WFM Congress to mark 60th anniversary in Geneva: Sixty years young!

The international World Federalist Movement will celebrate its 60th anniversary at the XXVth World Congress, August 27–31  in Geneva, Switzerland. WFM now includes 37 member, associated and regional organizations. The WFM Congress will be held at the headquarters of the World Meteorological Organization and will include a public seminar, elections and policy discussions, as well as commemorative events to mark the anniversary. The event is open to participation by individual world federalists from around the world. Visit www.wfm.org for more information.

Canada’s role promoting democracy

WFMC President Warren Allmand and Executive Director Fergus Watt provided expert testimony to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development (SCFAID). The committee is studying “Canada’s Role Internationally Promoting Democratic Development.” The minister of foreign affairs has announced plans to make democracy promotion abroad a higher priority for Canada.

WFMC’s submission (available at www.worldfederalistscanada.org) focused on (a) the international political and normative context for democracy promotion; (b) essential principles, constituent elements of democratic development; (c) suggested guideposts for Canadian policy and programs, including the critically important role of civil society; and (d) democracy promotion, the democratization of global governance and the proposed UN Parliamentary Assembly.

Is Canada still a peacekeeping nation?

Debating Canada’s Contributions to Peace Operations, Past, Present and Future headlines a new resource prepared by the Peace Operations Working Group (POWG), an NGO network chaired by the World Federalists. Former disarmament ambassador Peggy Mason and Prof. Doug Bland (Queen's University) have taken sides in this rich, in-depth discussion on what role Canada should play in international peace operations. National Post journalist Peter Goodspeed and Ernie Regehr, senior advisor to Project Ploughshares, have submitted responses to the initial expert opinions. You can also have your say!  The Peacebuild Forum is online at www.forum.peacebuild.ca/. 

A WFM–Canada press release and background kit marked International Day of UN Peacekeepers (May 29). An excellent paper summarizing Canadian peacekeeping deployments over the years is Prof. Walter Dorn’s March 2007 article Canadian Peacekeeping: No Myth – But Not What It Once Was (also available at the WFMC website).

POWG also sponsors the project  “Civilian Monitoring of Complex Peace Operations: the Peace Operations Monitor.” In order to provide a more holistic understanding of peace operations, this web site provides up-to-date factual information on peace operations (currently in Afghanistan, Haiti and Sudan). The website offers an ‘integrated mission perspective,’ identifying major players, mandates, governance arrangements, military contributions, non-governmental organization contributions, and coordination structures between them. In addition to these categories, a conflict background and event chronology are provided. The site draws on publicly available data from UN, military, international government, academic, think-tank, media, and NGO sources, in addition to primary information from an extensive network of NGO and civil-society contacts, to profile military, humanitarian, governance, development and peacebuilding activities.

Peace Tower or Peace Silo?

World Federalists were  among the 14 organizations represented at the national meeting of the “Initiative for a federal department of peace.” Member organizations, including eight chapters across Canada, share the goal of creating a federal department and minister of peace. Liberal MP Keith Martin has suggested a “Secretary of State for Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding” as a possible first step before creating a full department of government.

That’s ‘RLOAD,’ not ‘Re-load’

WFM–Canada Council Chair Robin Collins recently met with officials at Foreign Affairs and also a delegation from the Parliamentary Network for Nuclear Disarmament (PNND) to discuss RLOAD – Retaliatory Launch Only After Detonation, a proposal that would provide a safer alternative to U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons policies of “Launch-on-Warning.”

As long as the USA and Russia retain arsenals of intercontinental ballistic missiles, with some of these weapons on high alert and at "launch-on-warning", there is the possibility, remote but never completely absent, that radar and satellite warning displays could be misinterpreted and result in a launch on a false warning. The Norwegian ‘rocket event’ in 1995 was an example in which a number of Russian experts gave their opinion that there had been actual danger of a nuclear exchange from what was in fact only a scheduled launch of an unarmed Norwegian research rocket.

While explaining that WFMC supports arms control and disarmament efforts that go much further, Collins pointed out that RLOAD could be implemented immediately without an adverse impact on the nuclear powers’ deterrence policy.

Vote World Government?

In the 1980s, Jim Stark was president of Canada’s largest disarmament advocacy organization, Operation Dismantle. He led a campaign that organized municipal plebiscites in cities and towns across Canada on issues such as cruise missile testing and making Canada a nuclear-weapons-free-zone. 

A consistent believer in the power (and necessity) of organized citizens action to bring about fundamental political change, Stark has now ‘gone global.’ Says Stark,  "After a year of planning, the Internet-based global referendum on democratic world government has begun. It is hoped and expected that in a decade, we will collect “yes” votes from a strong majority of adult humans on the planet.… It is difficult to imagine any person or government or group of countries telling the entire human race that a democratically taken decision can’t be implemented. Even in law, such a referendum result must trump all other law!"

Democratic World Government through a Global Referendum is also the title of Stark’s most recent book. For a preview, or to cast your vote, visit www.voteworldgovernment.org.

When the tour is bigger than the book

Life, Money and Illusion by Mike Nickerson is a thoughtful consideration of one of the central challenges of the 21st century:  How can economic growth  and expansion continue on a planet with a finite resource base? How should we understand and measure progress and human well-being? The World Federalist Foundation supported Nickerson in his research for the book. Following a launch event June 2006 at the World Peace Forum, Nickerson and partner Donna Dillman have spoken at 95 (yes, 95!) workshops in communities across Canada. Visit www.sustainwellbeing.net for more information.

Looking Through Glasnost

In 1991, the political hierarchy of the Soviet Union for the past 74 years collapsed, throwing it into disarray. Mikhail Gorbachev created a watershed with “perestroika” and “glasnost,” the ideas that helped end the Soviet Union and start a new historical period. In the ensuing years, the market economy failed to materialize, Western aid money disappeared into the hands of oligarchs, the expectations of the people were dashed, their personal savings erased by successive devaluations of the ruble.

Looking Through Glasnost describes a dozen visits to Russia and some of the former republics from 1988 to 2003 by longtime world federalist Gil Parker. His experiences provide valuable insights into how Russian citizens experienced this period of transition from a command economy to a (still) faltering democracy.