10th May 2023, Paris/France  -  Wishes 13 / 14 / 15

In the name of Peace and Justice.

I have three wishes today, which I present to you in the name of Peace and Justice - in the hope they may be fulfilled. 

My wishes today are about the United Nations Organization. This institution was created by the victorious powers at the end of WW II, its main purpose being to try and prevent wars and keep peace in the future.

This is not the right moment to talk about the organization's success and failures in reaching its stated goals. Rather, it's time to revise the very set-up of the organization's two main bodies themselves, namely, its executive body, the so-called Security Council, and the soi-disant parliament, the General Assembly.

So, let's first talk about the Security Council.

The Security Council consists of a total of 15 members, five of which are permanent members (these are the victorious powers at the end of WW II, and they wield a veto power over all resolutions reached in the Council) and ten are non-permanent members elected from five different geopolitical regions.

Now, WW II is indeed over, it ended more than 70 years ago, many other wars have been fought in the meantime, with many more winners and losers - it's time to rethink this whole idea of permanent membership and veto power. In addition to this we have to consider the fact that the majority of today's UN's members were still ruled by colonial powers at the time of its creation and therefore had no voice in the spelling out of its provisions.

I therefore suggest, and this is my first wish for today, that the whole question of membership and regional groupings be reconsidered from scratch, and that a new formula be found.

In concrete terms I suggest the following:

As a first step, we divide all nations of the world into nine more or less homogeneous groups (to replace the present rather spurious groups):

1) North America, including Central America;
2) South America, including the Caribbean;
3) Western Europe;
4) Eastern Europe, including Russia, Turkey, the Caucasus and central Asian countries;
5) the Chinese Region (Mongolia, mainland China, Taiwan);
6) Far East Asia (ASEAN countries, Japan. Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands)
7) the Indian Region (India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Maldives);
8) the Perso-Arabic Region (stretching from Pakistan and Afghanistan through Iran and the Middle East to the Maghreb countries and all the way to Morocco);
9) Sub-Saharan Africa.

In a second step, each group chooses three of its countries as members of the Security Council, deciding on its own for which period of time each country will be elected.

Such is my first wish for today. I'm asking the UN General Secretary to convene a special session of the General Assembly soon in order to discuss this proposal and have a vote on it.

 And now let's talk about the deliberative body of the United Nations. It consists of exactly one chamber, the so-called General Assembly. The General Assembly is made up of one delegate per member country, with all delegates not elected by the citizens but chosen by the respective government in each country. In other words, these delegates don't represent the people but the government of their country.

My suggestion is, and this is my second wish for today: We need a second chamber for the UN parliament, a People's Assembly, which actually represents the people of all the countries in the world, and not just their governments.

For this purpose I suggest that all of the above-mentioned nine world regions are entitled to send the same number of representatives to this new Assembly (I suggest the number of 81 reps per region, of which at least 41 shall be women), with all these reps to be elected by popular vote by the people in each region.

And this is not enough. In my view, we need even one more chamber in the UN Parliament, a Peace chamber, or Peace Council.

The UN Peace Council shall consist of individuals wholly dedicated to the cause of Peace and Justice in the world, not representing some local political party or the special interests of their own country but the interests of all of humanity as well as the needs and rights of all of Nature, worldwide.

I suggest to fix their number at 111 per above-mentioned region (all of them elected for life), making up a total of 999 members - which, with the inclusion of the UN General Secretary as a non-voting member, we might then call the 1000 Immortals.

For this, I'm asking all peace and justice orientated NGO's and institutions to work out criteria for the eligibility of prospective candidates (I imagine that ideal candidates would mainly come from the fields of arts and education), to be presented to the UN General Secretary for the convening of another special session of the General Assembly.

Such is my third wish for today, which I present to you in the name of Peace and Justice, in the hope it will be fulfilled.

In the name of Peace and Justice, thank you!