Is it time for a U.N. Parliamentary Assembly?

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How strong does the United Nations need to be to control global threats like weapons of mass destruction and climate change? How democratic does it need to be to have the authority to manage these problems? Since the U.N. was founded, reformers have proposed changing its organs of governance or even adding new ones. One perennial such proposal is the creation of a new Parliamentary Assembly in the United Nations, which would function alongside the General Assembly but with a crucial difference: representatives to the Parliamentary Assembly would be popularly elected in proportion to the size of the populations they represent. Parliamentary assemblies are found in many regional organizations, such as NATO, the OSCE, the African Union and, of course, the European Union. In fact, the United Nations is one of the few international organizations that does not have a parliamentary assembly.

Clearly the U.N. has not been able to meet many current security crises with any significant success - as demonstrated by the ongoing chaos in Darfur and Somalia. Indeed, the U.N. is far from having fully achieved the core purpose of its founders -- "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war." One reason is because the structure of the U.N. provides representation to nations but not people.

In the General Assembly, each member nation has one vote, even though China is tens of thousands of times larger than postage-stamp-sized Liechtenstein. Delegates are appointees of the executive branches of their national governments, which means that they serve only as long as that government remains in power and they remain in favor with it. These structural shortcomings may be the main reason why the General Assembly is almost never regarded as an effective institution of global problem-solving.

Former Czech President Vaclav Havel has urged the U.N. to create a "group elected directly by the globe's population, in which the number of delegates representing individual nations would ... correspond to the size of the nations." George Monbiot, a well-known British journalist and environmentalist, has argued that such a "parliament would simply become the means of forcing multilateral bodies to operate in the best interests of everyone, rather than those of just the rich and powerful." Setting up a democratically-elected Parliamentary Assembly at the U.N. is an enterprise gaining mainstream political support, especially in Europe.

The Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly is an international organization centered in Western Europe. The Campaign's Appeal to Establish a UNPA has been signed by almost 3,000 people, including former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the former U.N. Force Commander in Rwanda General Romeo Dallaire, former Canadian Prime Minister Lloyd Axworthy, British actress Emma Thompson, and the late British writer Arthur C. Clarke.

The increased attention is giving new hope to long-time supporters such as Dr. Joseph Schwartzberg, Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota. "For many years, I have been an advocate of creating an elected UNPA...but I despaired of seeing such a development within my lifetime. Now...I believe there is actually a chance that I might live to see my hopes realized."

Dr. Richard Falk and Dr. Andrew Strauss, Fellows of the World Federalist Institute, Global Solutions' internal think tank, believe it would be better to have a Parliamentary Assembly that is completely separate from the United Nations. However, Falk and Strauss are realists who know that at the time of its creation, a parliamentary assembly, inside or outside of the United Nations, would have relatively little political power, but hope that, like the EU parliament, the assembly could gain stature over time.

Establishing a parliamentary assembly has its critics, even among the internationalist community. Anders Johnsson, Secretary-General of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, protests that "a world parliament could not function until democratic values and practices are firmly established in the world." However, Dr. Strauss believes that building democratic practices on the global level helps democratization grow in authoritarian countries such as China.

Supporters and opponents will have the opportunity to air all sides of this issue at the March Annual Meeting of Citizens for Global Solutions, when the World Federalist Institute presents a debate. See page 11 of this newsletter for more details.