Late January of this year will mark the first anniversary of the entry into force of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This momentous international agreement, the result of a lengthy struggle by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and by many non-nuclear nations, bans developing, testing, producing, acquiring, possessing, stockpiling, and threatening to use nuclear weapons. Adopted by an overwhelming vote of the official representatives of the world’s nations at a UN conference in July 2017, the treaty was subsequently signed by 86 nations. It received the required 50 national ratifications by late October 2020, and, on January 22, 2021, became international law.
Right from the start, the world’s nine nuclear powers—the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea—expressed their opposition to such a treaty. They pressed other nations to boycott the crucial 2017 UN conference and refused to attend it when it occurred. Indeed, three of them (the United States, Britain, and France) issued a statement declaring that they would never ratify the treaty. Not surprisingly, then, none of the nuclear powers has signed the agreement or indicated any sympathy for it.
Treaty Momentum During 2021
Even so, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has acquired considerable momentum over the past year. During that time, an additional nine nations ratified it, thus becoming parties to the treaty. And dozens more, having signed it, are expected to ratify it in the near future. Furthermore, the governments of two NATO nations, Norway and Germany, have broken free from the U.S. government’s oppositional stance to the treaty and agreed to attend the first meeting of the countries that are parties to it.
In nations where public opinion on the treaty has been examined, the international agreement enjoys considerable support. YouGov opinion polls in five NATO countries in Europe show overwhelming backing and very little opposition, with the same true in Iceland, another NATO participant. Polling has also revealed large majorities in favor of the treaty in Japan, Canada, and Australia.
In the United States, where most of the mainstream communications media have not deigned to mention the treaty, it remains a well-kept secret. Even so, although a 2019 YouGov poll about it drew a large “Don’t Know” response, treaty support still outweighed opposition by 49 to 32 percent. Moreover, when the U.S. Conference of Mayors, representing 1,400 U.S. cities, met in August 2021, the gathering unanimously approved a resolution praising the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Meanwhile, a variety of institutions, recognizing that nuclear weapons are now illegal under international law, have begun to change their investment policies. In September 2021, Lansforsakringar, a Swedish insurance company with assets of over $46 billion, cited the treaty as a major reason to avoid investing in companies producing nuclear weapons. In December, the New York City Council adopted a resolution telling the city comptroller to remove investments from the city’s $250 billion pension fund from companies producing or maintaining these weapons of mass destruction. According to ICAN, 127 financial institutions stopped investing in nuclear weapons companies during 2021.
The Nuclear Powers Accelerate Their Arms Race
Despite this impressive display of respect for the landmark agreement, the nine nuclear powers have not only continued to oppose it, but have accelerated their nuclear arms race. Having cast off the constraints of most nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements of the past, they are all busy either developing or deploying new nuclear weapons systems or have announced their intention to do so.
In this process of nuclear “modernization,” as it is politely termed, they are building newly-designed nuclear weapons of increasing accuracy and efficiency. These include hypersonic missiles, which travel at five times the speed of sound and are better able than their predecessors to evade missile defenses. Reportedly, hypersonic missiles have already been developed by Russia and China. The United States is currently scrambling to build them, as well, with the usual corporate weapons contractors eager to oblige.
When it comes to “modernization” of its entire nuclear weapons complex, the U.S. government probably has the lead. During the Obama administration, it embarked on a massive project designed to refurbish U.S. nuclear production facilities, enhance existing nuclear weapons, and build new ones. This enormous nuclear venture accelerated during the Trump administration and continues today, with a total cost estimated to ultimately top $1.5 trillion.
Although there remain some gestures toward nuclear arms control—such as the agreement between U.S. president Joe Biden and Russian president Vladimir Putin to extend the New Start Treaty—the nuclear powers are now giving a much higher priority to the nuclear arms race.
The current build-up of their nuclear arsenals is particularly dangerous at this time of rising conflict among them. The U.S. and Russian governments almost certainly don’t want a nuclear war over Ukraine, but they could easily slip into one. The same is true in the case of the heightening confrontation between the Chinese and U.S. governments over Taiwan and the islands in the South China Sea. And what will happen when nuclear-armed India and nuclear-armed Pakistan fight yet another war, or when nuclear-armed national leaders like Kim Jong-un and a possibly re-elected Donald Trump start trading insults again about their countries’ nuclear might?
What Will the Future Bring?
At present, this standoff between the nuclear nations, enamored with winning their global power struggles, and the non-nuclear nations, aghast at the terrible danger of nuclear war, seems likely to persist, resulting in the continuation of the world’s long nuclear nightmare. In this context, the most promising course of action for people interested in human survival might well lie in a popular mobilization to compel the nuclear nations to accept the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and, more broadly, to accept a restrained role in a cooperatively-governed world.
On January 28, advocates from several countries with cases before the International Criminal Court (ICC) came together to highlight the critical role the court plays in their countries’ futures. This took place as the U.S. Senate considered a bill that would impose sanctions on the ICC. Many of the countries represented have direct U.S. interests, and in some cases, the U.S. played a role in initiating the cases before the court.
