Petter Ölmunger: Getting back to basics - Human rights, democracy and a UN Parliamentary Assembly

In mid-November I attended the presentation on a UN Parliamentary Assembly at the Swedish forum for Human Rights in Göteborg. There, I was lucky enough to get five minutes to chat to Petter Ölmunger, the national co-ordinator of the Campaign for a UN Parliamentary Assembly in Sweden. We talked about his activities as co-ordinator, the basic idea behind the efforts to democratize the UN, and other things.

Andreas Gross: UN Parliamentary Assembly would be "globalization of the Strasbourg model"

In this second interview for the UNPA campaign’s blog I talk to Andreas Gross, a Member of Parliament from Switzerland and Chair of the Socialist Group in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, who recently participated in the "World Forum for Democracy" in Strasbourg which was organised by the Council of Europe.

After a stint as a professional journalist, Andreas obtained a degree in political science, and co-founded the "Workshop for Direct Democracy" in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1988. He was elected to the Municipal Council of the city of Zurich in 1986, and then to the National Council in 1991. He was one of the key persons who fought for Switzerland to join the United Nations and is an internationally recognized expert on direct democracy. In June 2003, he was appointed Special Rapporteur on the political situation in Chechnya for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which he first joined in January 1995. Andreas Gross is a long-time supporter of the Campaign for a UN Parliamentary Assembly and a member of its Parliamentary Advisory Group.

Among other things, we talked about his contribution to, and impressions from, the "World Forum for Democracy", the Arab Spring, the role of religion, and, of course, the question of a UN Parliamentary Assembly.

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Audio transcript of the interview

I’m talking today to Andreas Gross a Swiss politician and creative thinker on the subject of democracy, both global and local, welcome to the UNPA podcast, Andreas.

Hello!

Early this October, the Council of Europe convened a "World Forum for Democracy" in Strasbourg that brought together an interesting mix of officials, both public figures and politicians; some activists as well. You spoke at the panel about democracy and globalization, and one of the questions at that panel was whether today's institutions of democratic representation are equipped to meet the new challenges of globalization. Can you perhaps summarize that discussion for us? What changes do you think are necessary, in particular at the world level?

First of all it is impossible to summarize the debate because there were about 1200 people from about 60, 70 countries. The most important point was that the Eurocentric way of looking to democracy was broken though by all the representatives of the new Arab spring revolutionary countries, many Egyptians, Tunisian, Moroccans and others from the Northern shore of Africa. They really showed that we have to be open to other ways of organizing democracy; the main point was that democracy should be a universal value because it is the only way of protecting dignity – basing, grounding, so to say, the political order on the dignity of the human being; but how you do it, that might be very different and also the relation to religion might be different and this was in fact the biggest achievement of this forum, so to say.

My personal contribution to a workshop of three hours was that democracy is in a crisis because it cannot realize it’s promises anymore with today’s institutions and that we need to trans-nationalize democracy in the sense that first you need a real European democracy and that means basing the European Union on a citizens-based constitution and a double-chambered parliament and direct democratic elements where citizens are also able to get involved between the elections. I also mentioned that we should organize on a world regional level in this way - also Latin-America, Asia, and Africa; and as representatives of those who represent the continent, so to say, that would be a way of organizing a Parliamentary Assembly of the United Nations. This is an idea which is quite familiar to the Council of Europe because the Council of Europe has a Parliamentary Assembly. Many people say that if the Council of Europe would not have neither the court nor the parliamentary assembly, that they would not exist anymore, because – only the ministers, the ambassadors – they would not make the organization alive and this is exactly what we have in the UN because the UN is only a diplomatic governmental organization without any parliament, not to mention citizens representation, and that’s why this has to be done in the next 20 years.

So, I guess, from your perspective the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe had a critical role to play at the European level and I guess you think that a similar assembly at the UN level could also support democratization?

