Short Article

We need a democratic world parliament

A short article by Jim Stark

Founder and Past President, Vote World Parliament

For a printable pdf file, please click here.

Humanity needs a democratic world parliament because we are smart enough to resolve our disputes through law rather than through the use of force, and because we are civilized enough to not even want to beat up a person or a country that we may disagree with. And by “we,” I mean the overwhelming majority of ordinary people everywhere.

There is no good reason why we can’t live as comfortably under world law as we do now under national, provincial (or regional “state”) and municipal law (meaning those who are fortunate enough to live in democratic countries). In exactly the same way that the formation of the nation ended wars among all its provinces and cities, a democratic world parliament would end war among nations by providing for legal remedies for the resolution of all disputes. Even terrorist groups should be far less inclined to even want to use force if there was a new (and totally transparent) global legal order where they can get a fair hearing for their grievances.

While money isn’t everything, it is important. I mention this because it will cost far less to institute a global regime of “collective security” than to maintain an armed force for each of the 194 (or so) “sovereign” nations—just as it costs far less to have a local police force protecting all of us against all local threats than it would be for each family to arm itself to the teeth in case a neighbor from across the street might attack. The tax burden for security for your lifetime would likely be cut in half by a democratic world parliament, and the actual security that can be delivered will be far greater through a democratic world parliament than it is in the current system of 194 national armies and 194 national spy agencies.

As far back as the 1960s, it was realized that an all-out nuclear war could kill every person on the planet, and perhaps all life on Earth. We need to permanently remove the threat of nuclear war—or any war using weapons of mass destruction (WMD)—from the list of possible futures, and that will require that we ban war altogether—“criminalize” it in world law. Only a democratic world parliament has any realistic chance of doing all that.

There are other supranational issues besides war, the most dangerous of which is climate change (or global warming). It is now clear that climate change is a serious threat to our very existence. Al Gore has called this a “true planetary emergency.” If we expect a patchwork of national initiatives to solve this problem, we are simply dreaming.

We know how to use off-the-shelf technology to “corruption-proof” a parliament and make it completely transparent, so we won’t need to worry about the possibility of a “Hitler” gaining control of the democratic world parliament. If we are going to construct a democratic world parliament, common sense dictates that it must have total and “verified” integrity, using whatever technology it takes to accomplish this extremely high standard. It must be simply impossible for military force to be used inappropriately or prematurely at the global level.

There are enormous injustices in the world, and history surely teaches us that there is no peace without justice, no justice without law, and no law without governance—in this case, world law and a democratic world parliament.

Business needs stability to operate, and war is the exact opposite of stability (even if a few industries profit temporarily from every war). A future where companies can operate smoothly and (hopefully) profitably for thousands of years is possible only if we construct a fair and democratic world order.

According to former American senator George Mitchell (architect of the Mitchell Plan for peace in the Middle East): “We benefit enormously from technology … but we also suffer from [its] consequences … it is now easier, takes fewer people, less skill [and] fewer resources to kill large numbers of people than at any time in … history.” (This was on Newsnight, CNN, May 9, 2002.) In the future, a twelve-year-old might be able to make purchases on the Internet and poison an entire city. To survive as a species, we must accept law as one of the necessities of life, and that must include world law (this is not the same as international law; international law applies almost exclusively to relations among national governments, and world law would also apply to individuals, like the other three levels of law do).

No one today is so foolish as to suggest that we tear down all of our democratic municipal, provincial or national governments, even though they aren’t perfect. In twenty or thirty years, if a democratic world parliament is in place and doing its work routinely, virtually no one would suggest that we might be better off without it, either.

We have in front of us the opportunity to become the “founders” of the world of law and justice that must exist if humanity is to survive and thrive in the year 2500, or 25,000, or 250,000 … not to mention the year 2,500,000. This might be the greatest opportunity you will ever have, the chance to carve a path across this last major political frontier. The task of building a new and democratic world parliament is not that difficult, but it is huge—which means we should start immediately and work very hard.

If, say, 95% of all human adults voted in favor of the creation of a democratic world parliament, no one would dare to try to stop us from building what we had voted for. No political issue ever gets such high support, but there is a GlobeScan poll that was done within 18 nations, and it shows that a global referendum on constructing a democratic world parliament would pass very strongly. The numbers were 63% “yes,” 20% “no,” and 17% said they weren’t sure or gave no answer. One third of the 6.6 billion people alive today are children under the age of 16, so the electorate in a world referendum is about 4 billion adults. Our research indicates that if 50% of all human adults cast votes and 67% of all votes are in the “YES” column, such a mandate would not only be politically compelling; it would be legally binding under international law. So, let’s collect the 1.4 billion “yes” votes it will take to comprise a “compelling” mandate.

If you are a democrat, then you know that democracy means governance with the consent of the governed. In other words, to get a democratic world parliament, we must first have a democratic world referendum. The ideal way would be for the UN to pass a resolution calling for such a global referendum, but since that will likely prove difficult to accomplish, we can start by using the Internet, and a ballot now awaits your participation at www.voteworldparliament.org. (A draft UN resolution is also ready for the moment when a few national governments decide that we really need a democratic world parliament to prevent all wars and resolve supranational conflicts and to truly defend human rights. That draft UN resolution can be seen at http://voteworldparliament.org/allies-initiatives/draft-un-resolution/.)

In addition to the global referendum for a democratic world parliament, we need to come to grips with the obvious need for a constitution for the world (no democracy can operate without a basic constitution). We would like Canada to host a “framing convention” of NGOs (non-governmental organizations), scholars, religions and governments to prepare a draft. We anticipate the need for an electoral commission to prepare for a first global general election, and to prepare for the presentation of a draft world constitution to the human race for ratification (likely through a second global referendum).

For the full picture, go to www.voteworldparliament.org, and/or buy Rescue Plan for Planet Earth (go to www.rescueplanforplanetearth.com/3freechapters.html to read three chapters free). One way or another, please come to grips with this new and world-altering initiative. It deserves your support, and as David E. Christensen (the author of Healing the World) recently wrote to me, “This could work!” Yes, it could work, and if we all do our parts, it will work.