To address the global democratic deficit, a campaign established to establish a Parliamentary Assembly for the United Nations (UNPA). There are plenty of examples of the democratic deficit in the world, both inside and outside the United Nations (UN). The Security Council, the World Bank, the IMF and the World Intellectual Property Organization (sic; WIPO) are some UN organizations that have a lot of influence on the world but where there is hardly any democratic control. Global legislation is established through treaties and often even goes outside the UN, which means that all democratic control is gone. Such treaties confirm the need for an elected world parliament.

During the campaign meeting it emerged that parliamentary democracies do not function as desired and that other forms of decision-making should be considered. As a result, the following statement was made in the Declaration of Brussels of the Campaign for the Establishment of a UNPA (CEUNPA) included:

14. With a view to exploring innovative forms of civic participation in a UNPA, implementing models of electronic direct or “liquid” democracy that allows citizens to participate in deliberations or decision-making processes could be considered.

Liquid democracy is a form of representative democracy combined with elements of direct democracy. The idea is that each individual can give his or her vote to any other individual. For certain subjects you can directly change your delegate or decide to vote on bills or policies yourself. Recently, this form of democracy has become technically possible for large groups of people through the development of the Internet and the necessary software that implements (elements of) liquid democracy.

Good that liquid democracy (fluid democracy) has been mentioned and it may be important to further elaborate on this within the association and at future UNPA conferences.

At the conference the WFBN was well represented, and also the Pirates (Gregory Engels, international coordinator Pirate Party and co-chair PPI, and myself). It seems good to me to continue to follow the progress of a UNPA and to analyze attentively how this can democratize the world in the best possible way.