Speakers included:
Oleksandra Matviichuk, human rights lawyer and head of the Center for Civil Liberties (Kyiv, Ukraine), and Nobel Peace Prize recipient (2022)
Niemat Ahmadi, survivor of the Darfur Genocide, leading Sudanese human rights defender, and Founder/President of Darfur Women Action Group
Dino S. de Leon, Philippine human rights lawyer, spokesperson for former Senator Leila de Lima, and Director at Human Rights and People Empowerment Center
Kyaw Win, Executive Director, Burma Human Rights Network
Adam Keith, Director of Accountability, Human Rights First
Moderator: Rebecca A. Shoot, Executive Director of Citizens for Global Solutions
In her book, Existing Legal Limits to Security Council Veto Power in the Face of Atrocity Crimes, Jennifer Trahan outlines three independent bases for the existence of legal limits to the veto by UN Security Council permanent members while atrocity crimes are occurring. The provisions of the UN Charter creating the veto cannot override the UN’s ‘Purposes and Principles’, nor jus cogens (peremptory norms of international law). There are also positive obligations imposed by the Geneva and Genocide Conventions in situations of war crimes and genocide – conventions to which all permanent members are parties. The author demonstrates how vetoes and veto threats have blocked the Security Council from pursuing measures that could have prevented or alleviated atrocity crimes (genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes) in places such as Myanmar, Darfur, Syria, and elsewhere. As the practice continues despite regular condemnation by other UN member states and repeated voluntary veto restraint initiatives, the book explores how the legality of this practice could be challenged.
Jennifer Trahan is a Clinical Professor at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs and Director of their Concentration in International Law and Human Rights. She is an internationally renowned expert on issues of international law and international justice. She is also a prolific scholar, having published two digests on the case-law of the ad hoc tribunals, as well as scores of law review articles and book chapters, including on the International Criminal Court’s crime of aggression. Her recent book, “Legal Limits to Security Council Veto Power in the Face of Atrocity Crimes” (Cambridge U. Press 2020), received the 2020 Book of the Year Award from the American Branch of the International Law Association (ABILA). She serves as one of the US representatives to the Use of Force Committee of the International Law Association and holds various positions with the ABILA. She has served as an amicus curiae to the International Criminal Court on the appeal of the situation regarding Afghanistan and on the Council of Advisers on the Application of the Rome Statute to Cyberwarfare. She additionally serves as Convenor of the Global Institute for the Prevention of Aggression, and serves as a special advisor to states and others on the creation of a Special Tribunal on the Crime of Aggression for the situation of Ukraine.
In today’s world of widespread poverty and unprecedented wealth, how about raising the wages of the most poorly-paid workers?
This October, the World Bank reported that “8.5 percent of the global population―almost 700 million people―live today on less than $2.15 per day,” while “44 percent of the global population―around 3.5 billion people―live today on less than $6.85 per day.” Meanwhile, “global poverty reduction has slowed to a near standstill.”
In early 2024, the charity group Oxfam International noted that, since 2020, “148 top corporations made $1.8 trillion in profit, 52 percent up on 3-year average, and dished out huge payouts to rich shareholders.” During this same period, the world’s five wealthiest men “more than doubled their fortunes from $405 billion to $869 billion,” an increase of $14 million per hour. As corporate elites gathered in Davos for a chat about the world economy, ten corporations alone were worth $10.2 trillion, more than the GDPs of all the countries in Africa and Latin America combined.
The world’s vast economic inequality “is no accident,” concluded a top Oxfam official. “The billionaire class is ensuring corporations deliver more wealth to them at the expense of everyone else.”
Although inequalities in income and wealth have existed throughout much of human history, they have been softened somewhat by a variety of factors, including labor unions and―in modern times―minimum wage laws. Designed to provide workers with a basic standard of living, these laws create a floor below which wages are not allowed to sink. In 1894, New Zealand became the first nation to enact a minimum wage law, and―pressured by the labor movement and public opinion―other countries (including the United States in 1938) followed its lead. Today, more than 90 percent of the world’s nations have some kind of minimum wage law in effect.
These minimum wage laws have had very positive effects upon the lives of workers. Most notably, they lifted large numbers of wage earners out of poverty. In addition, they undermined the business practice of slashing wages (and thus reducing production costs) to increase profit margins or to cut prices and grab a larger share of the market.
Even so, the growth of multinational corporations provided businesses with opportunities to slip past these national laws and dramatically reduce their labor costs by moving production of goods and services to low-wage nations. This corporate offshoring of jobs and infrastructure gathered steam in the mid-20th century. Initially, multinational corporations focused on outsourcing low-skilled or unskilled manufacturing jobs, which had a negative impact on employment and wages in advanced industrial nations. In the 21st century, however, the outsourcing of skilled jobs, particularly in financial management and IT operations, rose dramatically. After all, from the standpoint of enhancing corporate profits, it made good sense to replace an American IT worker with an Indian IT worker at 13 percent the cost. The result was an accelerating race to the bottom.
In the United States, this export of formerly good-paying jobs to low-wage, impoverished countries―combined with “free trade” agreements, a corporate and government assault on unions, and conservative obstruction of any raise in the pathetically low federal minimum wage ($7.25 per hour)―produced a disaster. The share of private sector goods-producing jobs at high wages shrank, since the 1960s, from 42 to 17 percent. Increasingly, U.S. jobs were located in the low-paid service sector. Not surprisingly, by 2023 an estimated 43 million Americans lived in poverty, while another 49 million lived just above the official poverty line. Little wonder that, in this nation and many others caught up in corporate globalization, there was an alarming rise of rightwing demagogues playing on economic grievances, popular hatreds, and fears.
If, therefore, wages in underdeveloped nations and in advanced industrial nations are not keeping pace with the vast accumulation of capital by the world’s wealthiest people and their corporations, one way to counter this situation is to move beyond the disintegrating patchwork of wage floor efforts by individual nations and develop a global minimum wage.
Such a wage could take a variety of forms. The most egalitarian involves a minimum wage level that would be the same in all nations. Unfortunately, though, given the vast variation among countries in wealth and current wages, this does not seem practical. In Luxembourg, for example, the average yearly per capita purchasing power is 316 times that of South Sudan. But other options are more viable, including basing the minimum wage on a percentage of the national median wage or on a more complex measurement accounting for the cost of living and national living standards.
The advantages of a global minimum wage are clear.
It would lift billions of people out of poverty, thus enabling them to lead far better lives.
It would reduce the corporate incentive for offshoring by limiting the ability of multinational corporations to obtain cheap labor abroad.
