Petter Ölmunger
13. December 2018
Around United Nations Day on 24th October 2018, a global week of a action was celebrated for the fifth time with activities across the world in support of the establishment of a democratic world parliament.
The week of action’s declaration points out that “in order to create global solutions we need a global political body that can facilitate global democratic discussions and take global decisions.” According to the document, such a body has to be elected by the world’s citizens. “The world’s citizens should vote for their world representatives,” it says.
A democratically elected body is needed
In Tel Aviv, Israel, there was a public event organized by One World: Movement for Global Democracy. The event, that was hosted by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Tel-Aviv office, was titled ‘The day after the nation-state? Thoughts on democracy, federalism and the world.’
Picture from the Tel Aviv event. From left: Roy Dia, Asher Levi and Oded Gilad.
The two speakers, Roy Dayan and Oded Gilad, presented the idea that since so many of the forces that shape our lives are global, it is unrealistic to expect nation-states to regulate them effectively. To check and balance the powers of the global market, they argued, it is necessary to create federal state mechanisms at the global level, whose power and legitimacy will be anchored in the will of the world’s citizens. At the heart of this idea is the concept of a world parliament, and at the end of the event, after a very engaging discussion, most of the participants joined for a group photo holding the week of action’s slogan, ‘World Parliament Now!’. At the conference on supranational democracy in Lecce in April, Oded Gildad held a speech on a similar subject that can be watched here .
In Stockholm, Sweden, Democracy Without Borders Sweden, and other co-hosting organizations arranged a presentation of the book A World Parliament: Governance and Democracy in the 21st Century , written by Jo Leinen and Andreas Bummel. In his presentation the latter focused on the need of a transformation from international law to world law and stressed that a UN Parliamentary Assembly would be a first viable step. A video of the talk is available at Youtube .
