Committee for a Democratic UN
PRESS RELEASE
Wednesday, February 9, 2005, 10 AM CET

Bern. At a press conference in the Swiss federal building in Bern, an open letter to UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, was presented on Wednesday. With their signature, 108 members of parliament, among them the majority of the Swiss National Council, support the idea of the establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA). Through such an assembly civil society could be better integrated into decision-making on the international level, says the joint letter of the parliamentarians. An UNPA could be suitable to increase the legitimacy, transparency, acceptance and efficiency of the United Nations. The UN Secretary General is requested to "introduce the idea of a Parliamentary Assembly at the UN into the reform debate and to forward this suggestion to the governments of the UN member states for further discussion". The open letter was born of an initiative between the Committee for a Democratic UN (CDUN) and the Society for Threatened Peoples Switzerland (STP).

"In a first step the Parliamentary Assembly could be affiliated to the UN General Assembly as a secondary body or specialized agency with consultative status. It would thereby be able to adopt recommendations directed at the UN General Assembly", said Hanspeter Bigler, STP Secretary-General." According to the example of the European Parliament, the Assembly shall be vested with genuine rights of information, participation and control. "Having witnessed such overwhelming support for the proposal in the Swiss Councils we are examining the possibility of submitting an according bill to parliament", said Dr. Remo Gysin, member of the CDUN Advisory Council and leading coordinator of the initiative in the Swiss National Council. In Bern, CDUN chairperson, Andreas Bummel, said that the Swiss initiative is an important contribution in raising the reform proposal onto the international diplomatic agenda.