymore.

Legislation.

That word changes this investigation because until now, almost everything we have uncovered could still be understood primarily as religious advocacy. Menachem Mendel Schneerson believed the Seven Noahide Laws represented universal commandments for humanity. American presidents publicly recognized them. Congress acknowledged them in Public Law 102-14. The Institute of Noahide Code carried that message into the international arena and eventually obtained General consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

All of that is documented.

But believing something should guide humanity is not the same thing as trying to make governments put it into law.

That is the line we are going to examine tonight.

The reason I cannot simply dismiss this question is that the Institute of Noahide Code used legislative language itself. Its official profile in the United Nations Civil Society Participation database says the Institute proposed promoting the codification into national legislation of UN resolutions involving the culture of peace, environmental ethics and social justice. It described recruiting parliamentarians from UN member states, providing model draft legislation, holding workshops and conferences and building alliances with religious, academic, media and business leaders. 

Those are not allegations made by someone attacking Chabad.

Those are the organization’s stated objectives.

And there is something extremely important about the wording that we need to understand before going any further. The Institute’s UN profile does not simply say, “We are going to make the Seven Noahide Laws the criminal law of every nation.” The legislative program described there focuses on United Nations resolutions concerning peace, environmental ethics and social justice. But within that same description, the Institute invokes the Noahide Code as a foundation for the universal ethics it is promoting. 

So what exactly are we looking at?

Are these Noahide Laws being repackaged as something called “global ethics”?

Are Noahide principles merely providing religious inspiration for otherwise secular legislation?

Are politicians being asked to enact the traditional Noahide Code itself?

Or are people taking ordinary legislation concerning peace, education and terrorism and calling it Noahide law because some of the people promoting it happen to believe in the Noahide Code?

Those are completely different possibilities.

And I don’t want to choose between them until we follow the documents.

Because this time, there are documents.

I found the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics, an organization whose stated mission includes bringing parliamentarians together to implement principles from UN resolutions through national legislation. Its own material says parliamentarians from UN member states should work to implement “global ethics” involving the culture of peace, environmental protection, social justice and the Sustainable Development Goals through national law. 

Then I found actual parliamentarians.

In July 2016, a high-level panel was held at United Nations Headquarters concerning the role of parliaments in building peaceful and inclusive societies and combating violent extremism. The program included legislators and former legislators from countries including Italy, Pakistan, Germany and Morocco. One of the panels was specifically devoted to national legislation implementing the culture of peace and combating violent extremism. Another concerned putting that legislation into action, and Rabbi Yakov David Cohen of the Institute of Noahide Code appeared among its participants. 

Then the trail moved outside the United Nations.

A written declaration published through the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe called for national legislation among Council of Europe and UN member states concerning mandatory education on the culture of peace and the Sustainable Development Goals, along with legislative measures against incitement to extremist violence and terrorism. The declaration explicitly referenced the initiative of the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics. But the document also contains an important limitation: it states that the declaration committed only the parliamentarians who signed it. 

That distinction matters.

Because now we’re getting close enough to actual government institutions that sloppy language could completely distort what happened.

A parliamentarian attending a conference is not parliament passing a law.

A parliamentarian signing a declaration is not a country adopting the Noahide Code.

A proposed model law is not enacted legislation.

And legislation inspired by someone’s religious worldview is not automatically religious law.

We are going to keep those distinctions intact throughout Part 5.

But neither are we going to pretend nothing happened.

There was an organized strategy aimed at parliamentarians. There were international conferences. There were discussions of national legislation. There were proposals involving model legislation. There were parliamentarians publicly supporting portions of the initiative. And there was an organization explicitly dedicated to the Noahide Code participating within that network.

So now we follow it.

I want to know who these parliamentarians were supposed to be. I want to know what the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics actually was. I want to know why the language shifted toward “global ethics.” I want to know whether model legislation actually existed. I want to know whether proposals reached real parliaments and, most importantly, whether I can find legislation that actually contains the traditional Noahide Code.

Because that is the test.

If the complete Noahide Code was being proposed as governmental law, we should look for the text.

If it wasn’t, we need to say that too.

Part 4 followed the Noahide mission into the United Nations.

Part 5 follows one word out of it.

Legislation.

Investigation 1 — Read Their Own Words

If we’re going to ask whether anyone connected to this Noahide mission was actually trying to move these ideas into law, then I don’t want to begin with somebody’s interpretation of what they were doing. I don’t want a critic telling me what Chabad supposedly intended. I don’t want a conspiracy website interpreting a photograph from the United Nations. I want to begin with the organizations involved and read what they said they wanted to accomplish.

The clearest place to start is the Institute of Noahide Code’s profile in the United Nations Civil Society Participation database. The Institute describes a proposed strategic alliance connected with the United Nations development agenda and says it wants the codification into national legislation of UN resolutions involving the culture of peace, environmental ethics and social justice. That wording is important. It doesn’t say simply that the Institute wants people to study these ideas. It specifically uses the language of national legislation. 

Then it tells us how.

The Institute says it recruits parliamentarians from United Nations member states who share the objective of implementing those resolutions through national legislation. It says it would provide model draft legislation, initiate workshops and conferences, and create alliances with religious leaders, media leaders, academics and business executives. Those other groups would then support the legislative effort by teaching, publicizing and putting into practice what the Institute calls “global ethics.” 

That is not vague language.

There is an identifiable strategy here.

First, find legislators. Then provide legislative language. Then create a wider network capable of supporting the legislation culturally, academically, religiously and publicly.

The Institute repeated essentially the same language on its own website. In material describing its UN and Washington activities, it again said it wanted parliamentarians from UN member states involved in implementing UN resolutions through national legislation and again referred to model draft legislation, conferences and alliances with leaders from other sectors. 

So I don’t think we can responsibly say anymore that legislation was merely a word somebody else attached to this movement.

They used the word themselves.

But now comes the distinction that may determine the entire outcome of Part 5.

What legislation?

Because when I read the Institute’s actual description carefully, I don’t see a document saying, “Here is a seven-part criminal statute establishing the Seven Noahide Laws, and every parliament should enact it exactly as written.” What I see is an organization describing national legislation involving the culture of peace, environmental ethics and social justice and connecting those objectives with something it calls global ethics. The Noahide Code appears in that larger philosophical framework, but that is not automatically the same thing as introducing the complete traditional Noahide Code as statutory law. 

That difference is enormous.

If a religious organization believes murder is forbidden by God and supports legislation against murder, that doesn’t make the murder statute religious law. If a Christian organization campaigns against human trafficking because Christianity teaches the dignity of human beings, the resulting anti-trafficking legislation doesn’t automatically become Christian law. Religious motivation and the legal content of a statute are two different things.

So we have to apply that same standard here.

The fact that Noahide advocates supported legislation doesn’t prove the legislation itself was Noahide law.

But there is another side to this that we cannot ignore.

The Institute didn’t separate its legislative ambitions completely from the Noahide Code either. In the same description where it discusses legislation and global ethics, it invokes the Noahide Code and presents it as a universal foundation. Its material argues that humanity needs a universally accepted ethical code to promote peace and democracy. 

Then we find the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics using strikingly similar language.

The Coalition says it was established to promote implementation of United Nations resolutions concerning a culture of peace. It describes bringing religious leaders, parliamentarians and academics together and specifically includes legislation among the fields through which those objectives would be pursued. Even more directly, the Coalition says its goal is to invite parliamentarians from UN member states to implement universal values involving peace, environmental protection, social justice and the Sustainable Development Goals through national legislation. 

Now we have two organizations describing an overlapping strategy.

Parliamentarians.

Global ethics.

United Nations resolutions.

National legislation.

That still doesn’t tell us whether the complete Noahide Code was ever presented to a legislature. We haven’t reached that question yet. But it does establish something we could not responsibly establish several episodes ago.

There was an organized effort to turn at least some of these stated ethical objectives into legislation.

That is no longer speculation.

The Institute said so.

