Fergus Watt is executive director of World Federalists in Canada and John Daniele chairs the Toronto branch. In 2020 the UN will celebrate its 75th anniversary and there is a process underway to review the current system of world governance and consider possible improvements. Peacekeeping is one big challenge, but one huge leap took place when the International Court of Justice was created. Fergus, John, and Metta all hope that a parliamentary assembly will be the next phase of democratization.

Erin Hunt works at Mines Action Canada, which works to promote compliance with the Landmines Treaty, which prohibits the use of bombs that indiscriminately explode by touch or proximity and which, therefore, can injure civilians or even cattle, often long after the war has ended. Erin tells Metta about the origins and effectiveness of that treaty and a related one banning cluster munitions.

Maung Zarni and Paul Copeland discuss with Metta the plight of the Rohingya people in Myanmar and the massacres of 2017 that forced most of them to flee to Bangladesh. Had we misperceived Aung San Suu Kyi? She defended the Myanmar government before the World Court, but it ruled that they may be perpetrating genocide.

In the first of our Global Town Halls, Andre Kamenshikov, Charlotte Sheasby-Coleman, Joanna Santa Barbara, Bruna Nota, and Adam Wynne discuss their current concerns with Metta Spencer. Russia's changing constitution and the coronavirus are the first topics, with a broad agenda of ecological economics as a debating point. Ex-Soviet citizens tend to be wary of big ideas, and to worry that ideology may lead to extremism.

Libbe HaLevy calls herself a “Survivor of Three Mile Island,” which sounds strange until you learn that not everyone did survive it. Now she runs a weekly podcast about the effects of radioactivity. Angela Bischoff, director of Ontario's Clean Air Alliance, is a listener and, according to Libbe, a source of information. These two women discuss with Metta the risks of nuclear power, including a few new proposals.

Tariq Rauf is an expert on nuclear weapons and the unending struggle to restrain and abolish them all. He and Metta Spencer talk about politics of disarmament and their dismay about the number of states that are modernizing these weapons and creating hypersonic delivery systems. Rauf predicts that the upcoming Non-Proliferation Review Conference will fail, but that the NPT will not collapse.

Alyn Ware heads the Basel Peace Office, where he oversees the opposition to nuclear weapons by the Parliamentary Network on Nonproliferation and Disarmament and his new campaign, Move the Nuclear Weapons money. He and Metta Spencer discuss the way that financial profitability of producing these weapons shapes the policies of nuclear weapon states. They consider the possibility of shifting to alternative systems of security, such as OSCE, and the need to change the United Nations.

Mukti Suvedi and Sharad Neupane are Nepalese peace and development workers. Metta called them in Kathmandu and learned about Mukti's project: rebuilding a town that had been levelled by an earthquake. Sharad does peace work with youth. One technique is simply getting kids from different castes to play football together. Many youth go to work in the Middle East; now the challenge is to bring them home and give them productive jobs.