18. The History of the World Federalist Movement

From the Montreux Congress to the Coalition for the International Criminal Court and beyond, learn about the ideas and campaigns of WFM, the leading international organisation working towards peace, justice and world unity.

Episode Transcript

(00:10):
In this video we’re going to look atthe history of the World Federalist Movement, or WFM.
Today WFM is a network of dozensof organisations in many countries of the world,
all working to promote the ideaof global democracy and world federation.
Now these ideas existed long before the creation of WFM.
As far back as the mid-19th century, Peace Movementsstarted to develop the idea that the best way to stop war

(00:36):
was to create a legal structure above states,though which they could solve their differences through non-violent means.
Instead of going to war, they could go to court.
And many in the Peace Movement realisedthat if world law was going to become a reality
then it would require a world parliament to make this law,
and a world government to enforce it.

(00:58):
And thus in the early part of the 20th century
many of these Peace Movements started to alsocall for world government and world federation.
However, at that time peace was not to be, and in 1914 the First World War broke out.
Afterwards, states came together and formedthe League of Nations and the International Court of Justice,
hoping that this would be sufficient to keep the peace.

(01:21):
Many in the Peace Movement were convinced that this weak confederation of nations,
with no ability to make world law and no realenforcement power, would not keep the peace for long.
And so throughout the 1920s and 1930sa growing number of activists and thinkers
began to publish books calling for a world federation.

(01:42):
And in the late 1930s, as the winds of warwere beginning to rumble yet again in Europe,
a number of organisations dedicated to promoting an inclusiveworld federation with a democratic federal world government, began to form.
One of the first was the Campaign for World Government,
founded in the US in 1937 by feminist peace activists,Rosika Schwimmer and Lola Maverick Lloyd.

(02:07):
The following year Federal Union was formed in the UK,
and separate organisations with the same namewere also founded in America and in New Zealand.
World Federalist groups were alsoformed in several Scandinavian countries,
and in the late 1930s they organizedthe First Inter-Nordic Meeting on World Federation in Sweden.
And after the Second World War startedmore and more organisations were formed calling for world federation.

(02:33):
In 1940 the Mouvement Populaire Suisseen Faveur d’une Fédération des Peuples was formed in Switzerland,
and the World Federalists were established in the US.
In 1942, 15 year-old Harris Woffordset up the Student Federalists, again in the US.
In 1946, Een Verden (meaning ‘One World’)was formed in Denmark,

(02:56):
and other world federalist organisations were set up in Canada,Ireland, France, Australia, Southern Africa, India and Argentina and others.
When the Second World War finally came to an end in 1945there was a huge surge of interest in the idea of a world federation.
The shock of the scale of death and destruction in the war,

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and the creation of the atomic bomband its deadly use against Japan,
made many people think thatanother world war simply could not take place.
And thus the question of how to organise the worldso that countries could sort out their differences in a non-violent manner
was very high on the agenda,both among politicians and among the ordinary public.

(03:40):
In 1945, shortly after the bombing of Hiroshima,
the University of Chicago in Americahad set up a Committee to Frame a World Constitution,
including leading professors from across the social sciences.
They felt that it was imperative to act quicklyto make sure that war could never happen again.
They were very much against the United Nations,which had just been formed,

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and which they saw as just another powerless league,really like the League of Nations.
They thought that it was impossible to reform the UNinto a real federation because the basic structure was all wrong.
Instead they thought that a totallynew form of world order was needed.
And they thought that, between them,they had the intellectual strength and leadership to lead the way.

(04:25):
And thus they sat down and started working on draftinga World Constitution for a future federal world government.
And in 1947, on the other side of the Atlantic,
British Labour Party MP, Henry Usborne, set upthe All-Party Parliamentary Group on World Government,
which at its peak had around 200 membersfrom the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

(04:47):
These statesmen felt the very real needto create a higher power, above the states,
that would settle disagreements between themby non-violent methods, and thus avoid another war.
So this was a really real and serious issue at this time.
In 1947 several world federation activists decided the time was right
to bring together the various world federation organisations so that they could work together

(05:12):
in a concerted effort to bring about a world federationand a world government in the next few years.
They decided to organise a conference, which would take place in Montreux, Switzerland.
The British Federal Union took the leadin organising. and sent out invitations
to the hundred or so world federalist organisationsthat they knew, mainly in Europe and America,

