The UN’s Security Council, in particular, is suffering from a dysfunctional decision-making method that grants the five victors of the Second World War and official nuclear powers not only a permanent seat but also a veto right. Credit: United Nations

By Daniel Jositsch and Andreas Bummel
BERLIN / BERNE, Aug 28 2020 (IPS)

The people of the world need to seize the moment and bring about a democratic global revolution. It is time for a global parliament and real representation.

More than 21 million people got infected with the novel coronavirus and over 770,000 have died. Never before did the world witness similar collective lockdowns of social and economic activity that had to be enforced to contain the pandemic.

For many, the corona-related global crisis exacerbates a situation that was already critical before the outbreak of the virus.

The climate crisis is unfolding with record temperatures in Siberia, Greenland, the Antarctic and other places like the Middle East. The new climate apartheid is characterized by whether you can afford to shield yourself from such heat or not. Most cannot.

135 million people are facing crisis levels of hunger. There are currently more than 70 million displaced people who have fled war, persecution and conflict. It’s the worst humanitarian and refugee crisis in seventy years.

There is a global inequality crisis. Productivity gains and globalization disproportionately benefit the affluent. Financial assets in the trillions are hidden in offshore accounts from tax authorities. The world’s 26 richest billionaires own as much as the poorest 3.8 billion people on the planet.

While global surveys confirm that people across all world regions strongly believe in democracy, there is in fact a democratic retreat. Confidence in the actual performance of democratic governments is waning. Populist nationalism and authoritarianism has been advancing, aided and abetted by social media platforms and the internet. Major arms control treaties are crumbling, geopolitical tensions are rising and multilateralism is under attack.

Civil society and citizens across the world are fighting back, though. Pro-democracy movements are at an all-time high as widespread protests in dozens of countries now and in recent times demonstrate. Freedom and justice have lost no appeal. At the same time, millions of citizens joined climate protests around the world and called for quick and effective action in this critical field.

The present issues are symptoms of a crisis of global governance. There is a scale mismatch between a political world order that is based on 200 states and territories and issues that demand decisive global action.

As the UN celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, the organization continues to lose significance and impact. The UN is only as strong and effective as its member states allow it to be. The same applies to all intergovernmental organizations and forums, including the World Health Organization that had to launch an investigation into its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The UN’s Security Council, in particular, is suffering from a dysfunctional decision-making method that grants the five victors of the Second World War and official nuclear powers not only a permanent seat but also a veto right.

If long-lasting solutions are to be achieved, this scale mismatch must be tackled. It is not enough to call on individual governments to change their policies. The way how the world is governed must be changed. What is needed is a new vision of a democratic world order that is based on shared sovereignty on global issues, a clear commitment to human rights, the principle of subsidiarity and complete disarmament.

When the UN was founded it was recognized that this should only be a beginning and that changes would be required. Article 109 of the Charter provides that a conference to review the Charter should be held by 1955. The UN’s member states did not deliver on that promise. Now is the time to hold them to account.

The world’s people need an actual say in global affairs that is not intermediated by national governments and their diplomats. The key ingredient of a new UN should be a democratically elected world parliament that complements intergovernmental bodies such as the UN General Assembly.

The creation of a new democratic world organization that has actual powers seems to be a gigantic project that raises numerous questions. How is a global democracy to be created while major states themselves are not democratically organised? Can decisions of a world parliament be enforced against the will of individual states? How is it possible that states will agree to the creation of a superior political unit?

These questions show the way forward: The people of the world themselves need to embrace and call for global democracy. Eventually, they are the sovereigns not only in their individual states but on the planet as a whole, too.

A global democratic revolution needs to push for a legitimate, inclusive and representative global body that will deal with these questions in a serious way. The creation of a UN Parliamentary Assembly could be an important stepping stone to launch a global constitutional process and a transformation of global governance.

This global democratic revolution will be peaceful because it is not about destroying structures or conquering territories, but about opening up a political level that is lying idle. Supranational integration cannot be imposed by force. It will happen because the people want it.

If existing movements in the fields of climate, environment, peace, disarmament, democracy, social justice and others join forces, the global democratic revolution will become very real.

This may sound visionary. But the big issues troubling this planet and its people will remain, and worsen, unless the root cause is addressed. A democratic global government is not a mind game in some ivory tower. It is the most important question on the agenda of humanity today.

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By Andreas Bummel
BERLIN, Jul 20 2017 (IPS)

Earlier this month, the European Parliament adopted its annual recommendations on the European Union’s policy at the upcoming session of the United Nations General Assembly that begins in September.

