Drea Klein Bergman loves the UN and also thinks it needs lots of improvement. She is executive director of Progressive World Federalists, and she works with young people putting on model United Nations meetings. We talk about various proposals for making the UN more democratic, including of course by abolishing the veto power of the “permanent five” members of the Security Council. An even bolder plan would create a parliamentary assembly, but it is not clear how to make it elected by individuals, not nation states. Metta proposes using cell phones and having voters everywhere on earth choose a delegate to represent everyone according to their birthday. A virtual UN would have some real advantages over the current one, where delegates have to travel to meetings. The big disadvantage is that fact that time zones are incompatible. Drea is enthusiastic about forming a post-UN Model organization for youths who have gone through the experiment in university or high school. For the video, audio podcast, transcript or comment column: https://tosavetheworld.ca/episode-386-imagining-world-governance/.
Panelist
Drea Klein-Bergman:
Adele Buckley
Elizabeth Riddell Dixon
Ernie Regehr
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