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inviting them to come to Montreux and join forces.
And in August that year,51 organisations, and many independent delegates,
indeed came together in Switzerland at the Montreux Congress.
All in all, there were about 300 people from 14 countries.About half of them were students.
Messages of support were sent from a variety of important people,including Britain’s Foreign Minister, Ernest Bevin;

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Italian Foreign, Minister Carlo Sforza,and of course, Albert Einstein.
This was the Congress that foundedthe World Movement for World Federal Government,
that would later change its name to the World Association of World Federalists,
and then again, to the World Federalist Movement, or WFM.
It also founded a student movement,the World Student Federalists.

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The discussions at the Montreux Congress were energetic and intense.
The two key questions which dominated the discussions
were what should the future world government look like?And how do we make it happen?
There were two major views aboutwhat the future world government should look like.
Most of the American delegates favoured a 'minimalis't approach,
in which the powers of the federal level of world governmentwould be limited only to security issues,

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while most of the European delegatespreferred a 'maximalist' approach,
in which the federal level of government would also deal with socio-economic issues.
The Americans wanted to focus on security,while the Europeans also wanted to deal with justice.
There was also a divide in viewsabout how best to get there.
The Americans favoured a gradual and incrementalistapproach of reforming the United Nations.

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The UN was still very new and there wasa Charter Reform Conference scheduled for 1955,
and the Americans favoured drawing up proposals and lobbying politicians in order to achieve a change
which would lead the UNin the direction of becoming a world government.
Most of the Europeans, on the other hand, thought that the UN was fundamentally the wrong organisation,

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and that insteada new world government had to be created from scratch.
They suggested holding a World Constitutional Convention to draft a World Constitution
which they believed could be drafted,amended and ratified within a few years
so that the new world government would be in place by 1955.
Another group believed that the best route to a world federationwas through the formation of regional federations.

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They thus felt that it was important to devote energies to the fledgling unification process that was beginning to start in Europe
and to push for the creation of a European Federation.
And so they set up the Union of European Federalists.
Regarding the world federation,the speeches on each side were long and detailed,
and when they got too theoreticalthe student delegates would urge them to a conclusion

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by chanting, ‘action, action, we want action!’
That was the energy of the meeting,
a desire for action and a belief that world federationwas a possible achievement in the next few years.
By the end of the Congress it was agreedthat the World Movement for World Federal Government
would pursue both strategies,UN Charter Reform and a World Constitutional Convention.

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A declaration was drafted,what would come to be known as the Montreux Declaration,
the founding Charter of the World Federalist Movement.
Its key paragraphs say:
We world federalists meeting in Montreux at the firstinternational Congress of the "World Movement for World Federal Government",
call upon the peoples of the world to join us in our work.

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We are convinced that mankindcannot survive another world conflict…
The second attempt to preserve peace by means of a world organisation,
the United Nations,
is powerless, as at present constituted, to stop the drift of war.
We world federalists are convinced that the establishmentof a world federal government is the crucial problem of our time.

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Until it is solved, all other issues,whether national or international, will remain unsettled.
It is not between free enterprise and planned economy, nor between capitalism and communism that the choice lies,
but between federalism and power politics.
Federalism alone can assure the survival of man.

(09:41):
We world federalists affirm that mankind can free itself forever from war
only through the establishment of a world federal government.
Such a federation must be based on the following principles:
1). Universal membership…
2). Limitation of national sovereignty…
3). Enforcement of world law directly on the individual

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whoever or wherever he may be, … and guarantee of the rights of man,
4). Creation of supranational armed forces capable of guaranteeing the security of the world federal government
and of its member states,and disarmament of member nations…
5). Ownership and control by theworld federal government of atomic development

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and of other scientific discoveries capable of mass destruction.
6). Power to raise adequate revenues directly and independently of state taxes.
Now in the following years mostworld federalist activists rallied around the idea
of a World People’s Convention to draft a World Constitution.
British MP Henry Usborne led the way.

(10:44):
In 1948 he set up the Crusade for World Government and turned his Westminster office into its unofficial headquarters.
His parliamentary group met there once a week,
and young people from the Student Movement forWorld Government often came by to volunteer and help out.
He drew up a detailed planfor a People’s Convention to be held in Geneva in 1950.

