Reported
By any member, in any language, anonymously if preferred. Never routed through the person being reported.
Binding on every chapter
The charter
A global community is only as good as the line it refuses to move. This document is not a values statement — it is the condition of being an A-ROK chapter. It is identical in every country, it is not adjustable to local custom, and a chapter that breaks it ceases to be a chapter.
The articles
Seven articles
One category of person
A-ROK does not recognise caste, class, tribe, clan, lineage, surname, or any inherited or ascribed social ranking — anywhere, for any reason, including where such ranking is customary or socially expected in the country a chapter operates in. No chapter may use these to admit, refuse, seat, order, separate, rank, name, or assign roles to members. On the start line there is one category of person: someone who showed up.
Open regardless of who you are
No member may be excluded from a session, a division, a role, a result, or a leadership position on the basis of race, ethnicity, nationality, colour, religion or absence of religion, gender, gender identity, sexuality, disability, health status, age, body size, appearance, language, accent, literacy, education, occupation, marital or family status, immigration status, or income. This list is a floor, not a limit.
Cost is never the barrier
Weekly chapter sessions are free of charge, permanently, and no chapter may introduce a fee, a subscription, a required purchase, or a compulsory donation. Where an event is ticketed, at least 10% of places are funded and released through chapter leads without means testing. Youth entry is free at every event worldwide. Nobody is ever required to explain their financial situation to take part.
The standard bends for bodies, not for people
Adaptive divisions are full divisions. They are ranked, recorded, broadcast and awarded on equal terms with every other division, and appear on the same board rather than in an appendix. Scaling a movement to a body is a division, never a downgrade, and is never described as one.
Nobody finishes alone
No chapter session concludes until its final member has finished. This is a rule of the format, not a courtesy extended by the fast to the slow. A chapter that packs up around a member who is still moving has broken the charter.
Safety and dignity outrank the clock
Harassment, intimidation, slurs, unwanted physical contact, photography of a member who has asked not to be photographed, and pressure to continue when someone has said they are stopping are all charter breaches. A member's stated limit is final and requires no justification. No result is worth more than the person producing it.
No politics on the floor
A-ROK takes no position on the political, religious or national disputes that divide the countries it operates in, and chapters may not be used to advance them. Members from opposing sides of any such dispute train together on equal terms. The refusal to discriminate is not itself a political position — it is the condition of a community that intends to exist in every country at once.
Enforcement
A rule nobody enforces is a decoration
Most communities publish something like the articles above. What makes them real is what happens on the day one is broken — so that part is published too.
Reviewed
By a regional panel from outside the chapter involved, within 14 days. The reporter is told the outcome.
Acted on
Correction and re-training, removal of a lead, or removal of the chapter from A-ROK. Escalating, and applied evenly.
Published
Anonymised outcomes appear in the annual charter report, including the ones where we got it wrong.
14
Days to first response
31
Reporting languages
100%
Reviewed outside the chapter
Annual
Public charter report
Report a concern
If something happened, tell us
You do not need proof, certainty, or a name for what happened. You do not need to have been the person it happened to. Reports go to the regional panel — never to your chapter lead.
Hard questions
The ones worth asking
Then the charter wins, and the chapter follows it. A community that adjusts its floor country by country does not have a floor. We would rather have no chapter in a city than a chapter that seats people by lineage in it. Chapters have been removed on this basis, and the outcomes are in the annual report.
No. Article seven keeps national and party political disputes off the training floor so that people on opposing sides of them can train together. It does not apply to the charter itself. Refusing to rank people by caste or creed is not a political stance we are neutral on — it is the thing we exist to guarantee.
A regional panel of five members drawn from chapters other than the one involved, rotated annually, with no chapter holding more than one seat. Panels cannot rule on their own region's flagship chapter. Appeals go to the global charter office.
That is precisely why reports never route through chapter leads. A report naming a lead goes straight to the regional panel, and the lead is not told who filed it. Leads are volunteers, not owners — removing one does not close a chapter.
It usually is. The test is whether anything costs the organisation when it isn't true. Ours does: free sessions forever caps our revenue, funded places cost money at every event, regional pricing lowers ticket income in most of the world, and removing a chapter over the charter loses us members. Those are the receipts.
Hold us to it
The charter is yours
to enforce too
Every member can report a breach, in any language, anonymously. That is the whole mechanism — there isn't a more senior version of it.