Green youth organizations in Europe endorse call for elected UN assembly

The Federation of Young European Greens (FYEG), an umbrella organization of 38 environmental and Green political groups from across Europe, supports the international call for the establishment of a Parliamentary Assembly at the United Nations (UNPA). A resolution adopted at the federation’s general assembly on Saturday, 7 May, in Luxembourg, argued that “efforts to strengthen and revitalize democracy at the national and European levels do not suffice in the long run as more and more important decisions are being taken at the level of global intergovernmental institutions.” According to the resolution, the Federation of Young European Greens “joins the international Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly.” Said the federation’s spokesperson Terry Reintke: "The green European youth is part of the worldwide movement that advocates a more democratic global governance.”

"We will face more and more global problems in the next years and we need to think and act globally to solve them. The Westphalian diplomatic system where each state defends its interests in international negotiations doesn't work any more. A UN Parliamentary Assembly would be better able to see the global interests and take global decisions," commented Matthieu Content, former UN youth delegate and International Coordinator of the Belgian French Speaking Young Greens (ecolo j), who introduced the resolution.

The call for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly is supported by green parties all over the world. It was also included in the final declaration of the second Global Greens Congress that met in May 2008 in Sao Paulo. The proposal is endorsed across principal party lines. Major international party networks that have expressed support, in addition to the Global Greens Congress, include the Socialist International and the Liberal International.

Members organizations of FYEG are either the youth wings of Green Parties or environmental non-governmental youth organizations.

FYEG resolution calling for a UNPA

Top image: Participants of the gathering in Luxembourg, by FYEG

Creation of a world parliament suggested at World Social Forum

The establishment of a world parliament elected by the world’s population was proposed at an event at the World Social Forum in Dakar, Senegal. “A democratic and representative world parliament would be an institution with unprecedented political legitimacy. It is needed to bring globalization under democratic control”, explained Jo Leinen, one of the speakers at the event and a Member of the European Parliament from Germany who co-chairs the advisory board of the international Campaign for a UN Parliamentary Assembly. “It is neither possible nor desirable to reverse globalization. But those institutions that control the process to a large degree such as the World Trade Organization or the international financial institutions exclude the citizens of the world from their decision-making. This is no longer acceptable”, Mr. Leinen continued.

“The people of the world want to have a say in the affairs that affect them. As more and more important decisions are taken at the global level, this aspiration cannot stop at national borders. Global democratic representation is needed. The goal is to create a directly elected assembly”, said Manuel Manonelles, director of UBUNTU-World Forum of Civil Society Networks.

The Senegalese representative of the Campaign for a UN Parliamentary Assembly, Mamadou Ibrahimia Fall, elaborated on the campaign’s proposal. “We suggest a gradual approach. Initially, the assembly could be composed of representatives from national and regional parliaments. Over time, a transition to direct elections could take place. Its powers in the international system could be extended gradually as well. At the beginning, the function could be largely consultative.”

Coura Ndiaye, an advisor at the Economic and Social Council of the Consultative Assembly of Senegal expressed how important the activities of civil society are to give initiatives but that a Parliament is necessary to take decisions.

Several participants from Uganda, Sierra Leone, Benin, Great Britain, Norway stressed the importance of building up democratic representation at a global level. It was felt that a more direct connection between the world's peoples and global institutions is needed. The proposal of a UNPA received much applause and support.

The World Social Forum is a major global meeting place of social activists and movements that promote solidarity, democracy and a fairer world. It is considered as a grassroots counter-event to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, at which the global elite of the political, financial and economic world come together on an annual basis.

Top image: March in Dakar at the opening of the World Social Forum, Creative Commons license by Pambazuka News

International Parliamentary Institutions “help to overcome democracy deficits”

A new study published by the Committee for a Democratic U.N. (KDUN), a think tank based in Berlin, concludes that international parliamentary institutions such as the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe or the Pan-African Parliament “all introduce a democratic element into regional and global governance.” The study analyses and classifies more than 100 international parliamentary institutions. Around 70 of them

were established within the last 10 years. “There is a clear trend towards stronger interaction of parliamentarians across national borders and towards the creation of formal mechanisms for their inclusion into international organizations. The institutions might not be in the public spotlight. Nevertheless, they do play an increasingly important role,” said Claudia Kissling, author of the study and Vice-Chair of the Committee.