(11:06):
His plan included a methodologyfor how delegates would be elected from each country
according to the population of that country, with one delegate per million people.
Since the UK had a population of 38 million at the time,he proposed they would elect 38 delegates,
and he made plans for an unofficial electionto be held, modelled on the Peace Ballot of 1934,

(11:28):
when activists had organised an unofficial vote to gaugeif there was support for the UK to remain in the League of Nations.
Usborne thought that if he could get a quarterof the British population to vote for world government
then he would have sufficient popular support to make ratifyingthe world constitution an issue in the next parliamentary elections.
He and his colleagues travelled around the country, explaining the vision

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and winning considerable support from peace societies, churches, industry groups, trade unions, and political parties.
He also went on a tour of the US to try to build up support there.
While the United World Federalists,the largest world federalist group in the US,
favoured UN Reformover the World People’s Convention approach,
other more radical groups supported him, including the Campaign for World Government,

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World Republic, the Chicago Committee, the student groups, and so on.
He organised a conference in Pennsylvaniawhere participants discussed the pros and cons of his idea
and tried to work out the method by which the USwould elect delegates to the People’s Convention.
One of the lead activists in America who supported a People’s Conventionwas historian and classics professor, Stringfellow Barr.

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He suggested that it was important to include peoplefrom a wide range of countries in the Peoples Convention,
not just from western countries.
In particular he thought that Nehru,now Prime Minister of independent India, should be involved.
Nehru had spoken publicly about his supportfor the idea of a world federation, which he called ‘One World’,
and he had recently met with American World Federalist, Edward Clark,

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and he had also spoken enthusiasticallyabout world federation on University of Chicago radio.
Barr thought that Nehru could leada group of newly emerging post-colonial countries
to support world federationand send delegates to the People’s Convention.
Usborne, who had been born in India and was well-aware of Nehru’s views on world federation, heartily agreed,

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and he wrote to Nehru about the People’s Convention idea.
Nehru was cautiously supportive.
He had read many of the western proposals for world government
and he knew that some of themdid not include the people of the colonies.
He saw that Usborne and the World Movement for Federal World Governmentdid include everyone, and so he replied positively,
although taking the opportunity to stress again the importance of including everyone and ensuring equality and justice.

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Or in his words, and I quote from the letter he wrote to Usborne in 1948:
"I have little doubt that the great majority of our own people would welcomethe idea of international cooperation or some kind of a world government.
But it is important that they must not think of thisas a reversion to European or any other domination."
In 1948 the World Movement heldits second congress, this time in Luxembourg.

(14:14):
Again, some 300 people attended,including several heavy-weight figures,
such as Lord William Beveridge, former Directorof the London School of Economics and designer of Britain’s new welfare state,
and Sir John Boyd Orr,the first Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Authority.
By now the movement had over 300,000 members.

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The Congress discussed the People’s Convention and set upan international steering committee to coordinate the preparatory work.
Just a few months earlier, American peace activist, Gary Davis,
had publicly renounced his American citizenshipwhile he was in Paris, and declared himself a world citizen.
He was drawing huge support across Europe with his messageof world peace through world government and world citizenship,

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and he was starting a mass movementwith thousands of people coming out on rallies,
and literally hundreds of thousands of people registering with his World Citizens Registry.
Davis also supported the idea of a People’s Convention
and his voice amplified the calls for it far and wide across Europe and beyond.
However, by late 1948, tensions were beginning to flare upagain between the Soviet Union and the European countries,

(15:23):
and people began to fear thata Third World War may be about to erupt.
Discussions in political circles moved away from the idea of a world federation,
at least in the immediate future,and instead turned to various kind of Western alliances.
British politicians debated the various options.
Foreign Minister, Ernest Bevin,previously cautiously supportive of the idea of a world federation,

(15:45):
now turned to the idea of a so-called ‘Western Union’,what would later become NATO.
In opposition, Winston Churchill favoured unifying Europe,what would later become the European Union.
Parliamentary support for Usborne’s idea of world federation began to diminish.
But nonetheless Usborne and his colleaguescontinued preparing for the People’s Congress.