The Inter-Parliamentary Coalition said so.

And the Institute went even further by describing model draft legislation as one of the mechanisms through which parliamentarians could accomplish it. 

So now I want the names.

Who were these parliamentarians?

Were they simply hypothetical lawmakers the Institute hoped someday to recruit, or did elected officials actually participate?

Were legislators from real national parliaments involved in these conferences?

Did they agree to introduce anything?

And if they did, what exactly were they being asked to introduce?

Because saying you want legislation is one thing.

Finding someone with the authority to introduce it is something else entirely.

Investigation 2 — Who Is Supposed to Introduce It?

Once I established that legislation was actually part of the stated strategy, the next question became much more practical. The Institute of Noahide Code cannot pass national legislation. A nongovernmental organization with ECOSOC consultative status does not suddenly acquire legislative authority, and the United Nations does not give an NGO the power to create laws inside sovereign countries. If the Institute wanted ideas translated into actual legislation, somebody already inside a country’s political system would have to carry them there. The Institute’s own material tells us who those people were supposed to be: parliamentarians.

That word appears directly in the Institute’s description of its strategy. It says the organization seeks parliamentarians from United Nations member states who share the goal of implementing certain principles through national legislation. It also describes providing model draft legislation, organizing workshops and conferences, and building relationships with religious leaders, academics, media figures and business leaders. In other words, the Institute wasn’t describing legislation as something that would somehow emerge automatically from the United Nations. It was describing a process in which lawmakers inside individual countries would become the mechanism for introducing it.

That distinction is important because it tells us how the strategy was supposed to work. The Institute could advocate for an idea. Religious leaders could teach it. Academics could discuss it. Conferences could promote it. Organizations could prepare legislative language. But eventually someone possessing actual legislative authority would have to take that idea into a parliament, congress or other legislative body. Without that step, model legislation remains nothing more than a proposal.

This is where parliamentarians become the bridge between advocacy and law.

And when I began following that bridge, I found that parliamentarians weren’t merely hypothetical participants in some future plan. Lawmakers and former lawmakers actually began appearing in events associated with this effort. Material surrounding a 2016 conference at United Nations Headquarters described participation involving political figures from several countries. The subject matter included the role of parliaments in building peaceful and inclusive societies, combating violent extremism and developing national legislation. Rabbi Yakov David Cohen of the Institute of Noahide Code also participated in the program.

But we need to keep our definitions straight.

A parliamentarian attending a conference doesn’t mean that parliament endorsed the conference. A legislator appearing on a panel doesn’t mean legislation was introduced. A politician agreeing with the general idea of peace or opposing violent extremism doesn’t mean that politician agreed to enact the Seven Noahide Laws. And even if an individual parliamentarian personally supported the Noahide Code, that wouldn’t automatically transform every piece of legislation that person supported into Noahide law.

Those distinctions are going to become increasingly important.

What matters at this stage is that the Institute’s stated strategy begins matching the structure we can actually observe. It said parliamentarians were necessary. Parliamentarians became involved. It said conferences would be part of the strategy. Conferences occurred. It said national legislation was an objective. National legislation became part of the discussion. That doesn’t prove the complete strategy succeeded, but it does show that the legislative language wasn’t simply theoretical.

Then the organizational structure became even more interesting.

If you wanted similar ideas considered in many countries, you wouldn’t necessarily try to create one international government capable of imposing them everywhere. There is a much simpler method. Find legislators inside existing governments, develop common principles, provide those legislators with proposed language, and encourage them to pursue legislation through the normal political processes of their own countries.

That appears to be the basic concept behind the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics.

The Coalition’s stated purpose centered on bringing parliamentarians together around what it described as universal values and global ethics. Its public material discusses peace, environmental protection, social justice and sustainable development, and it specifically describes implementing those principles through national legislation. That is important because now the legislative strategy has an institutional mechanism built specifically around lawmakers.

This also helps explain why “model draft legislation” matters so much.

Model legislation isn’t law. It is proposed language designed to be adapted or introduced by lawmakers. A parliamentarian could use the entire proposal, rewrite portions of it, combine it with existing legislation or reject it altogether. Even if similar model legislation were distributed internationally, every country would still have its own constitutional and legislative procedures before anything became law.

That gives us a very important test for the remainder of Part 5.

If parliamentarians were being asked to introduce the traditional Seven Noahide Laws themselves, I want to find that language. If they were being given legislation saying governments should enforce prohibitions against idolatry or blasphemy because those prohibitions are commandments within Noahide law, I want to see the text. If the Noahide Code was supposed to become statutory law, there should eventually be something concrete that we can examine.

But if what actually reached parliamentarians was legislation concerning peace education, environmental protection, social justice or violent extremism, then we have a different situation. Noahide theology may have helped motivate the people advocating those policies, but religious motivation and the legal content of legislation are not automatically the same thing.

We cannot decide which explanation is correct yet.

What we can establish is how the Institute said the process was supposed to move forward. It wasn’t waiting for the United Nations to impose something from above. It was looking toward lawmakers already operating inside sovereign governments.

Parliamentarians would become the carriers.

Model legislation would provide the mechanism.

National legislatures would provide the arena.

And eventually an organization appeared whose very name described exactly that kind of international political network.

The Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics.

Investigation 3 — Meet the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics

Once I knew parliamentarians were supposed to carry this strategy into national governments, I needed to understand the organization built around that idea. The name is the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics, or IPCGE. According to its own material, the Coalition was established to promote peace and reconciliation by encouraging implementation of United Nations resolutions dealing with a culture of peace. But when I read beyond the general language about peace, something much more specific appeared. The Coalition says it wants religious leaders, parliamentarians, academics and media leaders working together to implement those principles through areas that include education, communication and legislation. 

The Coalition describes itself as working in cooperation with national governments, but that doesn’t make it a governmental organization or an official body of the United Nations. That distinction matters immediately. The name “Inter-Parliamentary Coalition” can sound like an international parliament, but that isn’t what the evidence shows. What we are looking at is an organization attempting to assemble political and nonpolitical leaders around a common program. Its stated goal is to invite parliamentarians from UN member states to work toward incorporating what it calls universal values of “global ethics” into national legislation. 

Then I looked at the people associated with it, because this is where we can test whether “inter-parliamentary” was merely an impressive name. The Coalition’s leadership and advisory material has included Emil Constantinescu, the former president of Romania; Lord Stone of Blackheath from Britain’s House of Lords; former Italian member of the European Parliament Fiorello Provera; Swiss parliamentarian Alfred Heer; former Israeli Knesset member Nissim Zeev; former Turkish foreign minister Yasar Yakis; former UN Under-Secretary-General Giandomenico Picco; Christian and Muslim religious leaders; and rabbis. Britain’s parliamentary records independently confirm that Lord Stone publicly registered his role as an adviser to the IPCGE, giving us evidence outside the Coalition’s own website that at least one of those political relationships was real. 

That doesn’t mean every person appearing on an advisory board agreed with every objective of the Coalition, and it certainly doesn’t mean their governments did. Advisory boards can contain honorary members, occasional participants and people whose involvement varies considerably. But it does demonstrate that the Coalition wasn’t simply inventing the idea of political participation. People with genuine governmental and parliamentary backgrounds were associated with it.

Then we reach July 21, 2016.

The IPCGE participated in a high-level panel at United Nations Headquarters titled “The Role of Parliaments for Building Peaceful and Inclusive Societies and Combatting Violent Extremism.” The Coalition’s records identify UNESCO and the Permanent Mission of Italy to the United Nations among the co-organizers. Participants included representatives of the diplomatic community, the UN system, civil society and parliamentarians. The event therefore gives us something stronger than an organization merely claiming that someday it hoped to meet political leaders. It had entered a setting where those different sectors were actually being brought together. 

And what were they discussing?

The Coalition’s description says the IPCGE was promoting the alignment of national legislation with UN resolutions involving a culture of peace, environmental ethics and social justice. It said the panel was intended to encourage legislators from UN member states to initiate legislation in their respective parliaments. It specifically discussed mandatory education concerning a culture of peace and stronger measures addressing incitement to terrorism and violent extremism. 

