Bodies Exposed

This part is the central file of the series. It concerns the fractures that no longer reach only bonds or institutions, but persons in their bodies, their safety and their future. It starts from the home — where the bond ought to protect first — then follows the lives that displacement, violence or domination expose, all the way to those treated as resources.

These subjects demand a double rigour: to soften nothing, and to dramatise nothing. The figures here are often contested or incomplete. Uncertainty about the number never removes the certainty of the injustice; it merely forbids speaking with more assurance than the data allow.

I. The weakened home

23. Divorce and the weakening of unions

United Nations data and international compilations show a historical rise in the proportion of divorced or separated adults across many regions of the world, with very different trajectories depending on the country, social norms and legal systems.¹

Divorce must not be presented as an automatic failure. In some situations, separation protects people, particularly where a relationship is marked by violence, coercive control or abuse. The question is therefore not to maintain every bond at any cost: it is to distinguish the bond that sustains from the bond that destroys.

The We-ism response. The Realism of Forgiveness demands neither forgetting nor forced reconciliation. It refuses to let resentment become the permanent principle of future decisions.

In the family as in politics, to repair does not mean to deny the rupture, but to prevent it from producing new victims indefinitely. True forgiveness presupposes truth, responsibility, the protection of vulnerable people and, where necessary, separation.

Justice must not be turned into vengeance. Forgiveness must never serve to avoid justice.

24. Inheritance disputes

Disputes over inheritance are among the frequent causes of lasting rupture between members of the same family. They turn a transmitted asset into a source of suspicion, of proceedings and of silence.

Inheritance touches on memory, on recognition and on each person's place in the family. A financial quarrel often becomes the visible language of an older wound: favouritism, invisibility, emotional debt or rivalry between generations.

The We-ism response. The Economy of Elevated Sharing recalls that an asset is not merely the absolute property of whoever manages to seize it. It also results from a collective history: the work of previous generations, family support, public infrastructure, education, social relationships.

This perspective does not abolish property rights; it reminds them of their responsibility. An inheritance can become an instrument of continuity, of protection and of transmission, instead of turning the dead into arbiters of a war among the living.

25. Jealousy as a social logic

Jealousy is extensively documented in social psychology. It is not confined to romantic relationships: it runs through families, organisations and communities. It appears when another's success is experienced as a diminution of one's own worth, and turns the other into a threat.

The We-ism response. We-ism distinguishes two forms of the relation to oneself: the hoarding « I », which perceives every success of another as a personal loss; and the contributing « I », which perceives another's success as a possible extension of the common good.

This distinction does not claim to abolish the emotion of comparison, but to change its orientation. The Companion does not deny their frustration or their envy: they examine them so that these do not become a policy of sabotage. In a healthy community, recognising another takes nothing from the one who recognises.

II. Lives displaced and exposed

26. Forced displacement

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees counted 117.8 million people forcibly displaced worldwide at the end of 2025 — a 3% decrease, the first in a decade, which nonetheless only brings the displaced population back to its 2023 level.²

Displaced people do not only lose a home. They often lose a network, a job, a school, an administrative status, a shared language and part of their territorial memory. Displacement also transforms the relation to time: urgency sometimes becomes a permanent condition, and life is lived in the conditional for years.

The We-ism response. The Knot of Destinies refuses to treat a displaced person as a mere recipient of compassion. They are a partner in a shared destiny.

This means supporting reception, but also recognising the skills, the dignity, the responsibilities and the agency of displaced people. Emergency aid must be connected to autonomy, to education, to the rebuilding of livelihoods and to participation in the decisions that concern them.

Reception must not be a charity that confines. It must be an alliance that makes a renewed capacity to contribute possible.

27. Femicide

According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, several thousand women are victims of femicide each year in the countries and territories of the region covered by its records.³ A majority of these crimes are committed by a current or former partner.

The intimate sphere, which ought to be the first place of safety, then becomes the site of an extreme domination. This is what makes this finding particularly demanding for a doctrine of the bond: the violence is exercised in the very name of the relationship.

The We-ism response. No doctrine of the bond can be credible if it does not protect people against violence exercised in the name of the bond.

The criteria of exemplarity for the Companion disqualify every form of abuse of power, violence, sexual domination, intimidation and control. This requirement begins in the home, before any public declaration.

We-ism never asks a victim to preserve a relationship that threatens her life. Reparation presupposes first of all protection, access to justice, support, economic autonomy and the accountability of the perpetrator.