We have to distinguish, at the European level, between the European Union, which is really a transnational or supranational organization where you have Brussels and Strasbourg as law-making institutions, and the Council of Europe which is only an intergovernmental organization - but with 47 states, the EU until now has only 27 states - but it has a Parliamentary Assembly and the Parliamentary Assembly is the engine of the Council of Europe and in this way, for the European Parliamentarians in the Parliamentary Assembly who are all national MPs - for them it is not so difficult to understand why we need a UN Parliamentary Assembly, that was the point I wanted to make: It is a kind of globalization of the Strasbourg model.

There is another dimension additionally also because the Council of Europe’s dual point is, as I said, the court based on the European Convention on Human Rights and that was another idea I also mentioned: a way to globalize democracy is that we should think about the global convention of human rights and then with a notion of human rights which integrates culture, health and safe environment rights and that every citizen, every human being all over the world, has some basic rights which are protected by a court, so to say, and this could be an element added to the UN, as well as the UNPA has to be added to the UN, which is today only an intergovernmental body unable to really live up to the expectations many people have all over the world.

At the forum religion and the discussion of religion came to the fore and I guess this is because EU politicians are for the most part very secular oriented whereas many of the actors in the Arab spring are explicitly religious. So this is an interesting dichotomy, right, this is an interesting tension. How’d you think we resolve that at a global level?

This is a difficult, a very difficult question and I’m not yet a specialist, the discussion has just started, but we should not make, we should not underestimate, so to say, the sensibility of these people for where religion has another importance in their daily lives, and which is very important, when you come out of a dictatorship where the dictator did not allow you to live up to your religious identity and then you make a revolution and get over this dictator then you want to live up for heaven's sake what was never allowed 30 years ago and this we have to understand.

This does not mean that you base your state on religion but you upgrade, so to say, the religion – when you compare it with our reality where religion is much, much, more or less privatized – but when you look carefully, you see that the state is not based on religion but it has an absolutely biased relation to the Christian religion where the Christians get much tax payer's money, also the churches and non-Christians churches do not get tax payers money. We also have a bias there which is hidden, so to say, by the secular discourse, that’s why we have to be a little bit more self-critical and on the other hand we have to be a little bit more open to those who have another relation, a more intense relation, and want to show this intense relation. Of course, the question is how they will treat other religions. In Tunisia, for instance, where 98% of the people are Muslims, nevertheless, how they respect the Jews and the Christians, which might be a small minority, but they still exist, so that will be a good debate for the future, nobody has already made his case, so to say, and we have to be a little bit more open and less aggressive. In the French public sphere you have always the term Islamistic for people who have the same relation to Islam that many Catholics in Germany have to Catholicism but they don’t use adjectives which are close to violence and fundamentalistic people and there you see how the language is already important not to establish a wrong view of the problem.

That was a genuinely interesting answer and perspective on that very difficult subject as you say. Three years ago you presented a report on UN reform to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Your report and a resolution later adopted by the assembly supported the creation of a "parliamentary element in the structure of the UN General Assembly". At the time you pointed out that many governments are still reluctant to embrace such a proposal. Why do think is this the case?

That’s a difficult question because I don’t really know all the governments enough. You know, one of the points I also made in this report was that when the 47 countries of the Council of Europe would really work together, they would have the majority in the Security Council because it is not only the Brits and the French, but also the Russians are members - but they never think about doing this because the Russians see themselves as a superpower equal to the United States - and the French and the Brits, they share their veto power privileges in the Security Council and do not want to share this power with other Europeans who do not belong to the permanent members of the Security Council. So this shows that the togetherness, the commonness, of the Council of Europe is only limited to some, especially human rights elements - they don’t understand themselves as a common global actor, so to say. That’s what we have to push to change and I think today I have the feeling that the need to globalize democracy - and that we could build on the experience of how the CoE europeanized, so to say, the democracy in Europe - is even more familiar than three years ago when I made the last report, that is why I’m thinking about making a new motion which tries to do what I mentioned before as a medium step, so to say: encourage and look what happens in Latin-America or in Africa when it comes to the world regional transnational parliamentary organizations parallel to the Council of Europe and then taking these world regional or continental parliamentary structures as the base for the UN Parliamentary Assembly. And I also have the feeling that those who are in the Inter-Parliamentary Union and see the IPU as the only parliamentary partner of the UN – and that’s why three years ago we had a lot of problems when they tried to water down a little bit my resolution – these people are not so present anymore and I think there is more openness to a parallel, parliamentary building, not as a competition with the IPU but as a 2^nd way of doing it with the IPU.

