It is Time for a Democratic Global Revolution

29/8/20

 The people of the world need to seize the moment and bring about a democratic global revolution. It is time for a global parliament and real representation.

For many, the corona-related global crisis exacerbates a situation that was already critical before the outbreak of the virus.

The climate crisis is unfolding with record temperatures in Siberia, Greenland, the Antarctic and other places like the Middle East. The new climate apartheid is characterized by whether you can afford to shield yourself from such heat or not. Most cannot.

135 million people are facing crisis levels of hunger. There are currently more than 70 million displaced people who have fled war, persecution and conflict. It's the worst humanitarian and refugee crisis in seventy years.

There is a global inequality crisis. Productivity gains and globalization disproportionately benefit the affluent. Financial assets in the trillions are hidden in offshore accounts from tax authorities. The world's 26 richest billionaires own as much as the poorest 3.8 billion people on the planet.

While global surveys confirm that people across all world regions strongly believe in democracy, there is in fact a democratic retreat. Confidence in the actual performance of democratic governments is waning. Populist nationalism and authoritarianism has been advancing, aided and abetted by social media platforms and the internet. Major arms control treaties are crumbling, geopolitical tensions are rising and multilateralism is under attack.

Civil society and citizens across the world are fighting back, though. Pro-democracy movements are at an all-time high as widespread protests in dozens of countries now and in recent times demonstrate. Freedom and justice have lost no appeal. At the same time, millions of citizens joined climate protests around the world and called for quick and effective action in this critical field.

The present issues are symptoms of a crisis of global governance. There is a scale mismatch between a political world order that is based on 200 states and territories and issues that demand decisive global action.

As the UN celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, the organization continues to lose significance and impact. The UN is only as strong and effective as its member states allow it to be. The same applies to all intergovernmental organizations and forums, including the World Health Organization that had to launch an investigation into its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The UN's Security Council, in particular, is suffering from a dysfunctional decision-making method that grants the five victors of the Second World War and official nuclear powers not only a permanent seat but also a veto right.

If long-lasting solutions are to be achieved, this scale mismatch must be tackled. It is not enough to call on individual governments to change their policies. The way how the world is governed must be changed. What is needed is a new vision of a democratic world order that is based on shared sovereignty on global issues, a clear commitment to human rights, the principle of subsidiarity and complete disarmament.

When the UN was founded it was recognized that this should only be a beginning and that changes would be required. Article 109 of the Charter provides that a conference to review the Charter should be held by 1955. The UN's member states did not deliver on that promise. Now is the time to hold them to account.

The world's people need an actual say in global affairs that is not intermediated by national governments and their diplomats. The key ingredient of a new UN should be a democratically elected world parliament that complements intergovernmental bodies such as the UN General Assembly.

The creation of a new democratic world organization that has actual powers seems to be a gigantic project that raises numerous questions. How is a global democracy to be created while major states themselves are not democratically organised? Can decisions of a world parliament be enforced against the will of individual states? How is it possible that states will agree to the creation of a superior political unit?

These questions show the way forward: The people of the world themselves need to embrace and call for global democracy. Eventually, they are the sovereigns not only in their individual states but on the planet as a whole, too.

A global democratic revolution needs to push for a legitimate, inclusive and representative global body that will deal with these questions in a serious way. The creation of a UN Parliamentary Assembly could be an important stepping stone to launch a global constitutional process and a transformation of global governance.

This global democratic revolution will be peaceful because it is not about destroying structures or conquering territories, but about opening up a political level that is lying idle. Supranational integration cannot be imposed by force. It will happen because the people want it.

If existing movements in the fields of climate, environment, peace, disarmament, democracy, social justice and others join forces, the global democratic revolution will become very real.

This may sound visionary. But the big issues troubling this planet and its people will remain, and worsen, unless the root cause is addressed. A democratic global government is not a mind game in some ivory tower. It is the most important question on the agenda of humanity today.

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All comments [ 20 ]


1
The free Wind 29/8/20 20:46

Remarkably, the current demise of communism and the movement toward democracy have come not in the aftermath of destructive war but in an unprecedented half-century of global peace.

2
For A Peace World 29/8/20 20:46

Indeed they come at a time when the Cold War has ended, regional conflicts from Central America to Southeast Asia have abated, and Europe, the very powder keg of global wars from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, has moved into a historic process of economic and political unification.

3
Gentle Moon 29/8/20 20:59

National governments are no longer equipped to address complex global issues, from climate change to poverty, and international organizations have not yet been empowered to step into the breach.

4
Vietnam Love 29/8/20 21:00

Terrorism, nationalism and Iraq and calls for a new global politics—a bigger league, with greater opportunity for all.

5
Red Star 29/8/20 21:01

How over the past few decades domestic problems—from unemployment to environmental distress—increasingly have international roots.

6
LawrenceSamuels 29/8/20 21:02

As national politicians lose control to impersonal global forces, they will be forced to become more effective participants in international mechanisms like the United Nations that may offer the only viable solutions.

7
Voice of people 29/8/20 21:03

Increasingly, ad hoc arrangements between NGOs, civil society and the private sector are filling in the gap created by the failures of individual governments.

8
Socialist Society 29/8/20 21:05

In the wake of the worldwide economic crisis, many have been forced to acknowledge that a global economy needs global institutions to govern it.

9
yobro yobro 29/8/20 21:06

People embrace more powerful international institutions and the values needed to underpin a truly globalist agenda—the rule of law, human rights, and opportunity for all.

10
Me Too! 29/8/20 21:07

The term ‘dictatorship’ re-entered political language at the end of the eighteenth century with the democratic revolutions in America and Europe

11
Duncan 29/8/20 21:24

Global Revolutions offers a comparative study of twentieth and twenty-first century world history through a thematic assessment of revolutions and revolutionary movements.

12
Kevin Evans 29/8/20 21:29

Other revolutionary movements under study include Gandhi’s unique anti-modernist and nonviolent path of civil disobedience and passive resistance to gain Indian independence and battle British colonialism.

13
Enda Thompson 29/8/20 21:32

Nationalism is linked to the innate tribalism of human societies. The emergence of the nation-state is discussed in the context of humankind having lived within empires, sometimes lasting for many centuries, for the majority of human history.

14
Egan 29/8/20 21:33

whatever the manifold defects of empires, the evidence is that they successfully managed the diversity and difference within the populations they ruled.

15
Robinson Jones 29/8/20 21:34

In this way the ever-present dangers of aggressive populist nationalism may be avoided and an era of benign nationalism may begin.

16
John Smith 29/8/20 21:35

Not only the combatant great powers but also smaller states witnessed a resurgence of constitutional disputes and competing ideological conceptualizations of revolution and reform, the will of the people, democracy, and parliamentarism.

17
Herewecome 29/8/20 22:16

The revolutionary experiences of the last two years of the First World War and the post-war settlements of 1919 have traditionally been studied from nation-state-centred perspectives.

18
Allforcountry 29/8/20 22:19

Internationalism was a core tenet for Social Democrats.

19
Swift Hoodie 29/8/20 22:21

Encouraged by a letter from Lenin,96 he rejected a presidential republic as ‘undemocratic’ and ‘bourgeois parliamentarism’ of the Western European type.

20
Wilson Pit 29/8/20 22:26

Instead of just constructing nation states on the basis of native constitutional traditions, many politicians turned their national parliaments into nexuses of general debates on the proper form of government.

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