According to the study, international parliamentary institutions are increasingly equipped with competences and functions that “help them to fulfill genuine parliamentary oversight functions.” In this way, it is argued, they can contribute to overcoming existing democracy deficits. However, it is pointed out that the trend so far has not reached major international intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations, the World Bank, or the World Trade Organization. “So far, none of them does possess a formal parliamentary body. This seriously weakens their legitimacy. We are convinced that the creation of a global parliamentary assembly will come onto the agenda sooner or later. The trend towards more parliamentary involvement will not be limited to regional organizations,” Ms. Kissling noted.

The head of the Centre for Parliamentary Studies and Training at the National Assembly of Kenya and former Clerk of the Pan-African Parliament, Murumba Werunga, notes in the preface of the new publication that international parliamentary institutions “have so far proved to be the best placed fora to bridge the gap between the governed and international governance. One therefore sees in the international parliamentary institutions a compelling rationale for the creation of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly.”

Professor Lucio Levi, head of the research program “International Democracy Watch” at the Centre for Studies on Federalism in Italy, said that the study “is a very important contribution to the advancement of our knowledge of international democratic bodies. It fills a huge vacuum that was present in this field of research.”

Download the study from KDUN's website

Top image: The building of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. The Council’s Parliamentary Assembly celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2009. It is the oldest parliamentary assembly in the world. Copyright: Council of Europe

Meeting on UNPA hosted in New Zealand's Parliament

A meeting was held on Thursday 14th October 2010 in the Maori Affairs Select Committee Room in the Parliament House of New Zealand - with the Treaty of Waitangi displayed on the wall - to discuss the proposal for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA) and how to build support for the proposal within the Oceania region.

Participants of the meeting in Wellington

Image: CEUNPA

The meeting was hosted by Sue Kedgley, MP, and comprised eight New Zealand MPs from across the three main parties: National, Labour and Green, along with the President of the World Citizens Association from Australia, and other individuals from civil society.

The meeting found common ground that the system for global decision-making needed to be improved and that the United Nations system had a serious democratic deficit and lack of democratic accountability. There were discussions about the best options for development and improvement for the future, and around the merits of the proposal for a UN Parliamentary Assembly, following a presentation by Gordon Glass, member of the Steering Committee for the UNPA campaign.

The meeting generated a number of proposals for building a strategy in New Zealand and in Oceania to support change within the United Nations system. A majority of the MPs present, including each of the parties, agreed to support the campaign and to take the UNPA proposal back to their parties for further debate and action. Two attendees, one from within Parliament and one from outside, agreed to be points of contact in the region for future action.

Top image: Parliament of New Zealand, by CEUNPA

Declaration calls for intergovernmental conference on UN Parliament

An international meeting of the Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly in the Senate of Argentina in Buenos Aires has called on the United Nations and its member states to initiate a “preparatory process towards an intergovernmental conference for the purpose of establishing a Parliamentary Assembly at the United Nations.“ A declaration adopted by around 50 participants from 20 countries, among them ten Members of Parliament and representatives of 20 civil society organizations, states that “the need to democratize global governance is one of the greatest political challenges of our times. It calls on individual world citizens, and

Group picture of the participants

Image: Democracia Global

especially parliamentarians, governments, the international donor community, and civil society to make a commitment to democratic global change.”

At the opening session the Argentinian deputy Fernando Iglesias reiterated the need for global democratization through a UN Parliamentary Assembly. As a guest speaker Olivier Giscard d’Estaing, former Member of Parliament from France, voiced his disappointment over the enduring failure to bring about any substantial reform of the United Nations. Mr. Giscard d’Estaing called for the creation of “new world institutions dealing with world problems, including a world parliament.” The Executive Director of the World Federalist Movement-Institute for Global Policy, William Pace, severely criticized the G8 and G20. “These informal governance mechanism have failed dramatically,” Mr. Pace stated. “Our goal is to replace the brutality of imperialism with constitutional and parliamentary principles at the global level,” he said.

In a written welcome note to the meeting, the parliamentarian and former Prime Minister of Malta, Alfred Sant, stated that “the goal of establishing a UN Parliamentary Assembly may appear to be far away down the road, but global realities are changing so fast that the relevance of an Assembly may become salient much sooner than is now supposed.” The European parliamentarian Jo Leinen noted in a message that “the proposal now has to be taken up by a group of like-minded governments”.

