New statements in support of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly

There are many remarkable sound bites on the need and the importance of a UN Parliamentary Assembly, a world parliament, and global democracy. We've collected around one hundred of them so far in this document. Recently, we've started to post them one by one as "quote of the day" on our wall at Facebook and to an album at Flickr.

We now want to highlight six remarkable new statements that were made in the past several weeks by supporters of the Campaign for a UN Parliamentary Assembly. If you follow the campaign at Facebook, you might have seen them already. At any rate, here they are again:

Let's start chronologically with a statement made by the President of the Parliament of Mercosur, Ignacio Mendoza from Paraguay, at the beginning of October:

The Mercosur Parliament supports the establishment of a UN Parliamentary Assembly as a means to create a citizen-based democratic world order. As a regional international parliament we very well understand the challenges but also the tremendous benefits that this endeavour entails.

You can read more about the Mercosur Parliament's endorsement in this news report of December 2011. 

After that Ove Bring, a professor emeritus of international law at Stockholm University, Sweden, stated that...

A world parliament of citizens would complement the UN system in a democratic way and contribute to strengthening the compliance to international law and human rights principles.

Then Heikki Patomäki, Professor of World Politics, University of Helsinki, Finland, put a spotlight on the need to create international law democratically:

Global crises require global solutions. Occasional summits, intergovernmental agreements and international cooperation are not enough. For instance, the globalization of finance requires new functional and democratic institutions as well as an elected body capable of coordinating their activities and determining the contents of international law, a world parliament.

Under the impression of the terrible civil war in Syria, Abdulbaset Sieda, then President of the Syrian National Council and in exile in Sweden, said on October, 26 that...

The United Nations is dysfunctional and unable to act. I strongly support the creation of a democratically elected UN Parliamentary Assembly. This is what is desperately needed to give the world's citizens a true voice.

Around two weeks later, we were delighted to publish a statement by Yossi Beilin, an experienced Israeli politician who was a member of the Knesset for more than ten years and who has held ministerial positions in the governments of Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak:

There is no substitute for the United Nations as the primary organization in which almost all countries participate. However, reflecting the realities of an ever-changing world, the UN should be complemented by a Parliamentary Assembly that helps maintain a strong relationship with the public across the world, feels its pulse, and tries to meet people's needs and desires.

Last but not least, for the moment, the well-known Nigerian environmentalist and until November chair of Friends of the Earth International, Nnimmo Bassey, spoke out in favor of a UN Parliamentary Assembly because...

Intergovernmental summits have proven to be ineffective, too ineffective, in addressing the challenges of climate change, the loss of biodiversity or environmental protection. Negotiators are trapped in narrow national interests as well as the interests of corporations on their national delegations. The lowest common denominator negotiated by the world's governments is not enough. It is indeed time to have the world's citizens heard through an elected UN Parliamentary Assembly.