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But by 1950 it was already too late.
The Korean War, a proxy war betweenthe US and the Soviet Union, had started,
and the world was splitting into Communist and Capitalist blocs.
People began to rally around nationalist causes,
and even popular supportfor the idea of world federation lost its fervour.

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While some 500 people from 42 countries did indeed attendthe People’s Convention in December 1950, the Convention was not a success.
Usborne’s system of electing delegatesto the Convention never found its way into practice,
with the one exception of the American state of Tennessee,
which did indeed hold formal electionsfor delegates to the People’s Convention

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and elected three representatives,who did indeed turn up in Geneva, ready to vote on a World Constitution.
However, they were the only elected delegates.
Eyo Ita, a professor and politician from colonial Nigeria, also turned up
and declared that he had beenelected by the various tribes and people of his region.
But four people was not enough.

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The elected delegates looked over the draft world constitutionthat have been prepared by the Chicago Committee,
and also another draft constitution that had beenprepared by Advocate Sanjib Chaudhuri of Calcutta, India,
who presented his text at the Convention.
But there was little that they could really do.
And instead the 6-day Convention turned into a general talking shop

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about how a real People’s Convention could be organised,what should be in a world constitution, and so on.
But by now the world had now changed
and the plausibility of states ratifying a world constitutionin the coming years now seemed remote.
While some groups decided to keep on withthe People’s Convention plan nevertheless,
including the Campaign for World Governmentand later, the World Constitution and Parliament Association,

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most people now turned away from the idea.
Usborne himself decided to change tactics,
and the following year he set upthe World Association of Parliamentarians for World Government,
to bring together parliamentariansfrom many different countries
to discuss how to reform the UNin the direction of world government.
And indeed, most of the world federalist organisations that continued to operate after 1950

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changed direction to start focusing on reforming the UN.
The promised Charter Revision conferencewas still tentatively scheduled for 1955,
and most of the energies of the World Movementand its member organisations
shifted now to thinking just how the Charter should be changed.
In 1951 Usborne organised a conference of the World Associationof Parliamentarians for World Government, to discuss the issue.

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250 parliamentarians from 24 countries attended
and together they came up with a proposalto replace the General Assembly with a two-house system,
a Council of States to represent statesand a Council of Peoples to represent the world’s people,
and to replace the Security Councilwith a World Executive Council
consisting of representatives elected from both the Council of States and the Council of People.

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They also proposed that the International Court of Justicewould be given compulsory jurisdiction, turning it into a real, world court,
that a UN police force should be formed,
and that all states should go through a process of complete and simultaneous disarmament.
This was essentially a minimalist approach
that would create a very thin layer of federal world governmentthat would deal with security issues.

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These ideas were very much in linewith those of American lawyer, Grenville Clark,
who in 1950 had published his 'Plan for Peace'which was also built on the idea of UN Charter revision.
He later developed his ideas further,with Harvard professor Louis Sohn,
and together they published'Peace through Disarmament and Charter Revision' in 1953,
and then later in 1958, 'World Peace through World Law'.

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All these ideas flowed into the movement.
In 1953 the World Association of Parliamentarians for World Governmentand the World Movement for Federal World Government
held a joint Congress in Copenhagenand together they decided to focus on the UN reform plan.
They adopted the plan of the parliamentariansand agreed to work to lobby their governments to support the plan

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when the Charter Review conference would finally take place.
The movement was again energised because they had a clear plan of action.
In 1955 the 10th General Assembly of the UN agreed that there was indeed a need to review the Charter
and they nominated a Commission which was charged with presenting a report to the General Assembly in 1957.

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The world federalists stepped uptheir efforts to win support for their plan.
But 1957 came and wentand still no Charter Review conference was scheduled.
The movement carried on in hope,because surely it would happen any year now.
Their discussions also began to broaden out.
The world was changing.
European empires were disintegratingand colonies in Africa and Asia were becoming independent states.

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The World Movement started to discuss de-colonisation and also issues of poverty and development.
They proposed the establishment of a World Development Authorityand a Fund for Economic Development.
At the Hague Congress in 1957 Komla Agbeli Gbedemah,the Finance Minister of newly independent Ghana,
was elected as the movement’s President.