In the plenary session, participants deliberated on the outcome document and on their activities in the previous year. In the afternoon, parallel workshops were held. The former clerk of the Pan-African Parliament, Werunga Murumba, now at the Centre for Parliamentary Studies and Training of the Kenya National Assembly, spoke about lessons learned from the creation of existing international parliamentary assemblies. Other workshops were held on the next steps in the Latin-American region and on the creation of a UN Parliamentary Assembly and UN Charter reform.

The event that was held in the premises of the Senate of Argentina on Monday was the fourth meeting of an international campaign that was launched in April 2007. The head of the Campaign’s Secretariat, Andreas Bummel, noted that in this time span around 900 Members of Parliament from over 90 countries expressed their support, representing over 100 million people from their constituencies. Around 750 are currently in office.

The meeting was preceded by a seminar of the Latin-American Parliament on regional integration and the reform of international institutions that was held in the previous week. One of the sessions was devoted to the proposal of a UN Parliamentary Assembly. The UNPA-Campaign meeting was part of a ten-day programme in Buenos Aires coordinated by the Argentinian non-governmental organization Democracia Global.

Outcome document of Buenos Aires

Top image: Opening session, by Democracia Global

Latin-American Parliament debates creation of a world parliament

The establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA) was one of the topics debated at a interparliamentary conference of the Latin-American Parliament on regional integration and the reform of international institutions convened in the Senate of Argentina in Buenos Aires.

Giving an introduction to the subject, the Argentinian Member of Parliament Fernando Iglesias pointed out that globalization has changed the global political and economic reality in fundamental ways. “From today’s perspective, even the setting of the year 2000 looks antiquated.

Fernando Iglesias MP, Senator Sonia Escudero, Shahriar Sharei and Andreas Bummel (from left to right)

Image: Senate of Argentina

But the global institutions have largely remained untouched.“ Although the farewell to the nation-state which was popular in the 1990s was overly exaggerated, Mr. Iglesias argued that it was just as inappropriate to pretend that nothing has changed. “In many areas, global governance now is an absolute necessity. But the world population is not included in decision-making“, said Mr. Iglesias. “The issue is how to change this and the solution is to establish a world parliament.“

The second panelist, Andreas Bummel, Secretary of the Campaign for the Establishment of a UN Parliamentary Assembly, stressed that international organizations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund or the World Trade Organization “create global policy with enormous impact on international trade, finances and national economies.“ However, by contrast to the regional level where parliamentary bodies are mushrooming, “no formal parliamentary body exists in any of these international institutions“, Mr. Bummel added. He argued that this gap should be filled by establishing a UN Parliamentary Assembly as an addition to the existing UN bodies: “The new global social contract needs to have two pillars: the individual citizens and the nation-states,“ said Mr. Bummel. These two dimensions could be reflected by today’s UN General Assembly and by an additional parliamentary chamber that eventually is directly elected.

Other topics discussed during the panel included details such as the distribution of seats in a UNPA, the role of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the legal options to create the body and possible powers and functions. In principle, the Latin-American Parliament supports the proposal of a UNPA. In 2008, a resolution was passed to this effect.

The panel was moderated by the Secretary-General of Parlatino, Senator Sonia Escudero. It was followed by presentations on UN Charter reform, Security Council reform and the role of the G-20, among others. Speakers included Shahriar Sharei, World Alliance to Transform the UN, Argentinia’s Ambassador to the UN, Jorge Arguello and the Director of the Department on International Organisations in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Argentina, Pablo Tettamanti. The conference was attended by lawmakers and experts from 14 countries.

The meeting of the Latin-American Parliament was the first part of a ten-day programme on global democracy coordinated by the Argentinian non-governmental organization Democracia Global. It continues on Monday with an international meeting of participants in the Campaign for a UN Parliamentary Assembly in the National Congress building. Finally, from Thursday to Friday, the annual Council Meeting of the World Federalist Movement – Institute for Global Policy is on the agenda.

New research project monitors democratization of international institutions

A research project launched by the Centre for Studies on Federalism based near Turin in Italy will continuously monitor the development of democracy in international governmental organizations. The scientific committee and the researchers’ team of International Democracy Watch (IDW) headed by Professor Lucio Levi is composed by a world-wide network of 40 University professors and scholars in international democracy, international organizations and regional integration.

Image: IDW

As the project reported, the need to create an International Democracy Watch is linked to “the progressive reduction of the role and the influence of nation-states in the process of governing the economic and social globalization and the ensuing birth of a process of creating intergovernmental and supranational organisations both at the regional and the world level.” In addition, the project will cover the creation and the growth of transnational civil society movements, whose principal aim is to foster global democracy, that is the check of the globalization process through the democratization of international institutions.

