VALID FILE
The United Nations vs. The World Government
Never before has it been so important to find a solution to the
problem of substituting law for force in international affairs. It is
almost a cliche to say that our very existence depends on finding a
solution and finding it soon - but if this is a cliche it is also a
frightening truth.
- U Thant, Secretary General, United Nations, 1963
Note: The page numbers have been left in this text for reference purposes.
1. Historical Background
The author fought with the Allies in World War II from the ruins and
idealism of which came the present United Nations. His right to take
an active role in the personal issue of world peace may be said to be
categorical and sovereign. The same may be said of all combatants
from whichever "side." To have been intimately involved with world
war and not to play a dynamic part in world peace is to have fought
in vain. Worse, it is a betrayal of one's brothers who died in battle
and of the wives, mothers, sons and daughters whose deaths testify
to the totality of 20th century war.
Two years after the atom bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the
author came to realize that the United Nations, as originally and
presently constituted, could not fulfill its avowed mission of world
peace. Based on the principle of collective security of exclusive
nation-states, which defect led to the collapse of the League of
Nations and World War II, it lacked the sovereign legislative,
administrative, judicial and enforcement ability, democratically
controlled, to govern the world community wherein war would be
outlawed.
The Dumbarton Oaks proposal of the Four Powers, the United States,
Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union, condemned in advance
the San Francisco Conference to a sterile exercise of national
diplomacy which continues to this day. No nation proposed-- in
recognition of our being one world in time and space-- to make us
world citizens under a representative government dealing directly
with people everywhere. Only China and Columbia expressed a
willingness to delegate sovereignty to the organization while France
and Venezuela paid passing tribute to a federal system. It must be
added that a world legislature was proposed by Ecuador, the
Philippines and Venezuela while more power for the General
Assembly was proposed by Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Costa
Rica, Egypt, France, Greece, Guatemala, Liberia, Mexico, New Zealand,
Norway and Uruguay.
As to the veto of the Security Council, seventeen nations opposed it
as completely contrary to the doctrine of the sovereign equality of
states while Ecuador maintained flatly that it represented anarchy
and the Australian delegate pointed out that if five states of the
original United States had enjoyed a veto, the ten amendments to the
Constitution would never have been adopted.
As one at least equally concerned with world peace as any United
Nations delegate, in May, 1948, after becoming stateless by virtue of
Section 401(f) of the U.S. Nationality Act of 1940, the author claimed
the status of world citizenship. By so doing, he was fulfilling his
P. 116
international civic obligations implied by the Nurnberg Charter under
Article 6(a)(b) and (c) which defines "crimes coming within the
jurisdiction of the Tribunal for which there shall be individual
responsibility."*
The right to assume individual civic responsibility in a given
community is the essence of course of the democratic principle and
the true meaning of sovereignty. This has been subsequently
confirmed by Arts. 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 15(2), 18, 19 and 29 of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.
The author's direct relationship with the United Nations itself began
on 11 September 1948 when he was ordered by ministerial decision
to leave France. Repairing to the "international territory" of the U.N.,
about to hold its 3rd General Assembly at the Palais de Chaillot in
Paris, he requested global political asylum as a World Citizen in a
petition to then Secretary-General Trygve Lie. This petition
specifically called for a review conference, according to Article 109 of
the U.N. Charter to convoke a world constitutional convention to draft
a world constitution for the governance of the world community. At
the request of the Secretariat, he was summarily expelled from the
"international territory" by the French police under orders from the
Ministry of the Interior.
Once again he "petitioned" the General Assembly, this time from the
balcony of the Palais de Chaillot the 22nd of November 1948,
interrupting a session with the aid of friends and fellow World
Citizens, calling for a world constitutional convention. Again, he was
summarily ex-
____________________________________________________________
*II. Jurisdiction and General Principles, Article 6, para. 2. The U.N.
Secretary-General, in his Supplementary Report to the General
Assembly of 24 October 1946 stated that "In the interest of peace,
and in order to protect mankind against future wars, it will be of
decisive significance to have the principles which were implied in the
Nurnberg trials, and according to which the German war criminals
were sentenced, made a permanent part of the body of international
law as quickly as possible. From now on the instigators of new wars
must know that there exist both law and punishment for their
crimes. Here we have a high inspiration to go forward and begin the
task of working toward a revitalized system of international law." On
15 November 1946, the U.S. delegation introduced a proposal to the
U.N. "...to initiate studies and make recommendations for the purpose
of encouraging the progressive development of international law and
its codifications "...and reaffirmed ...the principle of international law
recognized by the Charter of the Nurnberg Tribunal and the
judgment of the tribunal." U.N. General Assembly Resolution
488.48(v) 1950, "Nuremberg Trials," entered the principles to
international law.
