The United Nations would probably have to rest on two pillars: one constituted by an assembly of equal executive representatives of individual countries, resembling the present plenary, and the other consisting of a group elected directly by the globe's population in which the number of delegates representing individual nations would, thus, roughly correspond to the size of the nations.
Václav Havel, President of the Czech Republic (1993-2003), 2000
The world needs ... to establish an effective World Parliament - and elections to it based on population - which will represent the people, not their governments. ... This new World Parliament would enact legislative policies in a democratic manner. Perhaps a bicameral legislature is the most feasible with both a Parliament of peoples and a General Assembly of nations.
Paul Kurtz, In commemoration of Paul Kurtz (1925-2012). From the "Humanist Manifesto 2000: A Call for a New Planetary Humanism", drafted by Paul Kurtz, professor of philosophy, and signed by 130 personalities from over 30 countries, among them ten Nobel laureates, 1999., 1999
© Brian Hardin/knewways.com
It is inconceivable that world affairs should remain the monopoly of the executive branch of national governments. This major flaw in democracy and remnant from the past must be corrected. At least to begin with, a UN Consultative Parliamentary Assembly should be created.
Robert Muller, Co-founder of the University of Peace in Costa Rica, Assistant United Nations Secretary-General, longtime UN civil servant, 1995
© M. Snippe / Legacy of E. Childers
We need a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, where our directly elected representatives can monitor and contribute to the performance of executive governments. They do need help. Those who have been practising double standards need the realisation that the representatives of the citizens of this planet are close by, watching, and alert to expose all unethical international behaviour.
Erskine Childers, Former BBC correspondent and UN senior civil servant (1967-1989), 1994
© Paige Otwell
A United Nations Consultative Assembly constituted [by national parliamentarians] could play an important role in the formulation and execution of United Nations' policies. Though it would be only an advisory body, its opinion would carry weight, especially if its members succeeded in raising themselves beyond national ambitions and in approaching the issues from a global point of view
Louis B. Sohn, U.S. delegate to the 1945 San Francisco conference that established the UN, 1949
by F. Schmutzer, 1921 (public domain)
The method of representation at the UN should be considerably modified. The present method of selection by government appointment ... cannot give the peoples of the world the feeling of being fairly and proportionately represented. The moral authority of the UN would be considerably enhanced if the delegates were elected directly by the people.
Albert Einstein, Physicist, Nobel laureate and peace activist, in an open letter to the UN General Assembly, 1947
The only way out of international dictatorship is to place international law above governments, which means that there must be a parliament for making it, and that parliament must be constituted by means of worldwide elections in which all nations will take part.
Albert Camus, French author, philosopher, and Nobel Laureate, 1946
Imperial War Museum (public domain)
We need a new study for the purpose of creating a world assembly elected directly from the people of the world, as a whole, to whom the Governments who form the United Nations are responsible and who, in fact, make the world law which they, the people, will then accept and be morally bound and willing to carry out."
Ernest Bevin, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1945-1951), in a speech in the House of Commons, 1945
Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
The most obvious things are the hardest to do, for peoples and nations as well as for individuals. What is the present League of Nations? Nothing. We all long for a world parliament. We need a real League of Nations.
Gerhart Hauptmann, German dramatist and novelist (1862-1946), Nobel Prize laureate, in an interview, 1923
Library of Congress
When the peoples of all the nations are capable of governing themselves through an International Parliament then and not till then, will war cease to burden man and universal peace become a thing accomplished.
William Sulzer, U.S. Congressman and Chairman of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, 1912
For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, / Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be; …Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furl’d / In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, / And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, British poet, quote from the poem Locksley Hall, 1842
