THE WORLD CITIZENS PARTY

FOR A DEMOCRATIC WORLD GOVERNMENT

– A NEW CONCEPT OF SOVEREIGNTY

By Bob Brainerd

The World Citizens Party is established to hasten the day when the sovereign people of the world can live as one people in freedom, wisdom and peace. To attain this end, we are deeply committed to nonviolence in all our activities.

The time has come to move from the absolute sovereignty of the individual nation-state to the sovereignty of the individual world citizen, a citizen represented in a directly elected, democratic world government, a government totally dedicated to the recognition and enforcement of basic human rights.

The party supports the United Nations as an interim institution, but calls for a UN Charter Review Conference to effect its fundamental restructuring. It must embody all the organs of a democratic government: legislature, executive, and judiciary.

Hampered by a lack of funds and direct taxing authority, hindered by the absence of a trained, disciplined, quick-reaction peacekeeping force, made powerless by great power vetoes, and weakened by justifiable skepticism and distrust on the part of common citizens, the United Nations as presently formed is incapable of responding adequately to the desperate problems of our troubled planet.

When citizens worldwide have voted for their UN representative, when they have paid a personal income tax, however small, they will come to identify with the UN and think of it as their own creation. Only then will the UN have unquestioned moral authority. Only then will it have the full support and loyalty of the local citizenry in a crisis. Only then can it rise to the responsibilities that almost daily are placed at its door.

In the onrushing age of information technology, worldwide direct elections are no longer so wild a dream. Until they become reality, we must not rest.