United Nations Parliamentary Assembly

A United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA) is a proposed addition to the United Nations System that would allow for greater participation and voice for members of parliament. The idea was raised at the founding of the League of Nations in the 1920s and again following the end of World War II in 1945, but remained dormant throughout the Cold War. The Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (CUNPA) was formed in 2007 by Democracy Without Borders (formerly Committee for a Democratic U.N.) to coordinate pro-UNPA efforts, which as of June 2017 has received the support of over 1,600 members of parliament from over 100 countries worldwide. The Commission on Global Security, Justice and Governance, chaired by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Nigerian Foreign Minister Ibrahim Gambari, has called for the creation of a United Nations Parliamentary Network "to raise greater awareness and participation by strengthening the voices of legislators in global institutions." The commission proposes that this Network "would be similar in initial composition to the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and the Parliamentary Conference on the World Trade Organization". In July 2018, the European Parliament adopted a recommendation to the European Council endorsing a proposal for the establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly.

Supporters have set forth possible UNPA implementations, including promulgation of a new treaty; creation of a UNPA as a subsidiary body of the UN General Assembly; and evolution of a UNPA from the Inter-Parliamentary Union or another non-governmental organization. Several proposals for apportionment of votes have been raised to address disparities in population and economic power of UN members. CUNPA advocates initially giving the UNPA advisory powers and gradually increasing its authority over the UN system. In 2018, CUNPA's co-founders Jo Leinen and Andreas Bummel published a 420-page book on the history, current relevance and future implementation of the idea titled "A World Parliament: Governance and Democracy in the 21st Century".

History

Proposals for a parliamentary assembly in the global organization of nations date back to at least the 1920s, when League of Nations founders considered (and rejected) plans to include a people's assembly as part of the league's structure. League and UN founding documents include few mechanisms for direct participation by citizens or legislators, aside from Article 71 provision allowing ECOSOC to grant consultative status to certain organizations, and the Chapter XVIII and XIX requirements that ratification and amendments be approved by member states "in accordance with their respective constitutional processes" which typically involve legislative and/or public input. In 1945, a people's world assembly was proposed by British politician Ernest Bevin, who said in the House of Commons that "There should be a study of a house directly elected by the people of the world to whom the nations are accountable."

On 16 October 1945, before the UN Charter had even entered into force, retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts and former New Hampshire Governor Robert P. Bass held a conference in Dublin, New Hampshire, which passed the Dublin Declaration. It stated that the UN Charter was inadequate to preserve peace and proposed the transformation of the UN General Assembly into a world legislature, opining, "Such a government should be based upon a constitution under which all peoples and nations will participate upon a basis of balanced representation which will take account of natural and industrial resources and other factors as well as population. It cannot be based on treaties...in which the states...act and vote as states". It called for "limited but definite and adequate power for the prevention of war." Grenville Clark and other participants in the Dublin conference went on to become active in the United World Federalists (UWF) and the global World Federalist Movement. UWF enjoyed some success in the postwar period, as 23 state legislatures passed bills supporting the organization's goals, but McCarthyism prompted many prominent members to resign lest Senator Joseph McCarthy ruin their careers. In the United States, internationalism came to be associated with communism.

In the post-Cold War era, several factors contributed to a more favourable environment for UNPA proposals. A Trilateral Commission report notes that the shift from a world led by the two rival Soviet- and U.S.-led blocs meant a general diffusion of power. Growth of economic interdependence, proliferation of transnational actors, nationalism in weak states, spread of technology, and increasing numbers of issues (such as global environmental problems and weapons of mass destruction containment) that are both domestic and international generated stronger incentive to develop international cooperation than ever before. Democracy in general had spread; in 2003, Freedom House counted 121 electoral democracies, compared to 66 in 1987 and 30 in 1975 (although by the mid-2000s, the trend appeared to have stagnated). The rapidly integrating European Union, a unique supranational body whose European Parliament was gradually growing in power, provided an example to the world of how a multi-nation parliament can evolve and function. The World Trade Organization and similar organizations generated great concern as they seemed to be gaining more influence and control over trade disputes, yet were not accountable to the people;Watson, Graham (26 September 2007)
The Case for Global Democracy: Cross Party Coalition of MEPs calls for a UN Parliamentary Assembly
. Graham Watson MEP. Retrieved 7 December 2007. U.S. President Bill Clinton argued, "We must insist that international trade organizations be open to public scrutiny instead of mysterious, secret things subject to wild criticism." A "new diplomacy" seemed to be taking shape in which NGOs and governments cooperated to create new global institutions such as the International Criminal Court. U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy Chairman Harold C. Pachios of Preti, Flaherty, Beliveau & Pachios noted:

In early 1993, the House of Commons of Canada Standing Committee on External Affairs and International Trade presented a report stating, "By way of building the public and political constituency for the United Nations, the Committee recommends that Canada support the development of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly." The Campaign for a Democratic United Nations (CAMDUN), the International Network for a United Nations Second Assembly (INFUSA), and the Global People's Assembly Movement (GPAM), began circulating UNPA proposals around 1995, and other organizations, such as One World Trust, began publishing analyses of how to proceed in the current political situation. On 8 February 2005, on the initiative of the Committee for a Democratic UN (today Democracy Without Borders), 108 Swiss Parliamentarians signed an open letter to the Secretary-General calling for the establishment of just such a body. On 14 May 2005, the Congress of the Liberal International issued a resolution stating that "the Liberal International calls on the member states of the United Nations to enter into deliberations on the establishment of a Parliamentary Assembly at the United Nations." On 9 June 2005, the European Parliament issued a resolution that contained an item stating that Europarl "calls for the establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA) within the UN System, which would increase the democratic profile and internal democratic process of the organisation and allow world civil society to be directly associated in the decision-making process; states that the Parliamentary Assembly should be vested with genuine rights of information, participation and control, and should be able to adopt recommendations directed at the UN General Assembly; .. In 2006, Citizens for a United Nations People's Assembly circulated a petition to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to "convene a High Level Panel to determine the steps required for the establishment of a Peoples' Parliamentary Assembly within the United Nations Organization"

In April 2007, international NGOs launched the International Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, the principal current movement for the establishment of a UNPA. Its secretariat is led by Democracy Without Borders. Over 150 civil society groups and nearly 1,500 parliamentarians from all over the world are taking part in the Campaign. As of June 2017, CUNPA's appeal was endorsed by thousands of signatories from over 150 countries, among them hundreds of parliamentarians, civil society leaders, leading academics and distinguished individuals such as former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the President of the Pan-African Parliament, Gertrude Mongella, Academy Award winner Emma Thompson, SF-author Sir Arthur C. Clarke and Edgar Mitchell, former NASA astronaut and sixth human being to walk on the moon. On 25 September 2007, the statement by H.E. Mr. José Sócrates, Prime Minister of Portugal, on behalf of the European Union, at the United Nations 62nd Session of the General Assembly, General Debate, stated, "We remain committed to the reform of its main bodies in order to enhance the Organization's representativity, transparency and effectiveness." On 24 October 2007, the Pan African Parliament unanimously adopted a resolution calling for the establishment of a Parliamentary Assembly at the United Nations, noting, "in contrast to regional international bodies such as the African Union, the European Union, the Council of Europe, or Mercosur, the United Nations and its
specialized organizations is one of the last international fora lacking an integrated and institutionalized Parliamentary Assembly."Pan African Parliament (October 2007)
A United Nations Parliamentary Assembly
. 8th Ordinary Session of the Pan-African Parliament, Midrand, South Africa, October 2007, Committee on Cooperation, International Relations and Conflict Resolution, Motion introduced by Mokshanand Sunil DOWARKASING (Mauritius), Adopted by the house on 24 October 2007. Retrieved 7 December 2007. So far, four international conferences of CUNPA have taken place.Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly
Retrieved 12 December 2011.

One of the most influential and well-known pro-UN organizations, UNA-USA has been on both sides of the issue. In 2003, UNA-USA's executive director of policy studies, Jeffrey Laurenti, wrote an article, "An Idea Whose Time Has Not Come", arguing that there were important unresolved issues of inclusivity, authority, and efficiency with the UNPA.Laurenti, Jeffrey (May 2003)
UN Reform: Is a World Parliamentary Assembly needed? An Idea Whose Time Has Not Come.
United Nations Association of the United States of America. Retrieved 7 December 2007. UNA's position seemed to reverse in November 2006, when the 38th plenary session of the World Federation of United Nations Associations issued a resolution stating that it "Supports the establishment of a United Nations parliamentary Assembly as a consultative body within the United Nations system as a voice of the citizens; Calls upon the governments of the United Nations member states, parliamentarians and civil society representatives to jointly examine possible steps and options to create a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly."