By keeping jobs in the home country, it would aid unions in wealthy nations to retain their memberships and provide protection against “corporate blackmail”―the management demand that unions either accept contract concessions or get ready for the shift of corporate jobs and production overseas.
By raising wages in impoverished countries, it would reduce the poverty-driven mass migration from these nations and, thereby, deprive rightwing demagogues in wealthier countries of one of their most potent issues.
Of course, higher labor costs at home and abroad would reduce corporate profits and limit the growth of billionaires’ wealth and power. But wouldn’t these also be positive developments?
Washington, DC—On January 9, the United States House of Representatives voted in favor of a bill that would sanction the International Criminal Court (ICC). The bill was created to protest the ICC’s arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister over Israel’s crimes against humanity in Gaza. CGS led 116 organizations—including faith-based groups, human rights organizations, peace advocates, and legal associations—in an open letter decrying the attack on an independent judicial institution established to advance justice for victims of the most heinous crimes.
The vote passed by an overwhelming margin, with 243 in favor (including 45 Democrats) and 140 against the “Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act,” which threatens sanctions for any foreigner who helps the ICC in its attempts to investigate, detain, or prosecute a US citizen or citizen of an allied country that does not recognize the court’s authority.
The bill will now be passed to the Senate for consideration by the Senate Foreign Relations Affairs, emphasizing the importance of our continued efforts to speak out against it and its implementation, as it is a direct attack on the ICC. Not only that, but the passage of sanctions on the ICC jeopardizes the ability of desperate victims across all the court’s investigations to access justice, weakens the credibility of sanction tools in other contexts, and places the United States at odds with its closest allies, as outlined in the letter we issued to Congress and the incoming presidential administration on January 6.
Washington, DC—As co-convener of the Washington Working Group for the ICC, Citizens for Global Solutions led the effort to join 76 human rights organizations, faith-based groups, legal associations, and academic institutions in an open letter to Congress and the incoming US Presidential administration decrying sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC).
As the House of Representatives is scheduled to review this legislation among its first orders of business, we urge Members of Congress to consider the perspectives of the signatories, who include constituents, allies, experts, and survivors in ICC situation countries.
The ability to see and accept things as they are is difficult for us humans. We tend to repeat behaviors that fail to yield the results we want, lulling ourselves into the belief that this time the outcome will somehow be different. We mask our repeated endeavors as exercises in optimism even when we’re deeply mired in denial. Yet, accepting reality as it is, including acknowledging moments of failure, is a prerequisite for making meaningful change. One of the stark realities we must face as a global community is that the system we established in 1992 in the international treaty known as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) which resulted in regular meetings of the state parties known as COPs (conference of the parties) is simply inadequate to the task. This inadequacy applies in spades to the 21st COP which resulted in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement that aimed to keep climate change from wreaking calamitous effects on our way of life and the environment. The system as crafted simply cannot deliver on its promises. More specifically, the goal of limiting the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is already beyond our grasp and the goal of keeping such a rise to well below 2 degrees is a chimera. For those who may have had doubts about the severity of the threat of climate change, the bitter reality of the historically unprecedented rise in global temperatures in the form of unprecedented droughts, floods, sea-level rise, destructive storms, wildfires, and catastrophic loss of biodiversity, is already with us.
The current system is replete with fatal flaws that include the following: First, a reliance on voluntary pledges (or “nationally determined contributions” as they are termed in the Paris Agreement) representing efforts by each country to reduce national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change, simply does not work. Even if all the countries that signed on to the Paris Agreement were to fulfill the pledges they have given, current reports estimate that temperatures likely will still rise beyond the 2 degree Celsius outer limit we have set ourselves. As it stands, however, many countries are nowhere near fulfilling their pledges, putting us on the pathway to a rise in temperatures above pre-industrial levels ranging between 2.5 – 2.9 degrees Celsius by 2100. More importantly, there is no mechanism for holding nations to their promises. The system is therefore unfit for purpose and must be discarded in favor of an effective one.
Second, collective funding for activities like mitigation and adaptation and even research and development into alternative clean energy sources has proven challenging and generally unsuccessful, with poorer developing countries generally finding themselves supplicating, cap in hand, while richer countries respond by ducking and doing whatever it takes to limit their exposure.
Third, the rules governing the COPs require that all decisions be taken by consensus, effectively granting each member country the right to veto any agreement. The result is paralysis or at best agreement based on the lowest common denominator.
Given the degree to which the current COP system is flawed, it is time for us to find an alternative system to combat climate change that includes at its heart an effective pathway to reducing emissions. What humanity desperately needs at this stage in its collective development is a collective decision-making institution in the form of a World Legislature or World Parliament that is democratically elected by the people of the world and equipped with the authority to pass binding international laws in areas where global challenges like climate change demand global solutions. Such a global body should be able, for instance, to pass binding legislation requiring a scheduled universal phase-down of the quantities of fossil fuel that nations can burn. It should also be empowered to levy limited taxes on each member of the global community. Just as we pay state and national taxes, so too, we could be required to pay a modicum of international taxes to defray the costs of meeting our global needs and solving our global challenges. Moreover, decisions of the World Legislature should be based on a two-thirds or other majority vote, rather than requiring unanimity. Last, but by no means least, it should have an enforcement mechanism to ensure that nations comply with the laws it passes.
In sum, it is time to courageously and humbly acknowledge that our COP system does not work and to boldly reimagine a new system for stemming global warming. In this endeavor we would do well to heed the following words of Robert Schuman uttered in 1950: “World peace cannot be safeguarded without creative efforts commensurate with the dangers that threaten it.”
The International Criminal Court’s recent issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza has stirred up a considerable backlash. Dismissing the charges as “absurd and false,” Netanyahu announced that Israel would “not recognize the validity” of the ICC’s action. U.S. President Joe Biden denounced the arrest warrants as “outrageous,” while the French government reversed its stance after agreeing to support them.