It was pointed out that while a lot of projects and institutes exist that check and monitor the growth of democracy at the national level, no similar research is carried out with a focus on international relations and on international democracy.

Said Nicola Vallinoto, one of the project’s coordinators: “The aim of IDW will be to check the state of the art and the development of democracy in international institutions, both at regional and at world level, and to assess the progress or regression of international democracy through a regular monitoring, whose daily results will be available on the project website and through the publication of a biennial report.”

The project’s website includes sections dedicated to the monitored organizations and to the campaigns for the strengthening and the democratization of international institutions. According to Mr. Vallinoto, “one of the subjects that will be observed and analyzed are the efforts to create a body of democratically elected representatives, that is a global parliament.”

The biennial report will dedicate a chapter to every monitored international organization and a special section will present the main campaigns for the democratization of international governmental organizations. In addition, through the International Democracy Index every international organization will be rated and ranked. The first report is expected to be ready in Winter 2010-2011 and will be an instant view of the world situation as per June 30, 2010.

Project Website:
http://www.internationaldemocracywatch.org/

Top image: Tobias Keckel, iStockphoto

Summit buries bold plans to transform the Inter-Parliamentary Union

The third World Conference of Speakers of Parliament closed last week in Geneva with the adoption of a declaration on the need to secure global democratic accountability. Eventually, over 130 speakers of parliament gave their assent to a text that was characterized by Neue Zürcher Zeitung, one of Switzerland’s leading newspapers, as being “unpretentious”.

While the declaration states that “today’s multilateral systems should allow for much greater consideration for the thoughts, feelings and aspirations of people everywhere whose voices go unheard” and “called for greater parliamentary involvement in international cooperation”, the speakers assembled in Geneva seemed to disagree on the route to take. Turning to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), convener of the world conference and the umbrella organization of national parliaments, they affirmed in unison that the IPU is “the international body best suited to build the relationship between parliaments and the United Nations”. According to reports, however, speakers of parliament primarily from Western countries took offence at what was described as “ambitions towards a world parliament”.

Abdurahim Abdi suggested a bold approach

Image: IPU

The Speaker of the East African Legislative Assembly, Abdurahim Abdi, for example had promoted the imposing vision that parliaments should be formally included into the decision-making at the United Nations. “For instance it can be made a requirement that every decision of the UN General Assembly or the UN Security Council is subjected to some form of a parliamentary process before it becomes binding. We can do this by strengthening the existing international parliamentary forums like the Inter-Parliamentary Union to co-determine with the UN General Assembly or Security Council the shape of world policies,” Mr Abdi stated.

Amendment softens declaration

The Emirates News Agency reported that an alliance of European and Arab Speakers succeeded to remove a passage from the declaration’s draft that was tabled at the conference that acknowledged the need to examine “all options” to strengthen the IPU, “including reforming its current Statutes and Rules, concluding an international convention on the IPU and entering into a new and significantly improved cooperation agreement with the United Nations.” Instead, the amended declaration merely included the softened statement that the Speakers welcomed “the discussion which has been started within the IPU in order to strengthen its functions, promote its efficiency and develop its cooperation with the United Nations and its institutions.”

The Speaker of the German parliament, Norbert Lammert, stated in a speech that “the IPU is neither a world parliament nor a subsidiary organization of the UN and we also do not want it to turn into one.” According to Mr. Lammert, the presidents of all parliaments of the EU member states supported the suggested amendment.

GulfNews reported that the Speaker of the Federal National Council of the United Arab Emirates, Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair, played an instrumental role in rallying support for the amendment by voicing concern that - based on the draft text -, the IPU could be “converted into a UN government organisation that lacks independence, democratic accountability and transparency.”

New “parliamentary arm” for the UN proposed

Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair called for a new "parliamentary arm" for the UN

Image: IPU

At the same time, however, Mr. Al Ghurair called “for establishing an international independent body representing peoples of the world to act as a parliamentary arm for the United Nations (UN) and hold any country - whatever big or small - accountable democratically if it flouts its international responsibilities as per principles of international law and legitimacy.” Emirates News Agency quoted Mr. Al Ghurair saying that he believes that “the new international accountability organisation should represent all peoples of the world and serve as a voice for principles of international justice. It's necessary for the UN to mull deeply creating such a parliamentary arm.” According to the report, Mr. Al Ghurair stressed that the new institution should not replace the IPU.