28. Child marriage

According to UNICEF, millions of girls are married before the age of eighteen each year, and several hundred million women alive today were married during their childhood. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region with the highest prevalence.⁴

Child marriage is sometimes justified by protection, family honour, poverty or security. But a bond that deprives a child of her consent, her education, her health and her future cannot be presented as protection.

The We-ism response. Destiny sovereignty affirms that every person must be able to take part in building their own future. A child is neither a family resource, nor an economic guarantee, nor an instrument of alliance.

The family must protect the child's capacity to become the subject of her own existence. It cannot use family belonging to confiscate that future.

The protection of girls is therefore a doctrinal, legal, educational and economic priority. Tradition cannot be invoked to legitimise the reduction of a person to silence.

29. Racism, a persistent violence

Official statistics in several countries record thousands of racist incidents each year, with variable trends depending on the period and the categories used.⁵

Racism is not confined to insults or assaults. It also appears in institutional practices: discrimination in employment, access to housing, education, stop-and-search, healthcare, political representation. Those forms leave few statistical traces, and yet produce most of the damage.

The We-ism response. Racism directly contradicts destiny sovereignty. It refuses to recognise in the other a partner in the future, and turns difference into a ground for ranking.

Co-Genesis affirms on the contrary that peoples and groups learn to be born together. This does not mean erasing particular histories, but refusing to let a memory become a licence for domination.

Reparation requires naming the discriminations, measuring the gaps, correcting institutions and creating spaces where the groups concerned take part in the decisions that affect them.

III. Bodies turned into resources

30. Child labour in cobalt mines

Figures concerning child labour in the copper and cobalt mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo vary widely depending on the sources and the definitions used. Some older estimates cite several tens of thousands of children; others, more recent, have been contested or cover a broader set of hazardous work. Documented cases nonetheless exist, including among very young children.⁶

This methodological caution is indispensable. It must not be used to deny the phenomenon.

The We-ism response. The Economy of Elevated Sharing sets a simple rule: no wealth is to be built at the price of destroying those who produce it.

When a child extracts a resource used in global industrial chains without benefiting from protection, education or fair income, the economic relationship is entirely inverted: the community supplies the labour, others capture the value.

Vigilance must therefore cover the whole chain — extraction, processing, certification, purchase, consumption — and engage the responsibility of companies as well as of the authorities.

31. Sexual violence as a weapon of war

In eastern DRC, figures on sexual violence vary according to sources and methods. The United Nations Joint Human Rights Office documents verified victims, while health services report a far higher number of cases treated.⁷ These gaps reflect the difference between legal verification, medical reporting and unreported reality. They are not cumulative.

Sexual violence in wartime is not only an individual harm. It often aims to terrorise communities, destroy families, displace populations and control territories.

The We-ism response. Women's bodies can never become a territory of conquest.

The Knot of Destinies recalls that the security of a region cannot be proclaimed as long as the people living there are not protected in their physical integrity. Destiny sovereignty is empty if it does not guarantee the safety of bodies.

The response must combine prevention, protection, care, justice, support for survivors and the fight against impunity. No political reconciliation can take the place of recognition for the victims and accountability for the perpetrators.

32. Human trafficking and modern slavery

According to the International Labour Organization, the International Organization for Migration and Walk Free, several tens of millions of people were living in modern slavery at the last global count, a large share of them in forced labour.⁸ UNODC also records a rise in detected victims, notably among children.⁹

Trafficking reduces a person to a function: to work, produce, transport, sell, serve. It turns a human being into an instrument.

The We-ism response. Trafficking constitutes the most radical form of the hoarding of the other. The trafficker does not see a person, but a resource that is available, movable and exploitable.

The Heart/Conscience forbids this reduction. No person can be owned, bought or used as an object.

The fight against trafficking demands real international cooperation: protection of victims, prosecution of networks, corporate accountability, safer migration routes, action against demand, and access to legal pathways for mobility.

Ten findings, one same operation: a person ceases to be a subject and becomes a means.

This part is also the one where the doctrine is most tested. A thought of the bond that failed to protect against violence exercised in the name of the bond would be mere rhetoric. We-ism therefore sets an explicit limit: no bond is legitimate when it reduces a person. Family, tradition, community, nation — none of these belongings can serve as justification. The last part leaves the scale of persons for that of territories, and shows that the same rule operates there.