Thanks to a vigorous campaign by human rights organizations, the International Criminal Court (ICC) became operational in 2002, with the mandate to prosecute individuals for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and, after 2018, the crime of aggression. Nations ratifying the Rome Statute, the ICC’s authorizing document, assumed responsibility for arresting these individuals and submitting them to the Court for trial. The ICC prosecutes cases only when countries are unwilling or unable to do so, for it was designed to complement, rather than replace, national criminal justice systems.
Operating with clearly delimited powers and limited funding, the ICC, headquartered at the Hague, has thus far usually taken modest but effective action to investigate, prosecute, and convict perpetrators of heinous atrocity crimes.
Although 124 nations have ratified the Rome Statute, Russia, China, the United States, India, Israel, and North Korea are not among them. Indeed, the world’s major military powers, accustomed to the privileged role in world affairs that their armed might usually afford them, have often been at odds with the ICC, for it has the potential to investigate, prosecute, and convict their government officials.
The desire of the “great powers” to safeguard themselves from the enforcement of international law is exemplified by the record of the U.S. government. Although President Bill Clinton signed the Rome Statute in December 2000, he warned about “significant flaws in the treaty,” among them the inability to “protect US officials.” Refusing to support U.S. Senate ratification, he recommended that his successor continue this policy “until our fundamental concerns are satisfied.”
U.S. President George W. Bush “unsigned” the treaty in 2002, pressured other nations into bilateral agreements requiring them to refuse to surrender U.S. nationals to the Court, and signed the American Servicemembers Protection Act, authorizing the use of military force to liberate any Americans held for crimes by the ICC.
Although, subsequently, the Bush and Obama administrations warmed somewhat toward the Court, then engaged in prosecuting African warlords and Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, President Donald Trump reverted to staunch opposition in 2018, informing the UN General Assembly that the U.S. government would not support the ICC, which he claimed had “no jurisdiction, no legitimacy, and no authority.” In 2020, the Trump administration imposed economic sanctions and visa restrictions on top ICC officials for any effort to investigate the actions of U.S. personnel in Afghanistan.
Having previously denied wrongdoing in Bucha, the Russian government reacted furiously to the kidnapping charge. “The very question itself is outrageous,” declared Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, and the ICC’s decisions “are insignificant for the Russian Federation.” Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chair of the Russian Security Council and a former Russian president, publicly threatened a Russian hypersonic missile attack upon the ICC headquarters, remarking: “Judges of the court, look carefully at the sky.” Subsequently, Moscow issued arrest warrants for top ICC officials.
Meanwhile, the United States has continued its ambivalence toward the ICC. President Joe Biden scrapped the Trump sanctions against the Court and authorized the sharing of information and funding for it in its investigations of Russian atrocities in Ukraine. But he reaffirmed “our government’s longstanding objection to the Court’s efforts to assert jurisdiction” over U.S. and Israeli officials.
The incoming Trump administration seems likely to take a much harsher line. The Republican-led House of Representatives recently passed legislation to sanction the ICC, while Republican Senator Lindsay Graham, calling the Court a “dangerous joke,” urged Congress to sanction its prosecutor, and warned U.S. allies that, “if you try to help the ICC, we’re going to sanction you.”
Given the policies of the “great powers,” are the Court’s efforts to enforce international law futile?
Leading advocates of human rights don’t think so. “This is a big day for the many victims of crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine,” declared Amnesty International upon learning of the Court’s arrest warrants for top Russian officials. “The ICC has made Putin a wanted man and taken its first step to end the impunity that has emboldened perpetrators in Russia’s war.” Similarly, Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, stated that the ICC’s issuance of arrest warrants for top Israeli officials represented “an important step toward justice for the Palestinian people. . . . Israeli generals must now think twice about proceeding with the bombing and starving of Palestinian children.”
And, indeed, the ICC’s actions have started to bear fruit. Invited to South Africa to participate in a BRICS conference, Putin canceled his visit after his hosts explained that, in light of the arrest warrant, he was no longer welcome. Also, later that year, Russian officials returned hundreds of Ukrainian children to their parents. Although the results of the ICC’s action against Israeli officials are only starting to unfold, numerous countries have promised to honor the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant.
Even so, the ICC’s enforcement of international criminal justice would be considerably more effective if the major powers stopped obstructing its efforts.
Within nations, when conflicts inevitably erupt, there are laws, as well as police, courts, and governments that enforce the laws.
On the global level, however, governance is quite limited. The UN Security Council, responsible under the UN Charter for maintaining international peace and security, is frequently hamstrung by the veto, which the five great powers of 1945 insisted upon according to themselves. By this April, it had been employed 321 times. Although the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court deliver legally binding judgments, based on international law, such judgments are not always obeyed. The UN General Assembly votes on key international issues as well, but such votes are merely advisory. Consequently, these international organizations issue laudable statements, while the most powerful nations all too frequently defy them and go on their merry, marauding way.
From the overwhelming votes in the UN General Assembly to condemn the Russian and Israeli invasions, we can see what most of the world’s nations want done to address these terrible situations. But there is no implementation of their demand to respect international law―law that lacks effective international enforcement.
Over the course of human history, this international lawlessness has contributed to a might-makes-right approach to world affairs, in which militarily powerful nations play the dominant role. Naturally, then, nations have gravitated toward military buildups, making some very powerful, indeed.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the top military spenders in 2023 (the latest year for which figures are available) are the United States ($916 billion), China ($296 billion), Russia ($109 billion), and India ($84 billion). But others―Israel ($28 billion) and North Korea (amount unknown)―also rank among the big-time military spenders. All told, the nations of the world devoted at least $2,443 billion to war and preparations for war, an increase over the previous year of nearly 7 percent.