Now we have to stop and notice what is missing.

The Coalition’s description of this event doesn’t say that parliamentarians were gathering to enact the Seven Noahide Laws. It doesn’t present prohibitions against idolatry or blasphemy as proposed criminal statutes. It talks about peace education, sustainable development, environmental protection, social justice and preventing violent extremism. If we called that entire program “Noahide legislation” simply because people connected with the Noahide movement participated, we would be moving beyond what these documents actually establish.

But there is still a connection we need to investigate.

The Institute of Noahide Code and the IPCGE were operating within overlapping territory. Both talked about parliamentarians. Both talked about national legislation. Both talked about global ethics. Both described cooperation among political, religious, academic and other leaders. And Rabbi Yakov David Cohen, whom we have already followed through the Institute of Noahide Code, participated in events associated with this broader network.

That makes the Coalition important without requiring us to turn it into something the evidence doesn’t show.

The Coalition wasn’t a secret world government. It couldn’t enact legislation by itself. It couldn’t order national parliaments to adopt its proposals, and the involvement of UNESCO officials or UN diplomats at an event doesn’t mean the United Nations endorsed everything every participating organization believed. Those are precisely the distinctions we have been making throughout this series.

What the IPCGE provided was something much more practical.

A network.

Instead of the Institute of Noahide Code having to approach every parliament in the world independently, an inter-parliamentary organization could bring lawmakers together around principles presented as universal ethics. Religious leaders could provide moral arguments. Academics could provide intellectual frameworks. International institutions could provide venues and policy context. Parliamentarians could then take whatever proposals they supported back into their own political systems.

That is a recognizable political strategy, not evidence of political control.

And this is where the wording becomes crucial.

Because the Coalition wasn’t calling its program “Noahide legislation.”

It was calling it “global ethics.”

Those two words appear repeatedly as the bridge between religion, international policy and national legislation. So before we follow the strategy any further, we need to understand why that language was being used and whether “global ethics” was simply another name for the Noahide Code or something considerably broader.

Because if we get that distinction wrong, everything that follows will be wrong too.

Investigation 4 — Why Did They Call It “Global Ethics”?

Once I found the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics, one phrase kept appearing over and over again. It wasn’t “Noahide law.” It wasn’t “Jewish law.” It wasn’t even primarily religious language. The phrase was “global ethics.” That immediately raised a question for me, because the Institute of Noahide Code was openly involved in this network, Rabbi Yakov David Cohen was participating in its events, and the Institute itself had connected the Noahide Code with its international mission. So why, when the conversation moved toward governments and legislation, did the language become “global ethics”?

The Coalition gives us its own definition. It describes global ethics as universal values involving a culture of peace, environmental protection, social justice and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Its stated objective is to encourage parliamentarians from UN member states to implement those values through national legislation. The Coalition also says religious leaders, parliamentarians and academics should search for common principles in religion, law and education and then work together to implement UN resolutions concerning a culture of peace. 

That definition is broader than the Seven Noahide Laws.

This is important because I don’t want to simply substitute one phrase for the other and tell you that “global ethics” secretly means “Noahide law.” The documents don’t support making them identical. The Coalition’s public program incorporates UN resolutions, environmental protection, social justice, sustainable development, education and opposition to violent extremism. Those subjects extend beyond the traditional seven categories of Noahide law.

But the Institute of Noahide Code makes the relationship between religion and global ethics considerably more interesting.

In its own description of the project, the Institute says religious leaders, academics, media leaders and business executives would support legislation by teaching and putting into practice the “global ethics” contained in United Nations resolutions. Then, within that same presentation, the Institute introduces the Noahide Code as a universal ethical foundation and argues that humanity needs a universally accepted code capable of bringing peace to countries and communities in conflict. 

So I think we need to visualize this as overlapping circles rather than identical words.

One circle contains the Noahide Code. Another contains ethical teachings from Christianity, Islam and other religious and cultural traditions. Another contains United Nations resolutions concerning peace, human rights, sustainable development and social justice. “Global ethics” appears to be the language being used to identify principles that advocates believed could be shared across those different circles.

And they actually said something very close to that.

In 2018, material published by the Institute described a joint initiative with the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics to mobilize cultural and religious ethics in support of UN development goals. The document says those development goals contain ethics inherent in many cultures and religions, particularly concerning social and environmental justice. The proposed strategy was to create a global steering committee of religious leaders and cultural representatives who could harness those ethical traditions in support of the international goals. 

That tells me why the word “global” matters.

If you are trying to assemble Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, secular politicians and representatives from dozens of countries around the same legislative table, presenting the project exclusively as one religion’s law would immediately narrow the coalition. “Global ethics” provides a broader framework under which participants from different traditions can identify principles they already share.

That doesn’t prove anyone was hiding anything.

In fact, the religious component was frequently quite visible. At a 2015 summit associated with the Coalition, Cohen explicitly discussed the Seven Laws of Noah and presented them as part of the ethical foundation underlying the gathering. The event also included Muslim and other religious representatives discussing values from their own traditions. So at least in that setting, Noahide ideas weren’t concealed behind secular terminology. They were presented alongside other religious and cultural ethical systems. 

Then look at what happened when the project moved toward legislation.

The language became much more specific and much more secular. The 2016 high-level panel focused on national legislation implementing a culture of peace and combating violent extremism. Parliamentarians from several countries participated. The legislative subjects included peace, education and measures addressing extremism. Cohen participated on a separate panel concerning religious leaders, educators and media helping put legislation into action. 

That distinction may be extremely important.

The religious leaders could provide ethical motivation.

The Coalition could identify shared values.

The parliamentarians could translate selected principles into legislation.

But the legislation itself could still be written in secular language.

We can see that more clearly in a 2019 written declaration within the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The declaration supported the IPCGE initiative and called for national legislation involving mandatory education for a culture of peace and the Sustainable Development Goals, along with legislative measures against incitement to extremist violence and terrorism. It didn’t call for governments to prohibit idolatry. It didn’t establish religious courts. It didn’t reproduce the traditional Seven Noahide Laws as a statutory code. 

That doesn’t end our investigation.

It actually sharpens it.

Because now I understand why simply searching legislation for the words “Noahide Laws” may not answer the question we’re asking. The people involved described a process in which religious and cultural ethics could inspire broader principles, those principles could be expressed as “global ethics,” and parliamentarians could then pursue legislation addressing specific secular objectives.

But we cannot reverse that logic and call every peace or anti-terrorism law “Noahide legislation.”

We need evidence connecting the specific proposal to the specific religious framework.

So when they called this “global ethics,” the evidence doesn’t support me telling you that those words were merely a secret code for Noahide law. What the documents show is a broader international framework intended to gather common ethical principles from religious, cultural and UN sources and move selected principles toward education, social action and legislation.

The Noahide Code was inside that conversation.

But it wasn’t the only thing inside it.

And now that we understand what they meant by “global ethics,” we can finally ask whether this remained an international discussion among religious leaders and politicians or whether the strategy started producing something concrete.

Because talking about legislation is one thing.

The next question is whether anyone actually started building it.

Investigation 5 — Did the Strategy Become Concrete?

Up to this point, we have established something important, but we still haven’t established legislation. The Institute of Noahide Code talked about recruiting parliamentarians. It talked about model draft legislation. The Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics talked about moving universal values into national law. Conferences were held and lawmakers participated. But organizations can hold conferences for decades without producing anything beyond speeches, photographs and declarations, so I wanted to know whether this strategy ever became concrete enough that we could actually watch it moving toward government.

The first thing I found was that the strategy became considerably more organized after the 2016 United Nations conference. The IPCGE describes a continuing series of meetings, declarations and parliamentary initiatives rather than a single event that disappeared afterward. Its records point to a 2018 Summit of Parliamentarians at the United Nations, followed in 2019 by meetings and declarations in Rome, New York and Paris. By September 2019, the Coalition was describing these events as stages in an effort to build an international network of parliamentarians capable of implementing a culture of peace and the Sustainable Development Goals through legislation. 