Cedit: UN Photo

Among other things, the European Parliament called on EU governments to foster a debate “on the topic of establishing a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly with a view to increasing the democratic profile and internal democratic process of the organisation and to allow world civil society to be directly associated in the decision-making process.”

For more than twenty years the European Parliament has been pushing for a UN Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA). Six years ago it called on EU governments to promote its establishment.

The Council’s working group on the UN had a brief internal discussion at the time and concluded that the creation of a UNPA would imply a modification of the UN’s Charter which was considered unrealistic. It was also said that it would be a paradox for the UN to establish a UNPA since there are member states that do not have a democratically elected parliament. Finally, the point was made that a UNPA would entail high costs that the UN and governments would be unable to bear.

The Council did not engage with the parliament or anyone else pertaining these and other arguments. Its consideration of the issue was superficial. Ironically, it is easier for the UN to create a UNPA than to add just one single seat to the UN Security Council. Other than the Council seemed to believe, while the latter indeed requires an amendment of the Charter, the former clearly does not.

A UNPA can be created according to Article 22 which allows the General Assembly to establish subsidiary bodies as it deems necessary to fulfill its work. A UNPA could be seen as part of the assembly’s “revitalization”, a topic that has been pursued for long but did not yield much results so far.

Each year, Freedom House in Washington D.C. publishes its assessment of democracy in the world and today nearly two thirds of UN member states are considered to be “electoral democracies”. The foundation warns, however, that democracy is increasingly under threat by populist and nationalistic forces as well as authoritarian powers.

Proponents of a UNPA keep pointing out that giving parliamentarians a voice at the UN would help strengthening democracy especially in countries where it is still weak and under pressure. Opposition politicians certainly would benefit from a seat in a UNPA and the international exposure that would go along with it.

After all, it has been a key argument that if the UN’s promotion of democracy is to be credible, the world organization itself needs to democratize as well. The establishment of a UNPA could also be understood as a response to Sustainable Development Goal 16. SDG 16 targets include the development of “effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all levels” and ensuring “responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making at all levels.” Why should the UN, of all things, be excluded from this?

A UN parliamentary body could be a useful complement to the High-Level Political Forum on sustainable development in order to review the implementation of the SDGs.

At the beginning, a UNPA need not be a monumental investment. It depends on the specifics. So far, neither the Council of the EU or anyone else has come up with a thorough calculation. How can you argue that the costs would be too high if you never calculated them in the first place?

Under US President Donald Trump multilateralism and UN funding are under threat. This should be a wake-up call. To a large degree, a UNPA would be educational. It would bring the UN closer to lawmakers in the capitals and could help strengthen budgetary support of UN member states. In the long run, strengthening the UN’s democratic profile could turn out to be a good investment.

When she was an Italian deputy, the EU’s High Representative on Foreign Affairs, Federica Mogherini, endorsed a UNPA and last year she confirmed that she still believes that it “could be a very useful tool.”

For a long time, EU governments have been ignoring the European Parliament’s endorsement of a UNPA. Will it be different this time?

Although a debate on this topic is not unrealistic, it is premature to expect that there will be a formal push in the upcoming session of the UN General Assembly. Most UN member states, including those from the EU, never looked into the concept of a UNPA in a serious way and will have to do their homework first.

Support like it was expressed by Malta’s foreign minister George Vella, who was succeeded last month, or by the cabinet of Italy’s foreign minister Paolo Gentiloni, who is now Italy’s Prime Minister, was the exception.

In May an informal meeting in New York hosted by the Canadian UN mission in collaboration with the international Campaign for a UNPA brought together representatives of 12 governments for a briefing on the proposal. This was a sign of growing interest.

More such informal meetings seem to be the most likely way forward for the time being. In the process, several EU governments – and other UN member states – may declare their support in one way or another which eventually could bring it on the EU’s and the UN’s agenda.

In particular, it will be interesting to see what position the new French government under President Emmanuel Macron will take.

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Evo Morales Ayma (shown on screens), President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

By Andreas Bummel
BERLIN, Apr 28 2017 (IPS)

In pursuit of the Agenda 2030 the UN is playing an increasingly important role. Its Charter was declared in the name of “We, the Peoples.“ Elected representatives, however, who are interested in the affairs of the UN and its entities will discover that there are hardly any arrangements in place that would allow them to be involved.