Military spending is not the only way to measure militarism. The Global Peace Index 2024, compiled by the Institute for Economics and Peace, used the level of societal safety and security, the extent of ongoing domestic and international conflict, and the degree of militarization to examine 163 independent nations and territories. Not surprisingly, the major military powers ranked low on the scale of peacefulness, including China (88th), India (116th), the United States (132nd), North Korea (152nd), Israel (155th), and Russia (157th).
By contrast to these military behemoths―possessing the mightiest military forces in world history, including arsenals of nuclear weapons―the United Nations has remained a relatively anemic organization, speaking truth but lacking power.
Sometimes, the major military powers cope with the explosive global situation by making deals with one another―although such deals rarely create the basis for a peaceful world. For example, the August 23, 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (better known as the Nazi-Soviet Pact) provided for détente between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, two highly-militarized nations that had previously been at odds. In this secret protocol, Hitler and Stalin agreed to share Poland and give Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, and other East European territories to the Soviet Union. On September 1, Germany invaded western Poland, thereby beginning World War II. Soon thereafter, the Soviet Union took action to seize its share of the spoils. As early as July 1940, however, the German High Command began planning its invasion of the Soviet Union, which occurred the following June, ending this cozy arrangement.
On other occasions, major military powers have formed alliances. Wary of a military attack by their rivals or eager to bolster their strength for a military attack upon them, these “great powers” have enhanced their military might by creating military alliances with weaker nations. The weaker nations, for their part, sometimes seek alliances with the militarily powerful to guarantee their own security.
But alliances, too, have provided a shaky basis for maintaining international peace. During the Cold War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (dominated by the United States) and the Warsaw Pact (dominated by the Soviet Union) engaged in remarkably dangerous nuclear confrontations. Furthermore, both alliances experienced serious internal convulsions. In 1956, Hungary withdrew from the Warsaw Pact, leading to a Soviet invasion that slaughtered 2,500 Hungarians and sent 200,000 fleeing abroad.
Today, the traditional system of every-nation-for-itself is leading to disaster. There are currently 56 active military conflicts in the world, the largest number since the end of World War II. These conflicts are also becoming more internationalized, with 92 nations engaged in a conflict beyond their borders. According to the Global Peace Index, “there has been a significant rise in both conflicts and battle deaths in the past two decades, with battle deaths reaching a thirty-year high.”
Overarching this grim toll lies a revived nuclear arms race, increasingly likely to erupt into a nuclear war that will annihilate most life on Earth.
In this situation, there is a desperate need for effective global governance. Or, to put things differently, the world needs a stronger United Nations―strong enough to resolve conflicts among nations and, thereby, maintain international peace and security.
The time has come to transform the United Nations into a federation of nations that can effectively uphold international law―a government for the world. With such a government, we would have a much better chance of restraining outlaw nations and averting the nuclear catastrophe that looms before us.
Watch CGS’s Global Conversations program with Michael Collins from the Australia-based NGO Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP) to discuss the key findings from the Global Peace Index 2024, a report produced by which measures the relative position of nations’ and regions’ peacefulness. This years’ report reveals that the world is at a crossroads. Without concerted effort, there is a risk of a surge in major conflicts. Next to the annual global and regional results and longer-term trends, the GPI will this year also highlight the changing nature of conflicts, tensions in the Middle East and increasing global military capability. We are pleased to continue our partnership with the Institute for Economics & Peace to launch and discuss the new annual Global Peace Index (GPI).
First launched in 2007 and developed in consultation with an international panel of peace experts from institutes and think tanks with data collected by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the GPI report presents the most comprehensive data-driven analysis to date on peace, its economic value, trends, and how to develop peaceful societies. The report covers 163 independent states and territories, comprising 99.7% of the world’s population and uses 23 qualitative and quantitative indicators from highly respected sources to compile the Index. These indicators are grouped into three key domains: Ongoing Conflict, Safety and Security, and Militarization. The report has been endorsed by such eminences as former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Dalai Lama, and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Martti Ahtisaari.
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Keshet Benschikovski
Program Associate
Keshet Benschikovski is a Program Associate at Citizens for Global Solutions, where she supports the development, implementation, and coordination of CGS program activities. She brings a diverse background in international development, humanitarian assistance, and conflict resolution, with experience spanning project assistance, policy research, and business development.
Prior to joining Citizens for Global Solutions, Keshet served as a Project Assistant with the International Organization for Migration, where she played a key role in case management for the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. She previously worked at Social Impact, where she led knowledge management initiatives and contributed to the development of multimillion-dollar proposals for international development activities promoting democracy, human rights, and governance. Her experience also includes research, advocacy, and reporting assistance for EcoPeace Middle East, where she supported environmental cooperation initiatives in Israel, Palestine, and Jordan.
Keshet holds an M.A. in Conflict Resolution and Mediation from Tel Aviv University and a B.A. in International Studies from American University. She holds certificates in Mediation from Tel Aviv University and Results-Based Management from UNICEF.
Anthony Vance
Senior Representative, Bahá'ís of the U.S. Office of Public Affairs
Anthony oversees the development of the Bahá'ís of the United States Office of Public Affairs programs and strategic direction. He joined the office in 2010 after spending four years at the Baháʼí World Center in Haifa, Israel representing it to the diplomatic community, civil society, and parts of the host government. A lawyer by training, he spent 21 years in the U.S. Agency for International Development in legal and managerial positions in Washington, Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Botswana, and Egypt. Anthony holds a B.A. in Economics, an MBA, and a J.D. from Harvard University.
James Lowell May
Program Officer
James May is a programme and project development specialist. He has lived in Serbia since 2005, and prior to joining Citizens for Global Solutions, worked across the Western Balkans on a broad range of issues including human, minority and child rights, accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity, Holocaust commemoration, democratic participation, social justice and economic empowerment, and environmental restoration.