Then the trail moved into an actual national parliamentary setting.

In March 2019, a conference connected with the Coalition was held in the Italian Senate. An independent account from Romania’s Levant Institute says the event was organized in partnership with the IPCGE and with support from Italian Senator Lucio Malan. More importantly, the organization described the purpose of the gathering as promoting legislative initiatives in European Union and United Nations member states aimed at establishing mandatory education concerning a culture of peace. That still isn’t a law, but now we have moved from talking about parliamentarians to holding an event inside a parliament specifically concerned with legislative initiatives. 

Two months later, another meeting took place in Paris. The IPCGE described the May 2019 event as “Mobilizing Parliamentarians and Civic Leaders to Implement the Culture of Peace and SDG’s through Legislation.” Its published program said the organization was launching an initiative to create a global steering committee of parliamentarians, religious leaders, educators and cultural representatives. The purpose was to harness cultural and religious ethics in support of legislation and social action implementing the Sustainable Development Goals. 

Now we’re beginning to see the mechanism.

This wasn’t simply Rabbi Cohen telling people that humanity should follow the Seven Noahide Laws. The strategy was developing political infrastructure around particular policy objectives. Parliamentarians would participate. Religious and cultural leaders would provide ethical support. Educators would help develop curriculum. International conferences would build cooperation. Legislative initiatives would then be pursued within existing governmental institutions.

But the strongest evidence that the strategy became concrete appeared in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

In June 2019, members of that Assembly issued Written Declaration No. 691. The declaration specifically called upon the Assembly to support the initiative of the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics as a strategic partner. It then identified two concrete legislative objectives: national legislation requiring education concerning a culture of peace and the Sustainable Development Goals, and legislative measures intended to prevent incitement to extremist violence and terrorism. 

That is significantly more concrete than a conference discussion.

But once again, we have to read the fine print.

The Parliamentary Assembly itself placed an important statement directly on the document: the written declaration committed only the people who signed it. In other words, this wasn’t the Council of Europe adopting the IPCGE program as binding European law. It wasn’t legislation enacted across Europe. It was a declaration signed by individual parliamentarians calling for support of the initiative and advocating specific legislative objectives. 

That distinction protects us from turning evidence of political advocacy into evidence of governmental adoption.

Still, something had clearly happened.

The Institute originally described a strategy involving parliamentarians, model legislation, workshops and alliances. The IPCGE then organized parliamentarians and other leaders around similar objectives. Meetings occurred at the United Nations and in parliamentary settings. A declaration inside the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe explicitly referenced the IPCGE and called for national legislation. At that point, I don’t think we can describe the strategy as merely theoretical anymore.

It had become an organized legislative campaign.

And the Coalition kept pushing it.

By September 2019, another IPCGE high-level roundtable at United Nations Headquarters described its goal as developing a coalition involving parliamentarians from the Council of Europe, Pan-African Parliament, Eurasia and South America. The stated objective was legislation requiring education for a culture of peace at every educational level. The program included lawmakers and political representatives from Spain, Venezuela, Guatemala, Madagascar and Pakistan, followed by another panel devoted to putting legislation into action. 

There is something else here that I think is extremely important.

The concrete legislative proposal we can actually see is not the traditional Seven Noahide Laws.

It is education.

It is the culture of peace.

It is the Sustainable Development Goals.

It is legislation concerning incitement to extremist violence and terrorism.

That doesn’t erase the Noahide connection we documented earlier. The Institute of Noahide Code explicitly connected its international project with the Noahide Code, and it described model draft legislation as part of its strategy. But when I follow the trail into specific political documents, the language becomes secular and policy-oriented rather than a reproduction of traditional Noahide religious law.

That difference may become one of the most important findings of Part 5.

The strategy became concrete enough to reach parliamentary settings, declarations and identifiable legislative objectives. What we have not yet established is that a parliament was asked to enact the complete Noahide Code.

So now we need to follow these proposals one step further.

We know they reached parliamentarians.

The next question is whether they reached actual parliaments.

Investigation 6 — Did It Reach Actual Parliaments?

We have now reached the point where I wanted to get out of conference rooms and into actual political institutions. It is one thing for the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics to say it wants national legislation. It is another thing for parliamentarians to attend conferences at the United Nations. But if this strategy was really moving forward, I wanted to know whether it crossed the threshold into actual parliaments, where lawmakers could potentially do something with it.

The answer is yes, but with an important qualification. I found evidence that the initiative reached parliamentary institutions and individual legislators in several countries. I found meetings inside parliamentary buildings, declarations signed by parliamentarians and explicit appeals for lawmakers to pursue legislation. What I have not yet found at this point in our investigation is evidence that those parliaments enacted the traditional Seven Noahide Laws as national law. Those are two completely different findings, and we need to keep them separated.

One of the earliest examples listed in the Coalition’s own historical record takes us to Japan. The IPCGE says its board met with senior Japanese members of Parliament inside the Parliament of Japan in February 2015. Its history also records later meetings involving a French senator and, in September 2017, a high-level meeting in the Italian Senate concerning the role of parliamentarians in building peaceful and inclusive societies through a culture of peace and the Sustainable Development Goals. These records come primarily from the Coalition itself, so they establish what the IPCGE reports about its activities rather than independent proof that the respective parliaments formally endorsed its program. 

Then the strategy became considerably more specific. In May 2019, the IPCGE held a meeting in a French Senate setting hosted by Senator Samia Ghali. The title leaves little doubt about the objective: mobilizing parliamentarians and civic leaders to implement the culture of peace and the Sustainable Development Goals through legislation. The program said the goal was to develop a coalition of parliamentarians from the Council of Europe, Pan-African Parliament, Eurasia and South America and pursue mandatory education for a culture of peace from kindergarten through higher education. 

Notice what we have crossed at this point. We are no longer merely looking at religious leaders telling politicians that morality is important. We have an organization entering parliamentary environments and openly discussing how legislators could use national law to implement its policy objectives. That means the legislative strategy reached people and places capable of turning proposals into government action.

But again, reaching a parliament isn’t the same as winning a vote in that parliament. A conference held inside a parliamentary building doesn’t become an act of parliament. A senator hosting a meeting doesn’t mean the senate adopted the meeting’s proposals. Individual lawmakers regularly host organizations advocating policies that never become law, so we cannot use the building itself as evidence of legislative adoption.

Then I found something stronger because it exists inside an official parliamentary system.

In June 2019, members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe issued Written Declaration No. 691. The declaration called upon the Assembly to support the IPCGE initiative as a strategic partner and promoted national legislation in Council of Europe and United Nations member states for mandatory education concerning a culture of peace and the Sustainable Development Goals, together with legislative measures intended to prevent incitement to extremist violence and terrorism.

That is real parliamentary activity.

But even this document carries its own warning against exaggeration. The Parliamentary Assembly states that a written declaration commits only the members who signed it. It wasn’t a law enacted across Europe, and it wasn’t a binding decision requiring Council of Europe countries to adopt the IPCGE program. What we have is a group of parliamentarians using an official parliamentary mechanism to support the initiative and advocate legislation.

That is significant, but it isn’t sovereignty changing hands.

The Coalition subsequently pointed to that declaration when describing its September 2019 activities at United Nations Headquarters. Its material said the goal was to develop a wider coalition of parliamentarians from the Council of Europe, Pan-African Parliament, Eurasia and South America to implement a culture of peace through national legislation. The Coalition specifically highlighted mandatory peace education and measures against violent extremism. 

The pattern continued beyond 2019. The IPCGE’s own current historical material reports meetings with parliamentary figures in Turkey, another meeting in the Italian Senate in 2023 and a roundtable in the European Parliament in Brussels in 2025 concerning strategies to combat radicalism through education for tolerance and a culture of peace. Again, those are the Coalition’s descriptions of its activities, and participation or hosting does not establish parliamentary endorsement. But they show that the strategy of approaching lawmakers and parliamentary institutions continued rather than ending with the events we have been examining. 