I've got one last question for you Andreas and that has to do with the work you've done on direct democracy. I think you've kind of answered this question but you might want to expand on that. Isn't there something of an ideological clash between direct democracy and the kind of more distant representative democracy envisaged in a UN Parliamentary Assembly? Or at least that was a thought I’d had seeing some of the work you’d done before. How do you reconcile that clash, or is there even a clash?

I don’t think so, I don’t think that it’s a clash, because when you really take direct democracy and parliamentary democracy seriously or immediately, that means that we envisage law-making bodies. That means in the nation state you have a parliament and you have to share the power with the citizens in a way that also between the elections to the parliament the citizens have something to say - not in plebiscite but in referendums where he can organize or provoke any decision on any law or any constitutional change and this you can also think about constituting such a structure or such a politic on the European level but when it comes to the continental, other continental level, where the integration process is not yet as far as the on the European level with the EU or when you go to the global level, then the Parliamentary Assembly of the UN has not a direct law-making function, but it brings the voice of the people as an additional element to the governmental discourse. Because, when you observe diplomats how they discuss and when you observe parliamentarians and how they discuss there is a huge difference in the openness and the directness and in the way parliamentarians voice problems in the interests of the people even when they don’t have the power directly to make a law. In this sense I would not see any contradiction or any tension between direct democracy and indirect democracy, parliamentary democracy, when it comes to the global level. Because, perhaps in 100 years you could also envisage global referendums but this is not for our generation to envisage. It would be already a huge progress when we could establish parliamentarians on the global, on the UN level, as partners of the diplomats and kill the hegemony – or you can even say the monopole of the diplomats or the governments – when it comes to the UN. We have to strengthen the UN also by increasing the legitimacy and that’s the reason why we need to bring parliamentarians in, as well as transforming the structures that they represent really the world, and not only those who won the second world war 70 years ago.

Yeah, absolutely agree! OK, Andreas thank you very much, that’s all I had.

Thank you, all the best, thank you bye, bye!

Thanks, bye!

MEP Jo Leinen explains why we urgently need a UN Parliamentary Assembly

In this first interview for the UNPA campaign's new blog I talk to Jo Leinen from Germany who has been a Member of the European Parliament since 1999 and who acts as Co-Chair of the UNPA campaign's Parliamentary Advisory Group.

Among other things, Jo Leinen has served as President of the Union of European Federalists and he is now President of the European Movement International. From 2004 to 2009 Jo Leinen was chair of the European Parliament's Committee on Constitutional Affairs and from 2009 to January 2012 of the Committee on the Environment and Consumer Safety.

I have asked him why a UN Parliamentary Assembly is important, whether there are lessons to be drawn from the European Parliament and how he came to support the idea. Hear and read for yourself!

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Audio transcript of the interview

I am talking today to Jo Leinen co-chair of the UNPA Advisory Group and a serving member of the European Parliament affiliated with the progressive alliance of socialists and democrats; welcome to the UNPA audio blog Jo.

Hello and welcome.

We intend to be pretty pithy and to the point on our show/podcast so I'm going to plunge straight into my questions if that is OK?

That's OK, fantastic.

Great Stuff. OK, the first question is: You are one of the leading parliamentarians in the campaign for a UNPA. When did you first encounter the idea of a global parliament and why did it attract your attention?

It's more than 10 years ago that I thought that global problems need global solutions and the decision-making on the global level should be democratically accountable - so we needed a citizens' chamber, the parliaments, to play a big role on the global level.