James began working in the Western Balkans on issues related to accountability for human rights violations, first for the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, a coalition of NGOs active in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, as the network’s development coordinator, then the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights, leading a research project documenting the nomenclatural of the Milosevic Regime, and then the Federation of Jewish Communities in Serbia, running a Holocaust research and education project.
James then transitioned from accountability to efforts to protect and fulfil the rights of marginalised communities. For a decade James worked for the Centre for Youth Integration, an NGO that provides specialized services for children and youth in street situations in Belgrade, where he began as a volunteer before taking up a permanent role, while concurrently volunteering for community mental health organizations, as well as consultancy work for a number of local and international organizations, and most recently branched out to apply his experience to the environmental sector, focussing on social impact assessments and community-oriented nature-based solutions projects.
James has a degree in Archaeology from University College London. He was born and grew up in Great Britain. He is an avid cyclist.
Honorable David J. Scheffer
Former U.S. Ambassador
Amb. David J. Scheffer is senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), with a focus on international law and international criminal justice. Scheffer was the Mayer Brown/Robert A. Helman Professor of Law (2006-2020) and is Director Emeritus of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. He is Professor of Practice at Arizona State University (Washington offices). He was Vice-President of the American Society of International Law (2020-2022) and held the International Francqui Professorship at KU Leuven in Belgium in 2022. From 2012 to 2018 he was the UN Secretary-General’s Special Expert on UN Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials, and he was the Tom A. Bernstein Genocide Prevention Fellow working with the Ferencz International Justice Initiative at the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (2019-2021).
During the second term of the Clinton Administration (1997-2001), Scheffer was the first ever U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues and led the U.S. delegation to the UN talks establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC). He signed the Rome Statute of the ICC on behalf of the United States on December 31, 2000. He negotiated the creation of five war crimes tribunals: the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, and the ICC. He chaired the Atrocities Prevention Inter-Agency Working Group (1998-2001). During the first term of the Clinton Administration (1993-1997), Scheffer served as senior advisor and counsel to the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Dr. Madeleine Albright, and he served on the Deputies Committee of the National Security Council. Ambassador Scheffer received an A.B. (Government and Economics) from Harvard College, B.A. (Honour School of Jurisprudence) from Oxford University (where he was a Knox Fellow), and LL.M. (International and Comparative Law) from Georgetown University Law Center.
Jon Kozesky
Director of Development
Jon brings over 17 years of experience in development and fundraising in both the public and private sectors. He started his career in politics working in the Ohio Statehouse and later in the office of U.S. Congressman Steven LaTourette, as well as former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. After leaving Capitol Hill, Jon pursued his passion of helping nonprofits secure the resources they needed to best serve their constituents. This passion led to his founding of Jon Thomas Consulting, a boutique nonprofit management and development firm serving organizations across the United States and throughout the world in streamlining their processes and maximizing their revenue growth through grant writing, government affairs, donor stewardship, and major event planning.
Prior to his fundraising career, Jon proudly served his community as a firefighter and water rescue diver. In his personal time, Jon is a champion competitive sailor and a bit of a thrill-seeker, having skydived and bungee jumped on 6 continents.
Hannah Fields
Communications Officer
Hannah Fields is a communications and digital content specialist with over ten years of experience working in the nonprofit, global health, and higher education sectors. She has supported organizations, such as Mayo Clinic and the American Academy of Political and Social Science, with editorial projects, digital content management, and a broad range of communications outreach. During her time in global health, she worked alongside Christian Connections for International Health (CCIH) to assist in their mission of advancing health and wholeness for all people through capacity-building, networking, fellowship, and advocacy.
Hannah also has a background in book publishing, having received her Master of Letters in Publishing Studies from the University of Stirling. She has worked with several US and UK publishers to create high-quality printed and digital products for readers. Hannah also founded Folkways Press in 2020 to create a platform for authors of all backgrounds to use the power of their words to address social issues through themes of mental health, human rights, and more.
Marvin Perry
Accounting Manager
Marvin has been working in the areas of HIV/AIDS, international peace and human rights. He has worked with both national and international non-profits in the DC area. Marvin brings years of experience in non-profit finance and administration. Marvin is a certified human resources professional and holds an MBA from Howard University School of Business.
Peter Orvetti
Communications Consultant
Peter Orvetti is an editor and political analyst who has spent most of his career providing daily intelligence briefings for the White House across four presidential administrations, as well as multiple Cabinet agencies, trade associations, and Fortune 500 companies. He is the author of several “Young People’s Guides” to various U.S. federal elections and is a former daily columnist for NBC Universal’s Washington, D.C., website.
He has been involved with CGS and other world federalist organizations for more than a decade and publishes the daily “One World Digest” email newsletter. He is also a theater reviewer and an actor in both professional and amateur productions.
Bob Flax
CGS Education Fund President
Bob Flax, Ph.D. is the former Executive Director of Citizens for Global Solutions (now retired). He has spent a lifetime addressing human suffering, first as a psychologist, then as an organization development consultant, and for more than a decade, as a global activist through the World Federalist Movement. He also teaches in the Transformative Social Change Program at Saybrook University.
Bob has a B.A. in Psychology and Philosophy from New York University (1977), an M.A. in Psychology from Long Island University (1980), a Ph.D. in Psychology from Saybrook Institute (1992), an M.A. in Organization Development from Sonoma State University (2007), a Certificate in Global Affairs from New York University (2015) and a Diploma in Global Leadership at the UN Peace University in Costa Rica (2019).
Bob’s love of adventure has led him to international trekking, scuba diving, and climbing the tallest mountains on 3 continents. He also maintains a Buddhist meditation practice and lives in a co-housing community in Northern California.
Rebecca A. Shoot
Executive Director
Rebecca A. Shoot is an international lawyer and democracy and governance practitioner with more than 15 years of experience in the non-governmental, inter-governmental, and private sectors supporting human rights, democratic processes, and the rule of law on five continents.