P. 117
pelled, this time by U.N. security guards. Increasing public support
however coalesced into a worldwide movement for peace through
world citizenship.
Dr. Herbert Evatt, then-President of the General Assembly, granted
the author a personal hearing agreeing to distribute the petitions
endorsed by a public meeting at the Salle Pleyel to all delegations.
On 3 December 1948, at a public meeting at the Velodrome d'Hiver,
Dr. Evatt's personal response was read. In substance, he wrote that
the United Nations was not constituted to make peace between the
"Big Powers" but only "to maintain it once made."
From this public acknowledgment of its President that the United
Nations was inherently unable to "make peace" between "Big
Powers"-- a situation which prevails today 30 years later-- which
required world law and its sovereign institutions, we the people of
the world, understood that world peace depended on each of us, not
as exclusive nationals but as world citizens. We understood that we
had to become identified as a "world people" before we could claim
our right to determine our own political, economic, social and cultural
destiny.
Coincident with these historical events, the General Assembly on 10
December 1948 proclaimed the UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF
HUMAN RIGHTS "...as a common standard of achievement for all
peoples and all nations..." endorsing the principle of a world
democratic legal order+.
Both the concept of world citizenship as well as the eventual World
Government of World Citizens was thereby mandated by this United
Nations document to which all Member States became subject upon
signing the Charter itself (Ref. arts. 55, 56).
Needless to say, despite article 109(3) which provides for a review
conference after ten years of the U.N.'s existence, no such conference
has yet been held, every member of the Security Council with veto
power being on record as in opposition.*
In the five years following the above events, literally millions of
___________________________________________________________
+Preamble, para 4 and Article 28.
*U.N. General Assembly Resolution 375(IV), 6 December 1949.
"Declaration on Rights and Duties of States", Art. 14 states: "Every
State has the duty to conduct its relations with other States in
accordance with international law and with the principle that the
sovereignty of each State is subject to the supremacy of international
law."
P. 118
ordinary citizens throughout the world actively endorsed world
citizenship with more than 750,000 actually registering at the
International Registry of World Citizens in Paris which the author
founded with friends in January, 1949.
Given this popular mandate, and invoking both the highest moral
principles and the imperative need of humankind in toto and each
human being to survive, the author declared the World Government
of World Citizens on 4 September, 1953 at Ellsworth, Maine, U.S.A.+
The administrative and executive agency of the new government was
founded at New York City, January, 1954 under the name, World
Service Authority.*
The first official World Government document, the World Passport,
was printed and issued beginning in June, 1954. It was based on
Art. 13(2), UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS.
Sample copies were addressed to all national governments*, to the
High Commissioner for Refugees, to the U.S. Federal Bureau of
Investigation, to the Security Division, United Nations Secretariat, and
to the International Federation of Travel Agents. Thirty-six
governments acknowledged receipt of the sample passport, Ecuador,
Laos, Cambodia, and Yemen accorded it de facto recognition and
certain other governments indicated they would take advantage of
the document when the occasion presented itself. No national
government returned or rejected the document.
The 2nd edition of the world Passport was printed in November,
1971 and sample copies sent to all national governments.+ The third
edition of the World Passport was printed in June, 1975 with
samples again addressed to national governments.**
The World Service Authority central office is in Basel, Switzerland. It
is organized as a non-profit association under Swiss Civil Code 60 ss.
World Service Authority District II has offices in London and World
Service Authority District III in Washington, D.C. The latter is
organized as a non-profit corporation in the District of Columbia.
__________________________________________________________
+See "Ellsworth Declaration" (excerpted) appended.
**Purpose: 1) To realize fundamental human rights as outlined in
U.D.H.R.: 2) To promote technical, and global coordination of
organizations, specialized agencies, etc. working for general good; 3)
Provide documentation service for world citizenry corresponding to
the articles of U.D.H.R.
*Accompanying letter appended.
P. 119
2. The United Nations - An Analysis vis-a-vis the World
government of World Citizens
The present U.N. Secretary-General, Dr. Kurt Waldheim, is not
unaware of the Organization's defects. In his 1977 Annual Report, in
noting "increasing frustration and disappointment at the failure to
protect and promote human rights in various parts of the world..." he
reminds us that "...it must be remembered that the existing
machinery such as the Commission on Human Rights is
intergovernment and intergovernmental bodies of course reflect the
position of Member-States."* Unfortunately his conclusions are
vividly and tragically known to millions of victims of war,
deprivation and torture: "Thus we continue to have a conflict
between the individual asserted principles of national sovereignty
and the broad commitment to human rights."**
His own concern for this lethal duality-- reflected also by his
predecessors-- is apparent when he maintains that "For the work of
the United Nations to be effective in the field of human rights, we
need the active commitment, cooperation and political will of the
international community."+
Exclusive nation-states however cannot exercise "political will"
internationally which implies a political framework. What they can
and do exercise is their "power will" backed either by economic clout
or by armies. "Political will" outside the national constitutional
framework presumes people acting civically in the world community.