In 1992, governments agreed at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro that public participation in decision-making is important and defined nine major groups that should be engaged, including, for example, indigenous peoples, local authorities, business and industry, women or non-governmental organizations.

In consequence, many UN entities and UN-driven negotiations such as the climate talks give those groups an opportunity to be included. It’s one of many symptoms for the neglect of parliamentarians in intergovernmental affairs that they are not among them.

In 2004 the Panel on UN-Civil Society Relations suggested the creation of an Elected Representatives Liaison Unit at the UN but nothing happend.

In any case, much more is needed. It is no longer acceptable that UN decision-making primarily, if not exclusively, represents only the executive branch of national governments. It is now widely recognized that representative parliaments are an indispensable element of good and democratic governance.

Why should this insight not apply to the UN as well?

There has been a growing trend towards stronger interaction of parliamentarians across national borders. Today, there are more than 100 international parliamentary institutions such as Parliamentarians for Global Action, the OECD Global Parliamentary Network or the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The oldest of them is the Inter-Parliamentary Union that was created more than a century ago in 1889.

The group of formal parliamentary organs is the most developed. Examples are the European Union’s European Parliament or the African Union‘s Pan-African Parliament. In the UN system, however, no such body exists.

Although the IPU and other networks have slowly managed to establish a relationship with the UN, their formal status and political influence in the world organization are marginal at best.

The UN and its General Assembly, the most universal body in the international order, must seriously begin to add a parliamentary dimension to its formal structure.

A group of lawmakers and representatives of civil society organizations, encouraged by former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, concluded ten years ago that there needs to be a parliamentary organ formally embedded into the UN’s structure, a UN Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA).

To advance this goal, they launched the Campaign for a UN Parliamentary Assembly as an informal international platform that brings together all like-minded forces, and coordinates their efforts at all levels.

No question, a UNPA is a complex undertaking which necessarily means that there are differing opinions if it comes to details. Nonetheless, the campaign’s international appeal, a political statement that is endorsed by all campaign supporters, has proven to create focus and unity.

Since its publication in 2007, around 1,500 members of parliament signed the document, in addition to thousands of other individuals from over 150 countries, among them innumerous distinguished personalities from public administration, science, civil society and culture.

Since the campaign’s launch pro-UNPA resolutions were adopted, for instance, by the Canadian House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, the Pan-African Parliament, the Latin-American Parliament, the Senate of Argentina, the Chamber of Deputies of Argentina, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and the Parliament of Mercosur. The foreign ministers of Malta and Italy voiced support.

Through a UNPA, elected representatives who are directly accountable to their constituents would be able to play a role in the world organization. They could provide oversight of international decision-making and serve as a link between the world’s citizens, civil society, and the UN.

The assembly would allow for participation of parliamentarians who do not belong to governing parties. Giving the opposition a voice at the world level could strengthen democratic forces in countries in transition. The assembly could provide additional international accountability and oversight for government action on the Sustainable Development Goals.

A UNPA can provide innovative means of multi stakeholder inclusion in the UN’s work through public hearings, leveraging its convening capacity, or co-option of independent experts, rapporteurs, investigative bodies or advisory members in addition to collaborating with civil society organizations.

The campaign’s policy is that a UNPA could be of a hybrid nature, composed of members who are either sitting members of national or regional parliaments or directly elected for this purpose.

Starting as an advisory body, it should be incrementally provided with genuine rights of information, participation and control vis-à-vis the UN and the organizations of the UN system, including the international financial institutions and the World Trade Organization. A UNPA could provide the UN and the wider system of global governance with unprecedented democratic legitimacy.

In a first step the campaign advocates the establishment of a UNPA by means which do not require a change of the UN’s Charter, which is either by a decision of the UN General Assembly according to Article 22 of the UN’s Charter, or by a new international treaty.

Along similar lines, two years ago the Commission on Global Security, Justice, and Governance, which is co-chaired by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Nigerian Foreign Minister Ibrahim Gambari, recommended the creation of a UN Parliamentary Network as a step towards “the creation of a standing, formally constituted UN second chamber.”

It is crucial to recognize that in our times democratic deliberation, participation and decision-making can no longer be confined to the nation-state. If we want to save and strengthen democracy, we cannot ignore the interconnections between national and global democratization.

As the late Boutros Boutros Ghali said: “We need to promote the democratization of globalization, before globalization destroys the foundations of national and international democracy. The establishment of a Parliamentary Assembly at the United Nations has become an indispensable step to achieve democratic control of globalization.”

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