In nearly a decade with the National Democratic Institute (NDI), Rebecca held numerous positions in headquarters and the field supporting and leading democracy and governance programs in Central and Eastern Europe and Southern and East Africa. She subsequently moved to a leadership role steering NDI’s Governance projects globally and directing programming for the bipartisan House Democracy Partnership of the U.S. House of Representatives. Rebecca created a global parliamentary campaign for Democratic Renewal and Human Rights as Senior Advisor to Parliamentarians for Global Action (PGA), an international network of legislators committed to collaboration to promote democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Prior to that, she directed PGA’s International Law and Human Rights Programme and ran PGA’s office in The Hague. Most recently, she helmed global programming to promote gender equality and criminal justice reform for the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI).
Rebecca is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia and is a member of several bar associations, including the American Branch of the International Law Association (ABILA), where she serves as Advocacy Director for the International Criminal Court (ICC) Committee. She served as a Visiting Professional in the Presidency of the ICC and has provided pro bono legal expertise to The Carter Center, International Refugee Assistance Project, United Nations Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances, and U.S. Marine Corps University, where she helped develop the international humanitarian law curriculum.
Rebecca earned a Juris Doctorate with Honors from Emory University School of Law, where she received several academic distinctions, including the David J. Bederman Fellowship in International Law and Conley-Ingram Scholarship for Public Interest Leadership. She earned a Master of Science in Democracy & Democratisation from University College London School of Public Policy and a Bachelor of Arts Magna Cum Laude in Political Science from Kenyon College. She holds certificates in Conflict Analysis from the U.S. Institute of Peace and in Public International Law from The Hague Academy of International Law.
As Executive Director of CGS, Rebecca will continue her current role as Co-Convener of the Washington Working Group for the International Criminal Court (WICC), a diverse coalition of human rights organizations, legal associations, former government officials, and leading legal professionals. CGS and WICC have a rich and intertwined history that this dual appointment brings full circle, with CGS formerly serving as host for the coalition and with several current and former common Board and National Advisory Committee members.
She also acts, directs, and writes for the theater.
Helen Caldicott
Physician, Author, and Speaker
Helen Caldicott is a physician, author, and anti-nuclear advocate. She founded several associations dedicated to opposing the use of nuclear power, depleted uranium munitions, nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons proliferation, and military action in general. In 1980, she founded the Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament (WAND), which was later renamed Women’s Action for New Directions. In 2008, she founded the Helen Caldicott Foundation for a Nuclear Free Future.
Blanche Wiesen Cook
Professor, Author, and Historian
Blanche Wiesen Cook is a Distinguished Professor of History and Women’s Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. She is author of a three-volume biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as The Declassified Eisenhower: A Divided Legacy of Peace and Political Warfare.
David Cortright
Author, Activist, and Leader
David Cortright is director of Policy Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame and chair of the Board of the Fourth Freedom Forum. In 1977, Cortright was named the executive director of he Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy (SANE), which under his direction became the largest disarmament organization in the U.S. Cortright initiated the 1987 merger of SANE and the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign and served for a time as co-director of the merged organization. In 2002, he helped to found the Win Without War coalition in opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
He is the author or co-editor of 19 books including Waging Peace in Vietnam: U.S. Soldiers and Veterans Who Opposed the War, Gandhi and Beyond: Nonviolence for a New Political Age, and Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas.
Andrea Cousins
Psychologist, Psychoanalyst, and Anthropologist
Andrea Cousins is a psychologist and psychoanalyst who has practiced for more than 30 years. She has a doctorate in anthropology from Harvard University and a Doctor of Psychology degree from the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology. Her father, journalist and peace activist Norman Cousins, served as president of the World Federalist Association and chairman of the Committee for Sane Nuclear Policy, and was honored with recognitions including the United Nations Peace Medal.
Gary Dorrien
Professor, Author, Social Ethicist
Gary Dorrien is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Religion at Columbia University. An Episcopal priest, he has taught as the Paul E. Raither Distinguished Scholar at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and as Horace De Y. Lentz Visiting Professor at Harvard Divinity School.
He is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America’s Religion and Socialism Commission and the author of 18 books on ethics, social theory, philosophy, theology, politics, and intellectual history.
Daniel Ellsberg
Lecturer, Writer, and Activist
Daniel Ellsberg is a political activist and former military analyst. While employed by the RAND Corporation, Ellsberg precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of the U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War, to The New York Times, The Washington Post and other newspapers.
Since the end of the Vietnam War, Ellsberg has continued his political activism, giving lecture tours and speaking out about current events. Ellsberg was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 2006. In 2018, he was awarded the 2018 Olof Palme Prize for his “profound humanism and exceptional moral courage.”
Oscar Andrew Hammerstein
Painter, Writer, Lecturer, and Historian
Oscar Andrew Hammerstein is a painter, writer, and lecturer. He has taught graduate-level courses on New York theatre history and general musical theatre history as an adjunct professor at Columbia University. He is the author of The Hammersteins: A Musical Theatre Family.
Randy Kehler
Pacifist Activist
Randy Kehler is a pacifist activist who served 22 months in prison for returning his draft card in 1969 and refusing to seek exemption as a conscientious objector, seeing that as a form of cooperation with the Vietnam war effort. He played a key role in persuading Daniel Ellsberg to release the Pentagon Papers, and later served as executive director of the National Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign. Kehler and his wife Betsy Corner refused to pay taxes for military expenditures, resulting in the federal seizure of their Massachusetts home in 1989. They continue to withhold their federal income taxes.
