"Here’s a suggestion for UN reform: global decisions made by elected representatives of global citizens rather than by appointees of nations." 

By ELIZABETH SNELL

In All-Star games, players set aside home team rivalries to work for a common cause. After 60 years, Earth’s All-Star team of United Nations ambassadors still hasn’t grasped this concept. Nor have many observers. When the game unravels, too often it’s the Secretary General and the staff who get the blame, even though they just run the stadium. 

 The United Nations aspires to speak for the global community. But the geopolitical realities of 1945 imposed a UN structure in which that community is represented by unelected ambassadors from each nation state. These appointees are steeped in home team loyalty; their coaches urge them to hog the ball. 

 A few giants from the pro leagues freeze the action to maintain their dominance; the minor leagues all-stars are swept aside.  Ambassadors of the major arms-exporting nations dominate the Security Council’s decisions on peace. Proud democracies sabotage their principles by demanding vetoes. UN staff copes with this dysfunctional team on an annual budget less than New York City’s education department. We the peoples are left to watch our All-Star team divided and paralysed. 

 The main problem isn’t inefficiency – it’s lack of democracy. 

 Here’s a suggestion for UN reform: global decisions made by elected representatives of global citizens rather than by appointees of nations. 

 Unlike national diplomats, global citizens are much freer to see that we’re all on the same team. When the media shines its light on distant disasters, empathy flows from all corners of the world, leaping national boundaries. Citizens see faces. Too often, national governments see only narrow interests. Diplomats who as private citizens applaud fair play and social justice, in their role as national appointees lead the UN to abandon Rwanda and neglect Darfur – regions of “low strategic importance.”

 If Canada worked like the UN, our national government would be directed by provincial officials each jostling for their province’s gain, each backed by a costly provincial army. Any sense of shared national interest would be fragile. Canada would be unstable – even violent, wasteful and bleak. Instead, we elect citizens to serve us in the interests of the whole country. The outcome? Although it may sometimes look like a house divided, relative to global conditions we have stability, cooperation, prosperity, respect for diversity, hope. 

 In much the same way, a global layer of democratic governance – strictly limited to global issues, such as trade, climate change, weapons proliferation and pandemic disease – would bring elected representatives with an allegiance to the planet. A quantum leap in global cooperation could result. 

 But is global democracy any more attainable than in 1945? 

 It’s immeasurably more feasible, thanks to the communications revolution. It’s certainly more urgent. There are far more global issues beyond the scope of national decision-making. The demise of cheap oil alone will have enormous implications requiring both stronger local networks and global cooperation to avert catastrophe. 

 What about resistance by the powers-that-be? 

 To appease them, a United Nations assembly of global citizen representatives could start as a purely advisory body. It could be an annual assembly of parliamentarians elected from and by the parliaments of each country, or an assembly of representatives elected on a global constituency ballot in national elections.

 Either option would oxygenate the stagnant old boys’ club of nation state appointees. Elected representatives would nurture the promise of a just global community over the trap of national selfishness. The assembly’s advice would carry a moral authority difficult for the appointees on the Security Council and General Assembly to ignore, an authority that could generate momentum towards the establishment of a global democratically-elected legislature with true decision-making powers.

 It’s time to recognize that for global issues, we’re all on the same team.  Our diverse insights should nourish us, not paralyse us.  It’s time to adapt our political structures to that urgent reality. Our common future depends on it. 

Maintaining the World's Social Levees

Even with its less than democratic structure, the United Nations is among humankind’s wisest investments. It deals with root causes of issues and has had many successes funded by amounts the Pentagon might dismiss as petty cash. The UN staff and its agencies have quietly saved and improved millions of lives, effectively applying their ounce of prevention: immunization, nutrition programs, regulation of nuclear energy and international air travel, workers’ rights, literacy, cultural understanding, decolonisation, peacekeeping and mediation. The deterrence effect of the new International Criminal Court could save millions more lives. For 60 years, the UN has maintained the world's social levees. 

 Crises averted, though, go largely unappreciated while UN failures are well known. UN failures are really member states’ failures to provide the support such a tiny institution requires to respond. The UN is a fire department with no equipment. The member states must agree whether there is a fire, then whether it’s in their interest to extinguish it, then whether to provide the trucks. Too often states bicker while the fire rages out of control; too often they deflect blame onto the frustrated firefighters. The firefighters and the world deserve a decision-making structure that views the planet as our largest community, not simply as 191 competing states.

A United Nations Parliamentary Assembly?

Ever since the creation of the United Nations in 1945, political visionaries have called for the creation of an elected body of representatives to complement the appointed General Assembly: a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, or UNPA. 

 In 1993, the quest for a UNPA gained momentum when Canada's House of Commons Standing Committee on External Affairs and International Trade recommended “that Canada support the development of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly.” Last year, 108 Swiss Parliamentarians and the entire European Parliament joined in the call. 

 Among NGOs endorsing a UNPA, last June Citizens for a United Nations People's Assembly sent an open letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan petitioning him to convene a High Level Panel (an authoritative UN advisory committee) to develop a road map for “the establishment of a Peoples' Parliamentary Assembly within the United Nations Organization.” (You can sign the open letter at empowertheun.org.) 

 Annan won't be a hard sell. In 2001, he said “the parliamentary voice – the voice of the people – must be an integral component of the work of the United Nations.”

 For those who believe world citizens deserve a democratic voice on global issues, overcoming the inertia of entrenched power and individual powerlessness will continue to be the greatest challenge.

 Read more about the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly at wikipedia.org.