OK and I guess the next question dovetails into that. In the face of the immediate challenge of the global climate crisis (that could worsen much quicker than anyone expects), some people do argue that there is no time left to change the system of global governance - that it would be, you know, re-arranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. Can you explain why anyone should invest time and energy into something like the establishment of a UN Parliamentary Assembly?

I participated in various climate conferences of the UN and I could see the stalemate of diplomats that are not able to find a good solution and I'm sure that citizen representatives like parliamentarians could give a new dynamic and a new push to this global concern and even saving this global good, the atmosphere, which belongs to all of us - so I think there would be a new element in global politics if parliamentarians come in better than now.

Right and yourself, your involvement in the EU parliament has been fairly extensive, since 1999. So, do you think that the European Parliament is a good model for a global parliamentary assembly that you are considering? What can be learned from the development in the EU if we consider global democracy do you think?

The EU started as a union of states and then they got aware that you need as well a union of citizens; and to represent the citizens you need a chamber and that is the parliament. The EU parliament started as a consultative body with representations from the various national parliaments and very quickly we went towards the direct election of the members of the EU parliament parallel with new competencies of legislation, budget power, and scrutiny of the executive, so I think that this is the first example worldwide of a transnational parliament at the end directly elected by the citizens and this could be a blueprint, a sort of model, how we envisage the UN Parliamentary Assembly to start as an advisory body and then, little by little, to gain power and to control decision making and as well to make decisions with world wide dimension.

So in one sense the EU, as you say, began with more of a national focus but now that focus is shifting towards the citizens to some degree but it's still a sort of hybrid organisation and you think that would work quite well at the global level as well, that model.

Yes, we have an external policy, we have normally the executive that is acting, the governments and the diplomats, but more and more you have not external policy, you have to see it as internal policy. So in the EU we see lots of policies as internal policy and the same has to be done for the global level; saving the climate or working for enough water and energy for the people is a global good and the rain forest, the maritime ecosystems. So I think we have a lot of global goods where it is internal policy of the planet and not external policy and therefore I think the states are of course the one player, but the citizens chambers, the parliaments, should be the other player.

So then I guess it's natural that the EU Parliament was the first parliament in the world to endorse the idea of a global parliament or a UN Parliamentary Assembly. What is the current status of that support?

The EU Parliament is used to work on a multilateral level. We have no problem, because of our own practice, to think about a transnational parliament so this chamber was one of the first to endorse the UN Parliamentary Assembly and it is interesting to see that the African Parliament followed us, the Latin American followed us, you have all these regional continental parliaments that see the use of a UN parliamentary body and I think that' s a strong signal to the one or the other national parliament to get on board and to follow and support us.

What do you think would be the most important nation-state parliament whose support you would be most, you know, encouraged by?

I think that the emerging countries are aware of the global problematic and dimension and I see a lot of movement in India. We have 50 parliamentarians from the Indian Parliament, we have support from Brazil and many African countries as I mentioned before. So little by little this campaign is growing and getting really background and support and we have to continue the campaign.

Let's take the worst case scenario, if we don't improve our current - some say dysfunctional - global governance system. What is the downside? I mean is it really that serious? We've been muddling along since the end of WWII, we've got over some crises, we haven't stumbled into a major war like WWI or WWII. So what is the downside of not improving our current system of global governance?

You have a lot of frustration in the world that people are not represented in decision making. You could see that the UN Security Council is a really inadequate system for representing the world with 5 powers having veto on global decisions. I think that the world shows unable to solve common problems and that of course will have a lot of collateral damages; whether it's civil wars or wars, whether it's the further destruction of the eco-systems with all the negative consequences; so we could have a better world by involving citizens and their representatives and not letting them out of the process.

Great! Was there anything else you wanted to say about the UNPA campaign?

That was perfect I think you have a few elements that you need. OK. Greetings to Andreas and good luck.

Thank you very much Jo it was a pleasure chatting to you. Bye now.