So yes, it reached actual parliaments.

But what reached them?

That may be the most important question.

The concrete proposals I can document concern mandatory education for a culture of peace, implementation of Sustainable Development Goals and legislation addressing incitement to violent extremism and terrorism. I have not yet shown you a parliamentary document establishing the traditional Seven Noahide Laws as a criminal code. I have not shown you legislation outlawing idolatry because Noahide law prohibits idolatry. I have not shown you a parliament establishing Noahide courts or imposing the traditional religious penalties associated with historical interpretations of Noahide law.

If those documents exist, we need to find them.

Because this investigation has now crossed another threshold. We began with theology. We moved into presidential proclamations, congressional recognition, the United Nations, NGOs, parliamentarians and eventually parliamentary institutions themselves.

The legislative strategy was real enough to reach lawmakers.

The question now is what those lawmakers were supposed to do with it.

And that takes us directly to something the Institute mentioned from the beginning.

Model legislation.

Investigation 7 — How Would Model Legislation Spread?

When I first encountered the phrase “model draft legislation” in the Institute of Noahide Code’s United Nations profile, I assumed I was looking for a single document. I expected to find a proposed law that could be handed to parliamentarians in different countries and introduced with minor changes. But as I followed the strategy further, something more complicated emerged. The Institute certainly said it wanted to provide model draft legislation, but the later IPCGE material shows a broader system in which common principles, educational models and legislative objectives could be carried into individual countries and adapted to their national requirements. 

That distinction matters because model legislation doesn’t require an international government capable of imposing the same statute everywhere. In fact, the strategy described by the IPCGE depends upon sovereign national legislatures remaining responsible for their own laws. Parliamentarians are brought together around a common objective, frameworks are developed, and those lawmakers are encouraged to initiate legislation inside their respective parliaments. The 2016 IPCGE conference stated this directly when it described empowering legislators from UN member states to initiate legislation within their own countries. 

That gives us the first part of the mechanism.

Instead of one organization attempting to pass one worldwide law, lawmakers from different countries could carry similar principles home. Each parliamentarian would operate through the legislative system that already existed in that country. The resulting laws wouldn’t necessarily contain identical wording, and they wouldn’t necessarily even look related unless you traced them back to the common framework that inspired them.

Then, in 2019, I found something much more concrete.

At a conference held in the Italian Senate, participants produced what was called the Rome Agreement on Education for the Culture of Peace and Sustainable Development Goals. The agreement called for cooperation to create a model curriculum covering a culture of peace for all age levels. That model was intended to encourage and support national legislation in UN member states requiring education concerning a culture of peace and the Sustainable Development Goals. Importantly, the material said the outline would be available to parliamentarians, educators, religious leaders, media figures and decision-makers to use according to their countries’ specific national needs and requirements. 

Now we can actually see how the strategy was supposed to spread.

Create the model.

Distribute it internationally.

Give it to parliamentarians and other decision-makers.

Allow them to adapt it to national circumstances.

Then pursue legislation through individual governments.

And the distribution strategy wasn’t limited to Europe. The Rome Agreement described outreach to the European Union, African Union, ASEAN, Arab League, Council of Europe, parliamentarians, religious and educational organizations and relevant United Nations agencies. This wasn’t evidence that any of those institutions had adopted the proposal. It was a roadmap identifying the institutions and networks the organizers intended to approach. 

The strategy continued later that year at the United Nations. IPCGE described its September 2019 meeting as an effort to develop a coalition involving parliamentarians from the Council of Europe, Pan-African Parliament, Eurasia and South America. The stated objective remained legislation for mandatory education concerning a culture of peace. The organization also described creating a wider network of religious, educational, media and cultural leaders who would help support implementation within their respective professions and societies. 

That second network is important because legislation alone doesn’t implement itself.

A parliament might mandate an educational program, but educators would have to teach it. Academics might help develop it. Religious leaders might promote its ethical principles. Media organizations could publicize it. Civil society groups could advocate for it. The IPCGE called this a multi-track approach, where lawmakers create the legal framework while other sectors help carry it into society. 

The World Academy of Art and Science independently described its partnership with IPCGE in similar terms. It reported working on a model curriculum proposal intended to be made available to parliamentarians, government officials, educators and citizens internationally. That gives us evidence outside IPCGE’s own website that at least part of this model-and-distribution strategy involved partner organizations rather than existing only as promotional language on the Coalition’s website. 

But here is where this investigation needs another major guardrail.

The concrete model I can document is a model curriculum connected with proposed legislation for mandatory peace education. I have not yet found a model statute containing the complete Seven Noahide Laws.

That difference is enormous.

The Institute’s UN profile used the phrase “model draft legislation” while simultaneously connecting its international mission with the Noahide Code. But when I follow the later documentary trail into the IPCGE’s actual programs, the concrete model I can identify concerns education for a culture of peace and the Sustainable Development Goals. The Council of Europe declaration likewise called for mandatory peace education and measures against incitement to extremist violence and terrorism. 

So we cannot reverse-engineer the evidence and declare that every model curriculum or peace-education proposal was secretly the Seven Noahide Laws.

The documents don’t establish that.

What they do establish is a method that could spread policy internationally without requiring international law to be imposed from above. Develop common principles, organize parliamentarians, provide adaptable models, build supporting networks, and encourage lawmakers to pursue implementation within their respective national systems.

That is an organized international advocacy strategy.

It is not evidence of a world government.

And now we arrive at the question that may decide the entire direction of this investigation.

We have followed the word “legislation” from the Institute’s UN profile into parliamentarian networks, conferences, the Italian Senate, the Council of Europe, model curricula and proposals for national legislation. We can see how the strategy was supposed to spread, and we can identify some of the specific policies advocates wanted governments to pursue.

But the original allegation was considerably more serious than mandatory peace education.

So now I want the document that would settle this.

Where is the full Noahide statute?

Investigation 8 — Where Is the Full Noahide Statute?

We have now followed the word “legislation” a long way. We found it in the Institute of Noahide Code’s own description of its mission. We found parliamentarians, model draft legislation, international conferences, meetings in parliamentary settings and an official Council of Europe parliamentary declaration calling for national legislation. At this point, however, I needed to stop following descriptions of the strategy and look for the thing that would make the strongest version of the allegation demonstrable: the actual statute.

Where is the proposed law containing the Seven Noahide Laws?

That question matters because the Institute’s own UN profile unquestionably connects two ideas. It discusses codification into national legislation, parliamentarians and model draft legislation, while also identifying the Noahide Code as part of the ethical foundation behind its project. The Institute’s own website repeats essentially the same language. So there is no reason to pretend that legislation and the Noahide mission existed in completely separate worlds. The Institute itself placed them within the same overall project. 

But association isn’t enough.

If someone claims governments were being asked to enact the full traditional Noahide Code, I want to see a proposed statute containing it. I would expect language addressing the seven traditional categories: prohibitions involving idolatry, blasphemy, murder, sexual immorality, theft and eating flesh taken from a living animal, together with the requirement to establish courts or systems of justice. If governments were actually being asked to enforce that religious code, there should eventually be legislative language showing it.

I haven’t found that document in the material we have followed.

What I found when the strategy reached an identifiable parliamentary document was different. The 2019 written declaration in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe called for national legislation requiring education concerning a culture of peace and the Sustainable Development Goals. It also called for legislative measures intended to prevent incitement to extremist violence and terrorism. The document explicitly supported the initiative of the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics, but it did not reproduce the Seven Noahide Laws or propose a Noahide criminal code. 

That is a major finding because this is exactly where I expected the strongest evidence to appear.

If “global ethics” were simply another name placed over the complete Noahide legal system, an actual parliamentary document would have been an obvious place to look for the transition. Instead, the legislation described there concerns education, peace, sustainable development and violent extremism. The Parliamentary Assembly’s own documentation also confirms that an October 2019 meeting concerned mobilizing parliamentarians and civic leaders to implement a culture of peace and the Sustainable Development Goals through legislation. 