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Gbedemah had been involved with the movement,
and also with the World Association of Parliamentarians for World Government, since the early 1950s,
and strongly supported the idea of UN reform.
This marked the beginning of a short period in which the World Movementbegan to diversify beyond its predominantly European and American membership
and began to reach out to peoples in the newly emerging countries in Africa and Asia.

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As they began to think more broadly about world justice issues,and particularly about the colonial and post-colonial world order,
many world federalists at this time thought that they would findallies and supporters in the newly emerging states in Africa and Asia,
as these poorer and weaker states would have much to gain
from a world order in which power politicswould be subordinated to international law,

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and in which greed would be subordinated to justice.
And as these new countries joined the UN, they reasoned,
they could form a third bloc,separate from the American bloc and the Soviet bloc,
and they could have a real impact in shifting the UNin the direction of a democratic world government.
A few months later a regional Congress was held in Kyoto, Japan.

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The Union for World Federal Government had beenestablished in Japan in 1948, on the third anniversary of Hiroshima,
and several of its members had been attending the World Movement’s Congresses since then.
This regional Congress focusedalmost entirely on the issues of ending colonialism,
cooperation among the peoples of Africa and Asia,and economic development.

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Plans were laid to establish newworld federalist organisations in a range of countries,
including Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
Over the next few years more and more delegates fromAfrican and Asian countries started to attend the World Movement’s Congresses
and the discussions focused increasinglyon de-colonisation and economic development,
and the changes needed in the UN to bring this about.

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The 1961 Congress, held in Cologne, included delegatesfrom Pakistan, India, Vietnam, Japan, Cameroon, Congo, Ivory Coast,
Tunisia, Senegal, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Egypt,as well as several countries in Latin America.
Leopold Senghor, President of the newly independent Senegal,attended and was elected as Vice-President.

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Japanese Nobel Prize-winning physicist,Hideki Yukawa, was elected President.
The Movement was changing.
While the UN Charter Review conferencenever, in fact, took place,
in 1963 a small number of Charter reformswere in fact agreed by the UN General Assembly.
In order to accommodate the growing number of newly independentAfrican and Asian states that were taking up their seats at the UN,

(24:08):
the Security Council was expanded from 11 to 15 members,
and the Economic and Social Council, ECOSOC,was expanded from 18 to 27 members.
Whilst important, these changes wereso small that to many it finally became clear
that changing the UN Charterin any significant way was, by now, extremely unlikely.

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And thus the energy for UN reform began to run out.
Many of the African and Asian delegates who had beenattending the World Movement Congresses began to drop out.
They saw more potential to affect changein the UN through direct political channels,
such as the G77 or the Non-Aligned Movement,which united the developing countries to vote together as a bloc in the UN.

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And indeed in the late 1960s and early 1970s these movements developed an outline for a New International Economic Order,
which sought to offer more opportunities to the developing countriesand even out the unfair existing international order.
By then they formed a majority in the General Assembly,and they managed to vote through their Declaration.
But then the real weaknesses of the UN system became clear,because the rich countries simply ignored it.

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Most of the European and American world federalistsalso came to the realisation that UN Charter Reform was now unlikely.
The Youth and Student Division called for a shift in strategy.
It was time to move away from thelegalist approach of UN reform, they argued,
and time to focus on more immediateworld problems, such as securing human rights,

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improving East-West relations,working for international arms control,
reshaping the world’s economyand preserving the environment.
And thus starting from the early 1970s the movement again started to change
and shifted to focus its efforts on issue-specific goals.
They called their new policy ‘Dynamics for Peace’.

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In certain respects their approach was broader than the UN reform approach.
They wanted more of a maximalist approach,focusing on justice and not only on security,
but they lacked a clear vision of howworld federalism would deal with these issues,
and indeed, how world federalism would be brought about.
And thus they fell into just tryingto tinker with the existing international order

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to try to achieve some small improvements here and there.
While this might have seen more practical and realistic, it meant that the movement had basically lost its fundamental raison d’etre.
Instead of talking about structural change to the world order,
it just got bogged down in a whole variety of discussionsabout small improvements to specific issues.