The Secretariat of the Campaign for the Establishment of a UN Parliamentary Assembly affirmed that “a global parliamentary body is needed that eventually participates in decision-making at the UN and other international institutions and that is able to hold these institutions and their executives accountable. Such a body would not replace or duplicate the IPU’s functions.”

Declaration of the 3rd World Conference of Speakers of Parliament

Top image: Plenary of the conference, by Inter-Parliamentary Union

Parliamentary Forum for the Community of Democracies created

More than forty Members of Parliament from Lithuania, the United States and other European, Latin American and Asian countries have launched a Parliamentary Forum for the Community of Democracies, a global intergovernmental coalition that celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. In accordance with the Community’s program, the new Parliamentary Forum is dedicated to promoting democratic rules and strengthening democratic norms and institutions around the world. In a declaration setting

Was elected as President: Emanuelis Zingeris from Lithuania

Image: Wikipedia

up the forum, the parliamentarians hold that since “a parliament is the central institution of democracy, we commit to strengthen the role of national parliaments in our own countries and, in each of them, the functions of representation, legislation and oversight of the Executive.” Members of the Forum intend to meet regularly every year, make suggestions regarding the development of democracy around the world and share their experience of parliamentary work with transition countries and pro-democratic groups in authoritarian regimes.

At a convening meeting in March this year in Vilnius, Lithuania, the forum elected Emanuelis Zingeris, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Seimas of Lithuania, as President and created an international board consisting of seven Vice-Presidents. Long-time member of the United States House of Representatives Lincoln Diaz-Balart, one of the most active Canada’s fighters for human rights and democracy David Kilgour, German representative in the European Parliament Michael Gahler, who significantly contributed to Lithuania’s Euro-Atlantic integration, leader of the European Conservatives and Reformists group in the European Parliament Michal Tomasz Kaminski, one of the most active participants in the Prague Spring and former Czech Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Vondra, Speaker of the Georgian Parliament David Bakradze and Mexican Senator Adriana González Carrillo were elected as Vice-Presidents.

In one of its first declarations, the forum urged the government of China to release Mr. Liu Xiabo, one of the drafters of the Charter 08, from  prison  immediately and endorsed his nomination for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.

The Community of Democracies was founded in 2000 during a Ministerial Conference in Warsaw on the initiative of the then Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bronislaw Geremek. and former U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright. Mr Geremek who passed away in July 2008, also supported the idea to establish a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly in order to promote democracy in international institutions.

Website of the Community of Democracies

Top image: Convening Meeting of the Community of Democracies Parliamentary Forum on 12 March 2010, held at the Seimas; by Olga Posaškova, Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania

“Neo-Humanist” statement calls for a global parliament

The need to develop “transnational planetary institutions to cope with global problems” is one of sixteen main principles included in a statement that was published recently by Paul Kurtz and other prominent humanists. According to the "Neo-Humanist Statement of Secular Principles and Values",   "all members of the planetary community" are "ethically obligated" to "transcend the arbitrary political boundaries of the past and help create new transnational institutions that are democratic in governance and will respect and defend human rights." The document states that these new transnational institutions “will need to adopt a body of laws which will apply worldwide, a legislature to enact and revise these laws, a world court to interpret them, and an elected executive body to apply them.”

Drafted the statement: Paul Kurtz

Image: Wikimedia

The document that includes a call for an “eventual World Parliament” is signed by more than 100 well-known humanists including former U.S. Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, writer Ann Druyan as well as philosophers Rebecca Goldstein, Colin McGinn, Philip Kitcher and Owen Flanagan.

The statement is the latest public declaration of a humanist movement that has been shaped by similar documents in 1933, 1973, and 2000. It is not the first to endorse the notion of a world parliament. The “Humanist Manifesto 2000” that was published ten years ago already elaborated extensively on the need for “new planetary institutions.” Among other things it stated that “we need now more than ever a world body that represents the people of the world rather than nation-states.” The statement concluded that “perhaps a bicameral legislature is the most feasible with both a Parliament of peoples and a General Assembly of nations.”

The new “Neo-Humanist” statement was issued in March of this year, apparently in the context of a schism that is ongoing in the humanist movement. According to the website of the newly established “Institute for Science and Human Values” that is chaired by Paul Kurtz, one of the leading figures in the humanist movement for over 30 years, the statement “will help guide the new organization’s activities.”

Read the Neo-Humanist statement here

Top image: Paul Kurtz at an event in New York in November 2007, by QwirkSilver, Creative Commons (Flickr)