Gordon Orians
Ecologist
Gordon Orians, an ornithologist and ecologist for more than half a century, has focused his work on behavioral ecology and the relationships between ecology and social organization, as well as on the interface between science and public policy. He was director of the University of Washington Seattle’s Institute for Environmental Studies for a decade and has also served on the Board of Directors of the World Wildlife Fund and on state boards of the Nature Conservancy and Audubon.
Orians was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1989 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1990.
William Pace
International Organizer
William Pace was the founding convenor of the Coalition for an International Criminal Court (ICC) and a co-founder of the International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect. He has been engaged in international justice, rule of law, environmental law, and human rights for four decades, serving as executive director of the World Federalist Movement-Institute for Global Policy, secretary-general of the Hague Appeal for Peace, director of the Center for the Development of International Law, and director of Section Relations of the Concerts for Human Rights Foundation at Amnesty International, among other roles. He is the recipient of the William J. Butler Human Rights Medal from the Urban Morgan Institute for Human Rights and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the ICC.
James T. Ranney
Professor, International Legal Consultant, and Author
James T. Ranney is an adjunct professor of international law at Widener Law School. He co-founded the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center in Montana and served as a legal consultant to the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. He has written extensively on the abolition of nuclear weapons and the establishment of international dispute resolution mechanisms.
Rick Ulfik
The Founder of WE, The World, and the WE Campaign
Rick Ulfik is the founder of We, The World, an international coalition-building organization whose Mission is to maximize social change globally. He and his organization work closely with the New York Center for Nonviolent Communication, where he has been a facilitator since 2004. He is also the co-creator of the annual 11 Days of Global Unity - 11 Ways to Change the World, September 11-21.
He is an award-winning composer and keyboard player who has written, arranged, produced and orchestrated music for television networks, feature films, commercials, and albums. He has performed with Queen Latifah, Phoebe Snow, Carlos Santana, Bernadette Peters, and Judy Collins.
John Stowe
Bishop
John Stowe is the Roman Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Lexington, Kentucky. He is a member of the Order of Friars Minor Conventual, a mendicant religious order founded by Francis of Assisi. In 2015, Pope Francis appointed Stowe bishop of the Diocese of Lexington. He is the Episcopal President of the U.S. board of Pax Christi, an international Catholic Christian peace movement with a focus on human rights, disarmament, nonviolence, and related issues.
Barbara Smith
Author, Activist, and Scholar
Barbara Smith has played a significant role in Black feminism in the U.S. for more than 50 years. She taught at numerous colleges and universities for 25 years and has been published in a wide range of publications including The New York Times Book Review, Ms., Gay Community News, The Village Voice, and The Nation.
Among her many honors are the African American Policy Forum Harriet Tubman Lifetime Achievement Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and the Stonewall Award for Service to the Lesbian and Gay Community. In 2014, SUNY Press published Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith.
William J. Ripple
Conservationist, Author, and Professor
William J. Ripple is a Distinguished Professor of Ecology in the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society at Oregon State University. He has published two books and has authored more than 200 scientific journal articles on topics including conservation, ecology, wildlife, and climate change. He was the co-lead author on the 2020 paper “The World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency,” which was endorsed by more than 14,000 scientist signatories from around the world. He is the director of the Alliance of World Scientists, which has approximately 26,000 scientist members from 180 countries.
Mark Ritchie
President, Global Minnesota
Mark Ritchie is Chair of Minnesota's World Fair Bid Committee Educational Fund. From 2019 - 2022 he served as president of Global Minnesota, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization devoted to advancing international understanding and engagement. Ritchie was Minnesota's elected Secretary of State from 2007 to 2015. Since leaving elected public service, he has led the public-private partnership working to bring a world exposition (World's Fair) to Minnesota and he has served on the board of directors for LifeSource, Communicating for America, U.S. Vote Foundation, and Expo USA. He is also a national advisory board member of the federal Election Assistance Commission, where he serves as National Secretary.
Kim Stanley Robinson
Author
Kim Stanley Robinson is the author of many works of science fiction, including the internationally bestselling Mars trilogy, and more recently Red Moon, New York 2140, and The Ministry for the Future. His work has been translated into 25 languages, and won awards including the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards. In 2016, asteroid 72432 was named “Kimrobinson.”
Leila Nadya Sadat
Special Advisor to the ICC Chief Prosecutor, Professor, Author
Leila Sadat is the James Carr Professor of International Criminal Law at Washington University School of Law and the director of the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute. She is an internationally recognized expert on the International Criminal Court (ICC) and served as Special Advisor on Crimes Against Humanity to Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda of the ICC. She is also the director of the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative, a multi-year project to study the problem of crimes against humanity and draft a comprehensive convention addressing their punishment and prevention. She is a former member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, served as the Alexis de Tocqueville Distinguished Fulbright Chair at the University of Cergy-Pontoise in Paris, and is the author of several books.
Martin Sheen
Actor, Activist, and Leader
Martin Sheen is an Emmy Award-winning and Golden Globe Award-winning actor who has worked with directors including Francis Ford Coppola and Oliver Stone, in addition to starring as the U.S. president on the long-running television drama “The West Wing.” In his early days as a struggling actor in New York, he met activist Dorothy Day, beginning his lifelong commitment to social justice.
The self-described pacifist was an early opponent of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and has been a consistent opponent of nuclear arms. As honorary mayor of Malibu, California in 1989, he declared the city a nuclear-free zone. Nearly 20 years later, Sheen was arrested during a protest at the Nevada Test Site. Sheen said in 2009 that he had been arrested 66 times for acts of civil disobedience, leading one activist to declare Sheen to have “a rap sheet almost as long as his list of film credits.”
Sheen has also been active in anti-genocide and pro-immigrant causes, as well as in the environmental movement. In 2010, he told a crowd of young people, “While acting is what I do for a living, activism is what I do to stay alive.” In a 1963 episode of “The Outer Limits,” he portrayed a future astronaut wearing a large breast patch that read “UE. Unified Earth.”