From this civic commitment evolves inevitably a corollary sovereign
institution, divorced from nations, to which such individuals turn for
help, giving it their primary loyalty, which becomes thereby capable
of protecting human rights from violations by nations.
When the individual politically bypasses the nation-state in a
unilateral exercise of his/her innate sovereignty, s/he is acting ipso
facto as a citizen of the world. Further, s/he is incorporating the
universal and unitive principles of world government just as the
local and/or national citizen incorporates the principles of his/her
locality and/or nation.
___________________________________________________________
*Section V, para. 5
**Ibid.
*Section V, para. 7
P. 120
The failure of the United Nations is nowhere more nakedly revealed
than in the problem of disarmament. Since General Assembly
Resolution 41(1) of 14 December 1946 to Resolution 31/72 of 10
December 1976, spanning 32 years of lip-service to the problem,
general world disarmament has been grotesquely and disastrously
mocked by 94 international wars, over $6 trillion of the world's tax-
payers' money spent on destruction, over 50 million killed and many
more crippled, made homeless and refugeed, a 1977 global
armament budget of over $300 billion-- almost 8% of the world's
gross national product when endemic poverty is the daily grim
condition of hundreds of millions-- and an overkill capacity
hundreds of times over. "Stocks of nuclear weapons," writes Dr.
Waldheim, "have already been sufficient to destroy the world many
times over, and yet the number of warheads has increased five-fold
in the past eight years." Not only does the Secretary-General
recognize the universality of the problem-- "...In a period where a
new form of world society symbolized by the United Nations, is
emerging, (disarmament is) a problem which vitally affects them all
(the majority of the medium and small Powers)"-- but that all
nations "should play an important part in a comprehensive approach
to disarmament aimed at real disarmament in the context of
world order." (Emphasis added.)+
Though his appeal for "world order" is understandably addressed
only to national powers-- which inadvertently exposes the
fundamental contradiction of the underlying premise of the United
Nations itself-- he can only mean the political reality of a world
sovereign, i.e. legal power which can only derive from the true
sovereigns, humankind and its fundamental integer, the human
person.**
Since the nation-state is by definition incapable of extending itself
politically beyond its own sovereignty, the aware individual must
recognize his/her sovereignty as already directly allied to that of
humankind itself on a de facto or actual as well as moral basis. The
Founding Fathers of the United States of America, to take but one
example, recognized both a de facto and morally-based common
citizenship between 1778 and 1887 yet politically disunited. They
remedied the situation with the U.S. Constitution. That common
world citizenship is the dynamic conceptual and actual fact of the
20th
________________________________________________________
*Section IV, para. 3, 1977 Annual Report
*Section IV, para. 8 " " "
**Appended are statements from Heads of State advocating the rule
of law as indispensable to world peace.
P. 121
century rendered by contrast startling apparent by the totality of
nuclear war-- paling into virtual insignificance all lesser problems--
as well as by related global crises such as pollution, gross economic
injustice, depletion of the planet's resources and the like.
The institutionalization of our common world citizenship, as we have
pointed out, has already begun. Thus the complementing of the
international penal code of the Nurnberg Decisions by the World
Government of World Citizens removes the fundamental cause of
war, i.e. the absolute sovereignty of nation-states. Only by so doing
can nations disarm in security and world peace eventually ensue as
trust and cooperation become reinforced by just world law.
In his Report, the U.N. Secretary-General overtly sanctions the
extension of individual sovereignty-- as already codified by the
Nurnberg Decisions-- beyond one's national allegiance. In discussing
the administration of the U.N.*, he maintains that the Charter "...is
very clear on the exclusive international loyalty of the Secretariat...."+
Moreover, every Member-State is obligated "to respect the
exclusively international character of the responsibilities of the
Secretary-General and the staff...."*
The primary political allegiance then of Dr. Kurt Waldheim and
every member of his staff is to an organization-- not a government
to which an individual can affiliate civically-- which he admits
publicly as the highest civil servant of that organization is
constitutionally powerless to sanction and protect fundamental
human rights, the first of which is the right to live. This paradoxical
political allegiance is duly sanctioned by the U.N. Charter, the binding
international instrument of all Member-States. It follows that the
sovereign right of all humans to identify themselves politically as
world citizens allied to its governmental counterpart by a simple
pledge is likewise condoned implicitly by the United Nations Charter.
