Mondial Book Club Session with WFM-Canada

Reformers of the United Nations keep arguing over whether to demand a full overhaul or settle for smaller steps that might pass. A special session of the World Citizen Book Club gave four contributors to the journal Mondial the chance to explain their views.

About This Session

The World Citizen Book Club held this special joint session with WFM-Canada (the World Federalist Movement of Canada) on Saturday 25 May 2024. It was the third joint session that month. Authors and contributors to the Winter 2023 issue of Mondial, in its US and Canadian editions, discussed their articles. In 2024 Mondial was published by Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS) and WFM-Canada.

Speakers

Dan Perell, Bahá’í International Community and co-chair of the Coalition for the UN We Need; Lawrence Wittner, professor emeritus of history, State University of New York at Albany; Alex MacIsaac, Executive Director, WFM-Canada; and Rebecca A. Shoot, Executive Director, Citizens for Global Solutions. Saba Qureshi, who wrote the issue’s article on Kashmir, could not attend. James May, CGS program officer, moderated.

Titles are as of the event date.

Discussion Highlights

Perell described three levels of UN reform. The first is getting governments to do what they have already promised. The second is modifying existing institutions, and the third is rethinking the assumptions the UN was built on. Wittner argued that popular movements cut the nuclear arsenal from about 70,000 warheads to about 13,000. But they left the cause, national insecurity, in place. A federation with binding law, he said, would make nuclear weapons unnecessary. MacIsaac defended an idealist approach, saying new targets inside a flawed structure have not worked. Shoot reported on the May UN Civil Society Conference in Nairobi, with about 2,500 participants. She also reported on the impact coalitions CGS co-convened.

Questions covered weighted voting at the UN and who reads Mondial: mostly members, plus libraries and universities. Members also asked whether the Sustainable Development Goals could rally the public. Shoot noted that only about 15 percent of the targets were on track at the midpoint.

The World Citizen Book Club meets online on the second Saturday of each month and is open to anyone, whether you have read the book or not. See what the club is reading next.