Foto-AG Gymnasium Melle, CC BY 3.0
In the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe I have been working on important cross-border issues together with parliamentarians from other member states and learned a lot from them in the process. A Parliamentary Assembly at the United Nations could complement the collaboration of governments in the General Assembly and the UN's various subsidiary bodies with a structured collaboration of parliaments. I consider this to be very useful.
Ute Finckh-Krämer, Member of the German Parliament, 2017
Oscar Wettersten, CC BY 3.0
As a long time activist and now a Roma woman elected to the European Parliament, I see the need of democratising the representation of the UN through a UN Parliamentary Assembly. We as peoples of the world need the possibility to be able to directly influence the UN's political agenda and its implementation. It is a matter of our human rights and their full realisation.
Soraya Post, Member of the European Parliament from Sweden, 2017
Free world trade needs a clear political and eco-social framework if it is not to have ruinous effects. Global regulation calls for democratized global institutions based on checks and balances, among them a global parliament. In the long run, this is the only way to protect freedom and its preconditions which are under threat today intertemporally and across national borders. For this it will also be necessary to achieve a serious - and not only bogus - democratization of the world's nation-states.
Prof. Dr. Felix Ekardt, LL.M., M.A., Director of the Research Center on Sustainability and Climate Policy (Leipzig/Berlin) and Professor for Public Law and Legal Philosophy at the University of Rostock. For more than 20 years he has been dealing with global constitutionalization. (2017)
by Frankie Fouganthin, CC BY-SA 4.0
Humanity is a community of fate that is increasingly faced with cross-border challenges. That's why global decision-making is inevitable. Through a World Parliament we need to make sure that the emerging world order is democratic and as close to the citizens as possible.
Jens Orback, Secretary General for the Olof Palme International Center (2008-2016) and Minister for Democracy, Metropolitan Affairs, Integration and Gender Equality (2004-2006), Sweden
Convinced by the Tunisian revolution and the following democratic transition, I was also convinced of the urgent need to create a strong democratic connection between the people and their government. To face the global economic, social and environmental challenges, the international governance system needs a democratic revolution as well. With the support of the people and the necessary democratic legitimacy, elected representatives in a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly could work efficiently to find new global solutions, to fight poverty and the consequences of climate change. We need to act now and implement democratic principles at the largest scale of government if we want them to survive the recent rise of nationalism that is threatening peace and international understanding.
Mohamed Fadhel Mahfoudh, Former president of the Tunisian Bar Association and a leader of the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet which won the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize
Bas Stoffelsen / SP, CC BY-SA 3.0
It’s my personal experience that Parliamentary Assemblies can work quite effectively, for example within NATO and the OSCE. The United Nations is - and should be - the world’s most important organisation where almost all of the world’s nations and peoples meet. It’s high time that the UN gets its own Parliamentary Assembly.
Harry van Bommel, Member of the House of Representatives of the Netherlands
795 million world citizens are suffering from chronic hunger. An elected UN Parliamentary Assembly may be a means to give these most vulnerable members of our global community a stronger voice so that the systemic international causes of their misery can be more adequately addressed.
Hilal Elver, UN Special Rapporteur on Right to Food, 2016
Global problems require global solutions. A World Parliament is precisely the forum which takes humanity's point of view, it's the institution which proposes nothing less than to save us all from our own limitations. The rumor of the day is that a group of powerful hawks is preparing the Third World War. We should hope that this rumor will be debated in public forums that are guided by nothing but reason.
Mario Bunge, Argentine philosopher, 2016
The UN is not an exclusive inter-state institution, it is meant to be an inclusive space for active engagement with the civil society and multi-stakeholders. Time is ripe for new actors to launch new initiatives in order for the many commitments declared at the UN to be fulfilled or put into actions. I have seen the great value of cross-boundary work on the promotion of freedom of religion or belief by parliamentarians around the world, hence, I believe in the great potentials that a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly has for strengthening the UN system overall.
Heiner Bielefeldt, UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief and Professor of Human Rights and Human Rights Politics at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, 2016
Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
One weakness of the United Nations is that its Member States are represented solely through the executive branch. The involvement of additional actors such as parliamentarians and civil society is critical to democratizing the UN, and will go a long way towards making it more transparent, accountable and effective. That's why I support the creation of a UN Parliamentary Assembly.
Maina Kiai, UN Special Rapporteur on rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, 2016
© European Parliament
I support the creation of a UN Parliamentary Assembly as a first step toward an eventual world parliament. The UN Parliament and the Inter-Parliamentary Union could exist side-by-side: While the latter would continue to serve as a platform of national parliaments to discuss matters of mutual concern, the former would represent the world's citizens directly and deal with global political matters such as climate change or the refugee crisis.
Dimitrios Papadimoulis, Vice-President of the European Parliament from Greece, 2016