That doesn’t erase the Noahide connection.

Rabbi Yakov David Cohen and the Institute openly promoted the Noahide Code as a universal ethical foundation. The Institute discussed legislation and model drafts. It described recruiting parliamentarians. It even argued that humanity needed a universally accepted code. Those statements are real, and we shouldn’t minimize them simply because we haven’t located a complete Noahide statute. 

But we also cannot fill the missing space ourselves.

I cannot take a proposal for mandatory peace education and quietly insert a prohibition against idolatry into it. I cannot take legislation against incitement to terrorism and call it a blasphemy law unless the actual text establishes that connection. I cannot take the phrase “global ethics” and automatically translate it into “Seven Noahide Laws” every time it appears.

The evidence won’t allow me to do that.

This creates an important distinction between the goal and the mechanism. Cohen could believe that the Noahide Code provides humanity with the ultimate universal moral framework while simultaneously supporting secular legislation addressing individual principles that he believes are consistent with that framework. Those two things can exist together without the resulting legislation becoming the full Noahide Code.

And right now, that is what the documentary trail appears to show.

There was legislative ambition. There was an organized network. There were parliamentarians. There were parliamentary meetings. There were concrete policy proposals. There was even an official parliamentary declaration calling for legislation.

But I have not found the document that would allow me to say that a parliament was presented with the complete traditional Seven Noahide Laws as a statutory code.

That absence doesn’t prove nobody ever drafted such a document somewhere. It doesn’t prove nobody wanted one. It means something much narrower and much more important for this investigation: based on the documentary trail we have examined, I cannot show it to you.

And if I cannot show it to you, I am not going to tell you it exists.

That leaves us with a more difficult question than the conspiracy version of this story gives us.

What happens when people motivated by a religious ethical system advocate legislation written in secular terms?

Does the motivation determine what the law is, or does the actual text of the law determine what the law is?

That is where we have to go next, because religious motivation isn’t automatically religious law.

Investigation 9 — Religious Motivation Isn’t Automatically Religious Law

This is where I think we have to be extremely careful, because two things can be true at the same time. The Institute of Noahide Code can genuinely believe that the Seven Noahide Laws provide a universal moral foundation for humanity, and people connected with that organization can also advocate legislation. But that does not automatically mean every law they advocate becomes Noahide religious law. To determine that, we have to examine what the proposed law actually does.

The Institute makes its religious motivation remarkably clear. Its current description says its mission is rooted in the Seven Noahide Laws, which it considers an ethical foundation for humanity. In material describing its international strategy, the Institute connects the Noahide Code with its efforts involving peace, democracy, parliamentarians and legislation. There is therefore no reason to pretend the religious worldview isn’t present. It is openly present. 

But now consider what happens when that worldview enters the political process. The Institute described recruiting parliamentarians to implement United Nations resolutions concerning a culture of peace, environmental ethics and social justice through national legislation. It also described religious, media, academic and business leaders supporting those efforts by teaching and promoting what it called “global ethics.” The stated legislative object in that description was implementation of those UN resolutions, even while the Noahide Code appeared within the larger philosophical explanation. 

The IPCGE makes the distinction even clearer. It says the Coalition exists to encourage parliamentarians to implement universal values concerning peace, environmental protection, social justice and Sustainable Development Goals through national legislation. Elsewhere, it describes the role of religious leaders as contributing religious and cultural ethics to that broader project. That means religion can provide part of the moral reasoning behind a political objective without necessarily becoming the language or legal substance of the resulting statute. 

Think about how important that distinction is. A Christian legislator might oppose murder because he believes human beings were created in the image of God. A secular legislator might oppose murder because of human rights. A Jewish legislator might understand the prohibition through Torah. All three could vote for exactly the same homicide statute. Their motivations are different, but the resulting law doesn’t automatically become Christian law, secular law or Jewish law because of what motivated an individual legislator.

That same test has to be applied here.

The strongest concrete example we have found is the Rome Agreement developed around the 2019 meeting in the Italian Senate. It proposed creating a model curriculum that could encourage national legislation requiring education for a culture of peace and the Sustainable Development Goals. It addressed violent extremism, hate speech, antisemitism, racism, environmental protection and sustainable development. The model was supposed to be available to lawmakers and other leaders for adaptation to specific national requirements. 

The IPCGE also openly described the religious component behind this broader program. Its material says the Sustainable Development Goals contain ethics found within many cultures and religions and proposes harnessing those traditions to support legislation and social action. In another passage, the organization specifically presents the Seven Universal Laws of Noah as a means through which humanity can pursue unity and peace. That establishes a Noahide influence within the organization’s ethical thinking, but the same material simultaneously incorporates other religious and cultural traditions. 

So the question isn’t whether Noahide ideas influenced people involved in this movement. There is evidence that they did.

The question is whether that influence transformed the resulting legislation into Noahide law.

And those are not the same thing.

This distinction also protects us from making an enormous logical mistake. If Rabbi Cohen supports legislation against violent extremism because he believes the Noahide Code requires societies to establish justice, that doesn’t make every anti-terrorism statute a Noahide law. If he supports environmental protection because he connects Noahide ethics with responsibility toward creation, environmental legislation doesn’t suddenly become religious law. The connection becomes legally significant only when the religious requirement itself enters the substance of the law.

That is why Investigation 8 mattered so much.

If we had found a proposed statute saying governments must prohibit idolatry because the Noahide Code forbids idolatry, we would have something fundamentally different. If we found a proposed governmental prohibition against blaspheming God explicitly derived from Noahide law, that would deserve intense scrutiny concerning religious liberty. If we found legislation establishing Noahide religious courts or penalties because Noahide tradition required them, then we could examine that legislation directly.

But that isn’t what the documentary trail has shown us so far.

What we have documented is a religiously connected organization advocating a universal ethical framework, participating in an international coalition, recruiting parliamentarians and encouraging legislation concerning peace, education, social justice, environmental issues and violent extremism. The IPCGE itself describes its project as bringing religious, educational, political, media and cultural sectors together rather than establishing a single religious legal authority. 

That finding doesn’t make the investigation less interesting. It actually makes it more precise.

Because now we can separate three things that are very easy to collapse together: the religious philosophy motivating an advocate, the political objectives that advocate promotes, and the actual legal text a government is asked to enact. Until those three become the same thing in the documentary evidence, I am not going to tell you they are the same thing.

And now we can finally answer the question we started Part 5 with.

Are they actually trying to put the Noahide Laws into law?

Investigation 10 — So Are They Trying to Put It Into Law?

After following this trail from the Institute of Noahide Code to the United Nations, the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics, international conferences, parliamentarians, parliamentary meetings and proposals for national legislation, I think we can finally answer the question in the title of this episode. Are they actually trying to put it into law? The answer depends entirely on what we mean by “it,” because the evidence supports one answer very strongly and another answer it does not support.

If “it” means putting ideas that the Institute associates with its vision of global ethics into national legislation, then yes, that is explicitly documented. The Institute’s United Nations profile says it proposes promoting the codification into national legislation of UN resolutions concerning a culture of peace, environmental ethics and social justice. It says parliamentarians would be recruited, model draft legislation would be provided, workshops would be organized, and alliances would be built to support those efforts. That isn’t my interpretation of their objective. That is how the Institute described its own mission. 

The Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics says essentially the same thing. Its stated goal is to invite parliamentarians from UN member states to implement what it calls universal values of “global ethics” through national legislation. Its 2016 program went further, saying legislators should initiate legislation in their respective parliaments and describing mandatory education for a culture of peace and measures against incitement to terrorism and violent extremism. So by this point, the word “legislation” cannot reasonably be dismissed as symbolic language. 