According to Stefan Marschall, the post-World War II years, particularly the 1980s and 1990s, saw tremendous growth in parliamentary assemblies, with more than 40 established since 1949. About 42% of the world's parliamentary assemblies are formally affiliated with an intergovernmental organization; 32% are informally affiliated; and 26% are unaffiliated. The spread in parliamentary assemblies was spurred by acceptance of parliamentarism as a means of legitimizing decisions; initiatives for intergovernmental cooperation reaching a point at which stronger parliamentary backing was needed; and regional integration. However, many global organizations, such as the UN and WTO, still lack a parliamentary assembly and "have been heavily criticized for what is supposed to be an institutional deficit."

On 9 February 2010, a resolution of an international conference of sitting and former judges of the supreme courts of over 30 countries that took place in Lucknow, India, called for a revision of the United Nations Charter and for the establishment of a world parliament.

In 2013, the East African Legislative Assembly passed a resolution supporting the establishment of a UNPA, and urged the East African Community to take the initiative to promote the development of a common African position in support of the envisaged Parliamentary Assembly. The resolution, which argued that a UNPA would improve the UN's transparency, accountability and effectiveness, was proposed by Mike Sebalu and supported by Makongoro Nyerere, Frederic Ngenzebuhoro, Adam Kimbisa, Dan Kidega, Nusura Tiperu, and Abubakar Zein Abubakar.

In July 2018, the European Parliament adopted a recommendation to the European Council endorsing a proposal for the establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly.

Implementation

Five options for creating a UN Parliamentary Assembly have been proposed in various assessments. Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, the United Nations Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order summarizes several options as:

Amending the UN Charter

Amending the UN Charter, possibly through a Charter Review Conference under Article 109 of the UN Charter, is a commonly cited possibility, including by Louis Sohn and Grenville Clark in their 1958 book '' World Peace Through World Law''. According to Pat Orvis of the Foreign Policy Association, this path is difficult because it requires ratification by two-thirds of UN members, including all five permanent members of the Security Council. There have been only five amendments to the UN Charter since 1945, and none of them were done through the Article 109 process.

Establishing the UNPA as a subsidiary body of the UN General Assembly

The World Federalist Movement-Canada asserts that the General Assembly has authority to establish the UNPA as a subsidiary body of the UN General Assembly under Article 22 of the UN Charter. Erskine Childers and Sir Brian Urquhart endorsed this approach in their 1994 book, ''Renewing the United Nations System''. The Committee for a Democratic UN recommended the establishment of UNPA by Article 22 or a transformation of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in its report, ''Developing International Democracy'', authored by Andreas Bummel, co-founder and director of the UNPA campaign. In 2006, the Council of Europe passed a resolution noting, "A decisive step towards the development of a UN parliamentary dimension could be the establishment of an experimental parliamentary committee with consultative functions for General Assembly committees."

Nongovernmental organization of democratically elected legislators.

Parliamentarians for Global Action, however, have suggested a non-governmental organization of democratically elected legislators, which they claim would have the advantage of not requiring the cooperation of (sometimes dictatorial) national governments or world parliamentary organizations with dictatorial members, so only democratic legislators, parliaments and countries would be represented. Dieter Heinrich critiqued this approach by saying, "If it did succeed on any scale, it would divert resources from pressuring governments on thousands of specific issues, which citizens are good at, into the operation of a pan-global institutional structure, which citizens' groups are ill equipped to do...And the resulting assembly would always be of doubtful legitimacy (who does it really represent?) and of unlikely value as an evolutionary starting point for a real world parliament."Heinrich, Dieter (October 1992)
The Case for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly
(PDF). CEUNPA. Archived from th
original
on 27 November 2011. Retrieved 11 October 2022.

Stand-alone treaty

Andrew Strauss of the One World Trust, has put forward establishing a new, stand-alone treaty, which he claims would require as few as 20 or 30 economically and geographically diverse countries to establish a UNPA, which could expand as more countries ratified the treaty. Strauss notes that this is the method by which most international bodies, such the World Health Organization, International Labour Organization, and International Criminal Court, were founded.Strauss, Andrew (2007)
Taking Democracy Global: Assessing the Benefits and Challenges of a Global Parliamentary Assembly
(PDF), One World Trust, 2007. Retrieved 7 December 2007. José Enrique Alvarez, Professor of International Law at New York University School of Law suggests this route would begin via a conference of plenipotentiaries to draft the treaty which would then need to be ratified by each individual countries.Alvarez, Jose E
The New Treaty Makers
, Boston College Law School. Retrieved 7 December 2007.