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There were many other NGOs talking about how to make these types of small improvements
and the world federalists basically lost their identity and their core message.
Numbers dwindled as members leftthe movement to pursue other avenues.
But a small group continued on.
Some were waiting for the political situation to changeso that they could start calling again for world federation,

(27:04):
and others were content to engage in countlessdiscussions about world improvement projects.
There were, of course, many activities,including the creation of the Institute of Global Policy
as a think-tank to advance educationabout global issues and world federation,
but in all honesty, this was a low-point for the movement.
However, by the 1990s,the political situation did indeed start to change.

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In 1989 the Berlin Wall came downand the Cold War finally came to an end.
The world was no longer divided into two separate blocs,with two competing ideologies.
Instead all the countries were nowtaking part in the capitalist world economy.
American political scientist,Frances Fukuyama, called it ‘the end of history’.

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In the coming years it came to be known as ‘globalisation’.
Suddenly, it was indeed possible to imagine a unified world.
Energy and enthusiasm began to return to the world movement.
Furthermore, the 1980s had witnesseda major transformation in civil society.
Many largely voluntary social movements had professionalised and transformed into NGOs, (non-governmental organisations)

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with paid staff, and offices and large grantsfrom philanthropic or government donors.
WFM decided to follow this route.
In 1994 Bill Pace was hired as the Executive Director,
a new office was established in New York, close to the UN,
grants were sought,and a new strategic approach was agreed.

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WFM would now work with networksof other NGOs, about specific issues,
with the aim of getting new institutions created at the global levelwhich would improve the governance of global issues.
Pace had attended the Earth Summit in 1992
and he thought that global environmental governance would bethe area where there would be most support for new institutions,

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in particular, turning the small and powerlessUN Environmental Program into a proper UN Environmental Organisation
which would be able to makeand enforce international environmental laws.
But the leading environmental NGOs of the time were not interested.
They were sceptical that international law could actually work,
and so there was not a lot of interest or support.

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But instead, developments were starting in a different area altogether,that of international human rights law.
In 1989 Trinidad and Tobago had proposed that the UN General Assemblyshould discuss the creation of an International Criminal Court
to hold individuals accountable for the worst kinds of war crimes.
The General Assembly had referred the issue to the Sixth Committee (the Legal Committee)

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and by 1994 a draft Statute fora future International Criminal Court, or ICC,
had been prepared and presented to the General Assembly.
Even though there was strong oppositionfrom larger states, such as the US and Russia,
this looked like a process that was moving and that actually stood a chance.
Pace started talking to other NGOsin the human rights and disarmament sectors

(30:04):
and found that many of themwere also excited about these events.
Amnesty International, in particular,were keen to rally support for the process.
And so in February 1995, a meetingof around 25 interested NGOs was organised in New York
and the Coalition for the ICC was formed.
Pace became the Convenorand WFM hosted the small secretariat to organise the work.

(30:28):
Over the next few years there were several discussionsat the UN General Assembly about the proposed ICC.
There were states that supported, states that opposed,
many arguments about how it should be composed,what powers it would have, and so on.
The Coalition attended these meetingsand provided input and analysis.
They also brought NGOs from the developing countriesto participate so that they too could have a say.

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And they formed a partnership with the 70 or sostates that supported the creation of the ICC.
And as these activities started to bring results,more and more NGOs joined the Coalition,
and the pressure on the states to create the ICC increased.
In 1996 the UN General Assembly formally decided to hold a special treaty-establishing conference in Rome in 1998.

(31:16):
This is where the ICC would eitherfinally be agreed, or fall by the wayside.
The Coalition stepped up its activities, lobbying governments, providing analysis,
proposing solutions to technical problems,and keeping the pressure on.
In 1998 the Rome Conference took place.
The fate of the ICC was still very much in the balance.

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The US, Russia and others were very much against it and they were doing everything they could to find a way to block it.
But a large group of smaller countries were determinedly pushing ahead.
The Coalition, now consisting of over 800 NGOs,attended the Rome Conference in force.
While most states sent one or two delegates,and even the larger states sent 10 or 15,

(31:59):
the Coalition sent over 500 delegates.Their presence was huge.
They set up a website and wrote daily updatesso that people all round the world could know what was going on.
If they saw a state beginning to back off from supporting the ICC,
they would speak with their coalition membersback in the capital city of that state, and get them to talk to the Ministers there.