We also found evidence that this moved beyond statements on organizational websites. In 2019, members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe signed an official written declaration calling for national legislation requiring education concerning a culture of peace and the Sustainable Development Goals, along with legislative measures intended to prevent incitement to extremist violence and terrorism. The declaration specifically identified the IPCGE as a strategic partner, although the Assembly clearly stated that the declaration committed only its signatories. 

So there was a real legislative strategy.

But now comes the qualification that changes the answer to the larger question.

If “it” means the complete traditional Seven Noahide Laws becoming governmental law, I have not found the evidence necessary to say yes.

The Institute unquestionably brings the Noahide Code into its explanation of the project. Its UN profile identifies the Noahide Code as a basis for international law according to its interpretation of Hugo Grotius and speaks about the need for a universally accepted code. IPCGE material likewise discusses the Seven Universal Laws of Noah while describing the contribution of religious and cultural ethics to its broader international program. The Noahide connection therefore isn’t something critics invented. It appears in material produced by the organizations themselves. 

But when we reach the concrete legislative proposals, something important happens.

The legislation I can actually identify concerns peace education, Sustainable Development Goals, environmental and social concerns, and measures addressing incitement to extremist violence and terrorism. The 2019 Rome Agreement, for example, proposed a model curriculum intended to encourage national legislation requiring education for a culture of peace and the SDGs. It was designed to be adapted according to individual countries’ needs. 

I haven’t found the equivalent document saying governments should enact the complete Seven Noahide Laws.

I haven’t found the model statute prohibiting idolatry.

I haven’t found the proposed national blasphemy provision derived explicitly from the Noahide prohibition against blaspheming God.

I haven’t found legislation establishing Noahide religious courts or imposing the traditional Noahide legal system upon Christians, Muslims, atheists or anyone else.

And after everything we have uncovered, that absence matters.

It doesn’t prove that no individual involved ever desired something broader. It doesn’t erase Rabbi Cohen’s religious goals or the Institute’s promotion of the Noahide Code. But it means I cannot take documented advocacy for peace education or anti-extremism legislation and tell you that I have proven governments were being asked to enact the complete Noahide Code.

That would go beyond the evidence.

So Part 5 leaves us with a much more precise conclusion than the rumor we started with. There was an organized international effort to turn “global ethics” into national legislation. The Institute of Noahide Code participated in that effort and openly connected its worldview to the Noahide Code. Parliamentarians were deliberately recruited, model approaches were discussed, international networks were created, and specific legislative objectives reached actual parliamentary institutions. Those facts are documented. 

But the evidence we have examined does not establish that those legislative initiatives were proposals to enact the entire traditional Seven Noahide Laws as governmental law.

That distinction isn’t a technicality. It may be the key to understanding what we are actually looking at.

Because perhaps the more interesting question isn’t whether somebody secretly slipped seven ancient religious laws into a parliament. The documentary trail points toward something more complicated: religious principles being presented as universal ethical principles, those principles being connected with existing United Nations objectives, and selected objectives then being translated into secular public-policy proposals.

And that takes us directly into Part 6.

Because if the Noahide Code and “global ethics” aren’t simply interchangeable terms, then we need to understand how these ideas became connected in the first place.

How did Noahide law become “global ethics”?

Ending — Then What Exactly Are “Global Ethics”?

We started this episode with one word: legislation. By the time we reached the end of the trail, we had found something real. The Institute of Noahide Code wasn’t merely discussing personal morality. Its own description talked about parliamentarians, model draft legislation, national legislation and alliances with religious, academic, media and business leaders. The Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics then carried similar objectives into international conferences and parliamentary settings. Whatever conclusions we eventually reach about this movement, the legislative ambition itself isn’t something we have to speculate about.

But the investigation also forced us to correct something that would have been very easy to get wrong. I went looking for evidence that the complete Seven Noahide Laws were being introduced into governments as a religious legal code. I expected that if this were happening, eventually I would find the proposed statute. I would find idolatry. I would find blasphemy. I would find the establishment of Noahide courts. I would find language showing governments being asked to enforce the traditional code.

I didn’t find it.

What I found instead was “global ethics.”

The organizations involved describe a much broader collection of ideas involving a culture of peace, education, environmental ethics, social justice, sustainable development and opposition to violent extremism. They also describe bringing parliamentarians, religious leaders, educators, academics, media representatives and civil society together around those objectives. In the concrete parliamentary material we examined, those were the things being proposed for legislation, not a seven-part Noahide criminal statute.

But that creates another question.

Where did “global ethics” come from?

Because the Noahide connection hasn’t disappeared. The Institute of Noahide Code openly promotes the Seven Noahide Laws as a universal ethical foundation. Rabbi Yakov David Cohen has publicly connected the Noahide Code with humanity’s need for universal principles. The Institute then participates in organizations and initiatives promoting something called “global ethics.” Those initiatives seek political implementation through education, public policy and national legislation.

That means I don’t want to make either of two mistakes.

I don’t want to tell you that “global ethics” is secretly just another name for the Seven Noahide Laws when the documents don’t establish that. But I also don’t want to separate the two so completely that we ignore the documented religious framework of some of the people and organizations promoting these ideas.

There is an overlap.

Now we need to understand it.

Maybe “global ethics” is simply a broad coalition language allowing Jews, Christians, Muslims, secular politicians and other groups to cooperate around principles they already share. Maybe Noahide advocates see those shared principles as partial expressions of something they believe was given to humanity much earlier. Maybe the relationship developed gradually as ancient religious concepts were translated into modern language about universal values, human responsibility and international cooperation.

Those possibilities are very different from claiming that somebody secretly renamed Noahide law to hide it.

And that distinction is exactly why we need another investigation.

Because Part 5 answered the question I set out to answer. Yes, there was a documented effort to turn certain principles described as “global ethics” into legislation. Yes, the Institute of Noahide Code participated in that effort. Yes, parliamentarians and actual parliamentary institutions became involved. But no, based on the documentary trail we examined, I cannot tell you that I found the complete Seven Noahide Laws being introduced as a governmental statutory code.

So now I want to move backward before we move forward.

I want to know when the language changed.

I want to know who began connecting Noahide principles with universal ethics. I want to know whether that language came from Chabad, the Institute, the United Nations, academics, interfaith movements or somewhere else entirely. Most importantly, I want to determine whether “global ethics” developed independently and later intersected with the Noahide movement, or whether Noahide advocates deliberately adopted that language as a way of presenting their religious principles to a much larger world.

Because those aren’t the same story.

And if we can establish that history, then we won’t have to guess what “global ethics” means when it appears in these documents.

We’ll be able to trace it.

That is where Part 6 begins.

How did Noahide law become “global ethics”?

