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Call to participate in an Electronic Forum on a World Parliament for the 21st Century
The context and the proposal
In our present times of globalization, resulting from a long historical process sometimes called modernity, a set of problems confronts all of humanity. In spite of our best efforts, we have not still been able to develop common solutions
Both the dominance by some and the indifference of many allows, among other disasters, misery to cohabit with opulence, war to end to the life of millions of innocent people, the environment to become fragile and thus threaten more and more to regions and countries with unpredictable catastrophes, and the overwhelming sense of individualism that encourages us to cast off responsibility and hypnotizes society with a false paradise of consumption. Even worse, all these and other deep perturbations are increasing exponentially. As just an example, consider the imminent military attack that the Bush administration is eager carry out against Iraq, without the consent of the United Nations, or even the allies of the United States. Beyond the unfair and non democratic global free trade, now comes the irrational and unjustifiable particular law of the strongest.
Our planet is sailing without anyone at the helm, it is drifting. Our global human community lacks a juridical and normative dimension. And everybody knows that the final destiny of a drifting ship is to collapse or to crash against the reefs. Each individual part of a ship is indispensable: canvas, keel, masts, hull, ropes, helm... in the same way, any human community can be observed through some crucial common dimensions, including economical, technological, spiritual, artistic, nutritional, relationship to nature, and, finally juridical-political. This last is like the helm or the controls that are used to pilot any kind of real or metaphorical ship, in this case to direct or "drive" a village, a town, a country or a state community.
However the global community, in the words of some, can best be self-ruled trough the market. Nation - states, that were more or less able in other times to regulate their own societies, they are nowadays unable to face the severe costs of the giant and capricious wave of the global economy. The absence of a planetary regulation of politics facilitates and provokes distortion, perversion and even the collapse of most cultural, economic, technological or interpersonal exchanges that the present times offers to us, and that were originally dedicated to empowering people in a world of peace, well-being, freedom and justice.
We are submerged inside of a stammering global human community that still doesn't dare to look to itself, that doesn't dare to face full on the commitment to a personal, cultural and political change based upon dialogue, solidarity, justice and respect of the other that is, in other words, the only way of going forward. In this complex crisis that needs multifaceted concrete answers, one of them is calling to us but in some way also frightens us: building a juridical and political structure at the global level.
In facing such a challenge, we are afraid to look back in time, because the spectrum of the 20th-century ideologies still perturbs us with their sounds of supposed salvation. We are afraid of politics in a general sense, and also afraid of irresponsibility, lack of ethics and audacity of so many of our governors and representatives, but paradoxically, we need more than ever to set up a political answer in the face to the irresponsible globalization that has been forced upon us increasingly over the last decade - nothing but the market as an alternative to the former bipolar order. We need it to escape from the complete cataclysm toward which we are headed.
On the one hand we need to place the foundations for an ethical revolution, which shall be developed along many generations. This is needed in order to accomplish a transformation toward a world where respect and harmony must become fundamental values. On the other hand a short or medium-term political revolution is imperative, first, in order to avoid that the most terrible things that could happen and then, as soon as some imperative socioeconomic conditions for a better justice and responsibility, etc. are be ensured, in order to facilitate that other, slower behavioral metamorphosis.
All this brings us to an opening question, concerning which environment might best be adapted to become a place of regulation of global affairs. The Alliance for a Plural, Responsible and United World, a planetary network of constructive reflection and action assembling thousand of people from all continents and all social and professional categories, has a 15-year experience of outlining proposals for a political and social transformation. Between many other proposals, we are suggesting that a World Parliament could be the main institution in a possible and desirable future juridico - political dimension for the global community.
As an example of our commitment in this direction, the previous dynamics of the Alliance culminated recently in the experience of the final meeting of a world-wide Assembly (in Lille, France, in December of 2001). On the other hand our vision is also supported by such close experiences as the Global People's Assembly Network (GPAN), the Assemblies of the UN of the Peoples (Perugia, Italy) and the Millennium NGO Forum (New York, May 2000).
Liberal democracy of sovereign states has been, in the words of Winston Churchill, "the worst of all the systems known, with the exception of all the others". In facing the present post-nation-state system of globalization we are convinced that a World Parliament, in spite of all its predictable and unpredictable imperfections, could provide a necessary and viable alternative in order to subjugate the blind forces of the market to the forces of life.
A World Parliament seems to be the next logical step towards a system of world governance that on a global scale would reflect governance within the traditional confines of the nation-state. As such, a World Parliament would constitute the natural outcome of a process begun last century that saw a departure from a purely anarchical world ruled by individual nation-states to a more complex system that strives to be increasingly democratic and more just. In spite of the slow evolution, progress has been made. More than half a century after the creation of the United Nations, an International Criminal Court is being established. But, for all these advances, the international system is still in large part governed by the rule of power rather than by the rule of law.
While the U.N. has had an important impact on world politics, it has also shown its limits. While its role will still grow in the future, it is not likely to be able to enact on its own the reforms necessary to improve upon and fix the system. Individual states, even the more democratic ones, have shown that their governments all too often make important decisions without consulting their constituencies and define their policies according to a narrow definition of the national interest. Thus, other institutions must be created to fill the void.