Use and/or transform the Inter-Parliamentary Union

The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) is a body which was granted observer status in 2002. The IPU's Second World Conference of Speakers of Parliament adopted a resolution stating, "We would greatly welcome more substantive interaction and coordination with the United Nations, and call upon the world body to resort more frequently to the political and technical expertise which the IPU together with its Member Parliaments can provide." Moreover, a 2005 article by IPU Secretary-General Anders B. Johnsson stated that, "It makes little practical or political sense to set up a separate parliamentary assembly alongside the existing governmental General Assembly." The Inter-Parliamentary Union has at times supported a reformed IPU as a substitute for a UNPA, saying, "The Union had the necessary experience, and further bureaucracy should be avoided." Many national parliaments, however, are currently not members of the IPU.

Powers

The CUNPA proposes that the UNPA begin as a consultative body whose powers could be augmented as it evolved into a directly elected assembly: "Step by step, it should be provided with genuine rights of information, participation and control vis-à-vis the UN and the organizations of the UN system." An article in the '' Asian-Pacific Law & Policy Journal'' notes that precedents for this idea include the British Parliament, French Estates-General, U.S. Congress, and the European Parliament, which are all systems in which, over time, power shifted to directly elected officials: "In the past, fledgling democracy has always had to compromise with the realities of power and evolve step-by-step, where possible. This is often accomplished in the form of a 'non-democratic' additional house in the parliamentary structure. Thus, in Britain, the necessity of compromise of the 'common people' with the powers and interests of the armed and titled nobility necessitated a bicameral system incorporating the House of Lords, as well as the House of Commons. The French Estates-General included similar power blocs as 'estates' or functional separate houses, and the United States Senate reflected a necessary compromise of the interests of less populous states hesitant to subject themselves to 'democratic inundation' by the more populous states."Sheppard, Robert (2000)
Towards a U.N. World Parliament: U.N. Reform for the Progressive Evolution of an Elective and Accountable Democratic Parliamentary Process in U.N. Governance in the New Millennium
Asian-Pacific Law & Policy Journal. Retrieved 7 December 2007.

World federalists often point out that a democratic union of peoples, rather than governments, is suggested by the opening words of the Preamble to the United Nations Charter, "We the peoples ..." This sentiment was expressed by Theo van Boven, who said, "A more democratic United Nations as envisaged by the campaign for a UN Parliament will strengthen the legitimacy of We the peoples of the United Nations in whose name the UN Charter was proclaimed." According to the Committee for a Democratic UN, "The UNPA concept is the first step towards a democratic world parliament". World federalists typically view an empowered democratic assembly as a means of preventing war by providing everyone a peaceful means of pursuing their political objectives. Walter Cronkite, for instance, said, "Within the next few years, we must change the basic structure of our global community from the present anarchic system of war and ever more destructive weaponry to a new system governed by a democratic UN federation."

But there is some opposition to the idea of an empowered global parliament. A 2007 BBC poll of approximately 12,000 respondents asked, "How likely would you be to support a Global Parliament, where votes are based on country population sizes, and the global parliament is able to make binding policies?" Of those polled, 19.1% responded "Very unlikely–it is a bad idea"; 14.9% responded "Quite unlikely–but it might work"; 23.1% said "Quite likely–but with reservations"; and 14.4% said "Very likely–it is a good idea". The poll was broken out by country, and the U.S. and Australia showed the strongest opposition. Potential challenge to the UNPA are political organizations such as the U.S. Constitution Party, and politicians such as 2008 U.S. presidential candidate Ron Paul, which favour withdrawal from the United Nations and other multilateral organizations altogether due to sovereignty concerns. Canadian Action Party leader Connie Fogal also opposes the UNPA, saying, "It is very revealing to see the NDP and the Greens as part of and promoting this...Further, the European assembly has proven to be a rubber stamping mechanism of bureaucratic decisions. This is not democracy." In addition, a Civicus article warns, "With an unexpected backlash against civil society

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