Bibliography

• Council of Europe, Parliamentary Assembly. “Education for a Culture of Peace through Legislation.” Written Declaration No. 691, Doc. 14920, June 27, 2019. 
• Institute of Noahide Code. “Activities.” United Nations Civil Society Participation, Department of Economic and Social Affairs. The organization’s UN profile describes its proposed strategy involving national legislation, parliamentarians, model draft legislation, and “global ethics.” 
• Institute of Noahide Code. “Consultative Status.” United Nations Civil Society Participation, Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Records the Institute’s ECOSOC consultative status, including its reclassification to General consultative status in 2021. 
• Institute of Noahide Code. “General Profile.” United Nations Civil Society Participation, Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Organizational profile for the Institute of Noahide Code, Brooklyn, New York. 
• Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics. “Building Peace Starts on the Parliamentarians’ Benches as Much as on the Benches of Schools.” July 21, 2016. Records the high-level panel at United Nations Headquarters organized with UNESCO and the Permanent Mission of Italy to the United Nations. 
• Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics. “High Level Panel on the Role of Parliaments for Building Peaceful and Inclusive Societies and Combatting Violent Extremism.” United Nations Headquarters, New York, July 21, 2016. Describes the Coalition’s objective of aligning national legislation with UN resolutions concerning a culture of peace, environmental ethics, and social justice. 
• Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics. “History.” Records IPCGE meetings and initiatives involving parliamentarians, UNESCO, United Nations events, and parliamentary institutions. 
• Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics. “Leadership & Advisory Board.” Lists parliamentarians, former government officials, religious leaders, and former United Nations officials associated with the Coalition’s leadership and advisory structure. 
• Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics. “The Levant Initiative for World Peace: Italian Senate, Rome.” March 7, 2019. Includes the Rome Agreement on Education for the Culture of Peace and Sustainable Development Goals and its proposal for a model curriculum supporting national legislation in UN member states. 
• Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics. “Mobilizing Parliamentarians and Civic Leaders to Implement the Culture of Peace and SDGs.” Paris, May 2019. Describes efforts to build an international coalition of parliamentarians and civic leaders supporting implementation through legislation. 
• Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics. “Isaiah Declaration.” United Nations Headquarters, New York, May 7, 2019. Calls for cooperation among parliamentarians, religious and civic leaders, and the United Nations in promoting legislation and mandatory education concerning a culture of peace and the Sustainable Development Goals. 
• Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics. “High Level Roundtable at United Nations Headquarters.” September 4, 2019. Describes efforts to develop a coalition of parliamentarians from the Council of Europe, Pan-African Parliament, Eurasia, and South America supporting legislation for mandatory education concerning a culture of peace. 
• Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics. “Events.” Compilation of IPCGE conferences and initiatives, including its stated mission to promote alignment of national legislation with United Nations resolutions concerning a culture of peace, environmental ethics, and social justice. 
• Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics. “Brochure.” Organizational history highlighting meetings with parliamentarians and events in the Japanese Parliament, Italian Senate, Council of Europe, United Nations Headquarters, and European Parliament. 
• Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics. “Strategy for Joint Abraham Accords Model Curriculum for the Culture of Peace and SDGs.” Dubai, February 12–13, 2023. Describes a later continuation of the model-curriculum strategy intended for adaptation according to national circumstances. 
• Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics. “Stage III of the Dubai Education for the Culture of Peace Initiative.” United Nations, New York, June 2023. Describes the proposed model as a resource for parliamentarians, educators, religious leaders, media representatives, and decision-makers to adapt to national and regional needs. 

Endnotes

1. United Nations Civil Society Participation, “Institute of Noahide Code — Activities.” The Institute’s UN profile states that it seeks the codification into national legislation of UN resolutions concerning a culture of peace, environmental ethics, and social justice. The same profile describes recruiting parliamentarians, providing model draft legislation, organizing workshops and conferences, and building alliances to promote what it calls “global ethics.” 
2. The same UN profile explicitly places the Noahide Code within the Institute’s broader international program, describing it as a foundation for international law according to the Institute’s interpretation of Hugo Grotius and arguing for the need for a universally accepted code. This establishes the Institute’s stated Noahide framework, but it does not by itself establish that the complete traditional Noahide Code was proposed as statutory law. 
3. United Nations Civil Society Participation records that the Institute of Noahide Code received ECOSOC consultative status in 2011 and was reclassified to General consultative status in 2021. Consultative status provides an NGO with channels for participation in ECOSOC-related activities; it does not make the organization part of the United Nations or give it governmental authority. 
4. The Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Global Ethics describes its objective as promoting implementation of United Nations resolutions concerning peace through cooperation among political, religious, educational, and other social sectors. Its public description presents the Coalition as an advocacy network rather than a governmental or United Nations body. 
5. IPCGE’s published leadership and advisory material lists parliamentarians, former political officials, religious leaders, and former UN officials among people associated with its structure. Those affiliations demonstrate the kind of network the organization assembled, but an advisory or board position should not automatically be interpreted as endorsement by the person’s government or institution of every IPCGE objective. 
6. IPCGE records meetings and events involving parliamentary figures and parliamentary settings, including Japanese parliamentarians, the Italian Senate, the Council of Europe, and later the European Parliament. These records demonstrate political outreach and access, but a meeting inside a parliamentary institution is not equivalent to adoption of the organization’s proposals by that parliament. 
7. At a May 2019 meeting associated with a French Senate setting, IPCGE explicitly described its objective as mobilizing parliamentarians and civic leaders to implement a culture of peace and the Sustainable Development Goals “through legislation.” The organization said it sought to harness cultural and religious ethics to promote legislation and social action. 
8. IPCGE’s May 7, 2019 summit at United Nations Headquarters similarly described an initiative to bring together parliamentarians, religious leaders, educators, and cultural representatives. The stated purpose was to use cultural and religious ethics to support legislation and social action implementing UN Sustainable Development Goals. 
9. The March 7, 2019 conference held in the Italian Senate produced the Rome Agreement on Education for the Culture of Peace and Sustainable Development Goals. The agreement proposed development of a model curriculum intended to encourage and support national legislation in UN member states requiring education concerning a culture of peace and the SDGs. 
10. The Rome Agreement stated that the proposed model would be made available to parliamentarians, educators, media representatives, religious leaders, and other decision-makers for use according to individual national requirements. It also described intended outreach to institutions including the European Union, African Union, ASEAN, Arab League, Council of Europe, parliamentarians, religious and educational organizations, and relevant UN agencies. 
11. The Italian Senate event therefore provides a concrete example of how the model approach was supposed to work: establish common objectives, develop an adaptable framework, distribute it to political and civic leaders, and encourage national implementation. It does not establish that every institution identified for outreach subsequently adopted the proposal. 
12. At its September 5, 2019 United Nations Headquarters event, IPCGE described a strategy to harness religious and cultural ethics in support of legislation and social action. Its stated policy areas included peaceful and inclusive societies, social and environmental justice, and implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. 
13. An official Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe written declaration from June 2019 concerned a “culture of peace preventing violence and terrorism” and identifies its parliamentary signatories. Such a written declaration represents activity by the participating parliamentarians; it should not be treated as equivalent to binding legislation enacted throughout Council of Europe member states. 
14. The documentary trail therefore supports a distinction between political advocacy, parliamentary access, parliamentary declarations, proposed model frameworks, and enacted law. Evidence that parliamentarians participated in IPCGE initiatives establishes political engagement, while evidence of actual statutory adoption requires examination of the relevant legislative text and legislative history.
15. The concrete model located during this investigation concerns education for a culture of peace and the Sustainable Development Goals. The Rome Agreement specifically discusses mandatory education, combating violent extremism, hate speech, antisemitism and racism, environmental protection, and sustainable development. 
16. IPCGE continued developing this model approach after the period emphasized in Part 5. Its 2023 Dubai initiative proposed a joint Abraham Accords model curriculum based upon UN culture-of-peace resolutions, values shared among participating states, and the Sustainable Development Goals, with the resulting framework intended as a model adaptable to different countries. 
17. The subsequent 2023 stage of that initiative stated that the model would be presented at United Nations Headquarters as a best-practices framework available to parliamentarians, educators, media representatives, religious leaders, and decision-makers for use according to specific national and regional requirements. This later material reinforces the model-and-adaptation mechanism identified in the 2019 documents. 
18. Nothing in the concrete parliamentary and model-curriculum documents examined for Part 5 establishes a complete statutory enactment of the traditional Seven Noahide Laws. The evidence located demonstrates advocacy for legislation associated with “global ethics,” peace education, sustainable development, social and environmental objectives, and opposition to violent extremism, while the Institute separately and explicitly identifies the Noahide Code within its broader philosophical program. 
19. For that reason, Part 5 distinguishes religious motivation from legal substance. A religious organization or religiously motivated advocate may support secular legislation for reasons grounded in religious belief without the resulting statute automatically becoming religious law. Determining whether a proposal constitutes Noahide law therefore requires examination of the proposal’s actual legal provisions rather than inference solely from the religious beliefs of its advocates.
20. The central evidentiary conclusion of Part 5 is consequently narrow but significant: the Institute explicitly advocated national legislation and model draft legislation, and related IPCGE initiatives demonstrably carried legislative objectives into international and parliamentary settings. The sources examined here do not, however, establish that the complete traditional Seven Noahide Laws were presented to national parliaments as a unified statutory code. 

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