Along with the community of states, the United Nations and a strengthened International Court of Justice, a World Parliament could act as a representative of international civil society. In the past decade, civil society has come back in full force. It has re-organized itself and is now a key international player. Civil society has brought down traditional borders and evolves in a world without frontiers. However, from an institutional perspective, civil society has not yet been formally given the home that it deserves. A World Parliament could provide such a home. Let us see if we can envision it, and perhaps try to build its foundations together.
Following this reasoning, we are inviting you to participate in a new stage of this evolutionary process: an electronic forum on the World Parliament for the 21st century. Through this e-forum you could join with us in exploring, querying and shaping the many underlying values, many present challenges, many organizational structures and many probable real uses and ways of application, all of them concerning both substantive World Parliament proposals and other global governance issues. It is worth noting the last weeks on the forum agenda, which will be devoted to outlining the next steps and to inviting you to formulate some engagement within.
Features of the e-forum
This e-forum will take place during six months, from October 15, 2002 to April 30, 2003. Participants are expected to come from all the regions of the world, from diverse professional areas: politicians, researchers, activists, teachers, religious personnel, entrepreneurs... and different also in their political orientation, in gender and age.
A weekly or biweekly summary of the messages will be sent to the list, as well as a monthly summary concerning the contributions for each topic area. These summaries will be especially useful for people having little time to read and to introduce newcomers to the conversation and outcomes.
You will receive each contribution in three languages: English, Spanish and French. You will be able to write in any one of these languages and also in two others: Arabic or Chinese. For these two additional languages, there will only be available the summaries of each contribution. If you, or those you know of, would like to volunteer, we would also be interested in having the documents and dialogue translated into other languages, including Esperanto.
The forum is an initiative of the Alliance for a Responsible, Plural and United world. It is managed by 3 facilitators and financed by the FPH (Fondation Charles Léopold Mayer pour le Progrès de l'Homme).
Getting to the point
To conclude this invitation, we propose some additional thoughts that maybe useful in order to get to the point and to provoke your first reactions.
The proposal for a World Parliament could be seen from different approaches, which will maybe have the chance to be reviewed in the e-forum. First, a general history from an evolutionary point of view: it concerns the idea of a progressive increase in scale of the human societies size (a local-based prehistory, an urban and regional-based ancient and middle ages, a continental-based modern age and globally-based present times). Such an approach presumes a future institutionalization to take place at this global scale, as a later phase that could consolidate and democratize globalization beyond the present global economic system.
Secondly, we are confronted with the urgent task of stopping, after the Sept.-11 attacks, the "globalization" of terrorism and its subsequent international wave of security-oriented politics. This new two-sided genre of globalization has turned recent history and has hurried the road to chaos. As mentioned before, the threat of war against Iraq is just the present chapter of such a pervasive pathway.
Thirdly, the spread of modernity in a large sense of the word, and particularly the multiplication of migratory movements, has given rise to the emergence of an "intercultural" thinking and practice: in the future each of the cultural traditions of the world should confront and re-consider this modernity. Dialogue over planetary common management should be first of all a dialogue among cultures and in such global scale, the so-called, in western tradition, "parliament", is probably the sort of institution most suited to be a candidate for an equilibrate intercultural dialogue.
We are convinced that some type of a parliamentary structure is in any case the most appropriate for managing, in all its complexity, the common problems of a more than six thousand million people community. Contrary to a more centralized structure, such as a global executive power, and contrary to a fragmented structure such as that of the current nation-state system, a parliament could be the best common place for representing the diversity of cultural, political and professional forces of the whole world.
This interpersonal-scale agora represents a society in miniature that first of all makes possible the consensus between these forces. On the other hand this common and permanent dialogue serves to exchange knowledge and experiences that would enrich the quality of the normative production. Last but not least, this process should take place as openly and interactively as possible with broad citizen participation: in order to avoid the distance and lack of communication that could exist given the magnitude of the global community represented in such an institution, each member, each commission or cross-sectoral group, should multiply, consolidate and diversify the dialogue with other actors and instances and should generate, along with them, spaces for common decision-making.
In line with this reasoning, this institution must not become another "traditional" parliament, even if it keeps a typical parliamentary structure. Thus, besides the treatment of the building process for the juridical-political dimension at the global level, this forum will face the challenge of inventing a new kind of parliament that would be able to solve many problems. For example, those resulting from the competitiveness among parties, their lack of internal democracy, the media-oriented behavior in politics, the many forms of favoritism and corruption, the political and bureaucratic inertias, money and special interests, the lack of social dialogue and seeming government aversion to initiatives of deep social transformation. A participatory and deep democracy should enrich and strengthen attitudes and practices, among them those of global governance.
Nevertheless, all these arguments are not being shared to limit the possibilities of discussion but only to motivate you to make your own interventions in order to enrich this common work. From all of this it follows that the World Parliament is seen as an empty page to be written, through all the comments - building a dialogue between them, helping to give form and collective articulation to the proposal.
Don't forget that by making your contribution you are helping to shape the World Parliament that we need to carry out in the 21st Century. It is an indispensable and collective project to assure social harmony on our planet. It is a desire of permanent dialogue in security, conviviality and justice for all the people. We hope to see you soon among us.
Rob Wheeler, Arnaud Blin, Germà Pelayo
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