(32:19):
All this massively increased the transparency the process
and put pressure on the wavering statesto stand by their previous positions.
Eventually the Treaty was passed, and the Rome Statuteto create the International Criminal Court was adopted.
According to Bill Pace, who of course was there,
there was a thunderous applause that went on for about 25 minutes!

(32:41):
A partnership between a group of states and a group of NGOs
had succeeded in creating a new international institution,
an international court that would be able to investigateand prosecute individuals for four international crimes,
genocide, crimes against humanity,war crimes, and the crime of aggression.
This would be the first international courtable to prosecute individuals, rather than states,

(33:06):
and thus it represented a huge breakthrough in international law.
In 2002 the Rome Statute entered into effect and the ICC was created.
The Coalition decided to continue working togetherto support the fledgling ICC and to try to improve it.
Over the next 20 or so yearsBill Pace and the WFM led the Coalition,

(33:27):
which during that time consisted of between 2,000 and 4,000 NGOs,
to work towards improving the ICCand keeping ordinary people aware of and involved in its activities.
This formed the bulk of WFM’s work during the past 20 years or so.
The staff in the offices in the New York, and also in The Hague,focused most of their energies on the Coalition for the ICC.

(33:50):
They also carried out some other smaller projects,such as leading the NGO Working Group on the Security Council,
which sought to improve the Security Counciland make it more transparent,
and they also contributed to thinking about theResponsibility to Protect initiative that was developing at the time.
And while WFM became a well-known and well-respected NGO in New York,

(34:10):
a disconnect began to developbetween the NGO part of the WFM, and the movement part of it.
All the member organisations continued to meetand discuss their ideas in the WFM Congress,
and continued to work in their own countriesto promote world federation.
But were only marginally involved in the activities of the NGO in New York.

(34:31):
And since the early 2000s there has been a great influx of new energyand a significant growth in these member organisations.
In 2003, for example, the Committee for a Democratic UNwas formed in Germany and joined the WFM.
They set up the Campaignfor a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly
and set about lobbying politiciansand diplomats in order to win support.

(34:53):
In 2013 the Spanish section of the Campaignlaunched a lively Global Week of Action for a World Parliament.
In 2017 the Committee for a Democratic UN changed their name to Democracy Without Borders
and they began a process of expansion,
setting up branches in India, Kenya, Greece, Spain,Sweden and Switzerland, with others on the way.

(35:15):
And by now the Campaign for UN Parliamentary Assembly had gained considerable traction.
It has been discussed in the European Parliamentand various other international fora,
and over 1,500 parliamentarians have given it their support.
Democracy without Borders has also startedworking together with other democracy-promoting NGOs
to create a campaign for a World Citizens Initiative, similar to the European Citizens Initiative,

(35:40):
in which ordinary people would be able join togetherand get particular issues discussed in the UN General Assembly.
And in 2005 a new organisation was formed in Argentina,called Democracia Global, and they too joined the WFM.
They started working with leading academicsto issue a Global Democracy Manifesto
and they have also created theCampaign for a Latin American Criminal Court,

(36:03):
as a step towards building up moresupra-national institutions at the regional level.
In 2013 One World was formed in Israel-Palestine,
bringing together young Jews and Arabs to call for global democracy,
and producing educational materialsabout global democracy and world federation.
And in 2014 Profesoor Joseph Schwartzberg,Emeritus professor at the University of Minnesota

(36:27):
set up the Workable World Trust, to support activitiesfocusing on UN reform, and on global democracy more generally.
And in 2019 the Young World Federalists burst onto the scene,bringing new youthful energy to the movement,
engaging on internet platforms and social media,
and rallying millennials and Generation Zto the cause of world federation.

(36:49):
So, as we can see, the world federalist movementhas changed many times over the years,
responding to changes in world eventsby developing new ideas and new strategies.
Right now is probably anotherinflexion point for the movement.
Bill Pace has retired and the leadershipfor the Coalition for the ICC has been passed onto another NGO.

(37:11):
There is new leadership, new energy and a desire for new directions.
In today’s highly globalised worldit is now very much possible to imagine a unified world,
a world federation,with global democracy and global citizenship.
The problems with the existing international world orderare becoming increasingly visible to everyone.

(37:33):
A retreat to nationalism does not seem likely, or desirable.
So now, finally, it may be the right time for WFMto start again the push for world federation and global democracy.