Not only Article 15(2), UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN
RIGHTS, sanctions the right of the individual to choose his/her
government, but the U.N. Charter itself as well as the
INTERNATIONAL COVENANTS
__________________________________________________________
*Section X, Para. 2
+Article 100(1): "In the performance of their duties, the Secretary
General and the staff shall not seek or receive instructions from any
government or from any authority external to the Organization."
*Article 100(2), U.N. Charter
P. 122
ON HUMAN RIGHTS+ recognize the right of self-determination of
peoples and that the States Parties to these Covenants "shall promote
the realization of the right of self-determination and shall respect
that right in conformity with the provisions of the Charter of the
United Nations."
Furthermore, the United Nations by definition and by Article 20(1),
U.D.H.R., recognizes the right of association. Notwithstanding the first
three words of its Charter: "We, the People...", it does not however
admit membership by individuals. It cannot therefore disapprove
the founding by individuals unrepresented democratically by its
mandate of a governmental institution to which they can associate as
sovereign citizens thereby fulfilling their determination "to save
succeeding generations from the scourge of war...reaffirm faith in
fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human
person, etc...."*
Again, the Secretary-General condones this position in his remarks
concerning the helplessness of the Commission on Human Rights+
when he writes, "...in the present circumstances of international
affairs, I feel that my actions must be governed by one overriding
criterion,. namely, what approach will best serve the welfare of the
individual concerned."**
This humane "approach" is clearly and unequivocally spelled out in
the Preamble of the UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
itself: "Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have
recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression,
that human rights should be protected by a regime of law...." And
Art. 28 confirms the character of this "regime of
__________________________________________________________
+ The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, opened for
signature on 19 December 1966, entered into force for the following
States on 23 March 1976: Barbados, Bulgaria, Byelorussian SSR,
Canada, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Czechoslovakia, Denmark,
Ecuador, Finland, German Democratic Republic, Federal Republic of
Germany, Hungary, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon,
Libyan Arab Republic, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Mongolia,
Norway, Romania, Rwanda, Surinam, Sweden, Syrian Arab Republic,
Tunisia, Ukranian SSR, U.S.S.R., United Kingdom, United Republic of
Tanzania, Uruguay, Yugoslavia, Zaire, Spain, Panama, Poland.
**Part I, art. 1(3)
*Preamble, U.N. Charter
+General Assembly Resolution 728 (XXVIII): "The Economic and
Social Council approves the statement that the Commission on Human
Rights recognizes that it has no power to take any action in regard to
any complaints concerning human rights."
**Section V, Para. 6, 1977 Annual Report
P. 123
law": "Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in
which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be
fully realized."
The oppressed individual must therefore avail himself of the most
effective "approach" to secure protection of his fundamental rights
and freedoms "in the context of world order."
The WORLD GOVERNMENT OF WORLD CITIZENS then represents the
genuine political genesis of that world order which already has
myriad other manifestations far advanced such as communications,
technology, commerce, medicine, travel, etc., and represented in
some measure by the specialized agencies.
The Secretary-General defined in his 1977 Report our very World
Citizen allegiance: "The United Nations is also...the symbol of a higher
and more ambitious political and social aim, the evolution of an
international community with interests, aspiration and loyalties of a
far more wide-ranging kind."* (Emphasis added.) He concedes that
the U.N. "is in search of its identity and its true role..." which again is
to say that it has not found either yet, and that "...It tends to react
rather than to foresee, to deal with effects of a crisis rather than
anticipate and forestall that crisis." As a result, he adds, "its
problems sometimes seem insurmountable and its frustrations
intolerable."+
The United Nations therefore, as presently constituted, based on
exclusive national sovereignty, represents world disorder or, to put
it boldly, international anarchy. It is thus per se an institution of
discord and conflict. Its Secretary-General however tells us that "We
are, I believe, beginning to see the birth of such a community
(international).**
We World Citizens allied wilfully to World Government are in
common accord with the Secretary-General of the United Nations on
this point. But we would go further. Neither the world community
nor humankind are abstractions. Both are dynamic facts of the 20th
____________________________________________________________
*Section I, Para. II, 1977 Annual Report
+Section X, para. 6, " " " . His predecessor, U Thant,
in discussing the obligations of the S.G. stated: "The Secretary-
General operates under the Charter in a world of independent
sovereign states, where national interests remain dominant despite
ideological, technological and scientific changes, and despite the
obvious dangers of unbridled nationalism.... The truth is of course,
that the United Nations, and the S.G., have none of the attributes of
sovereignty, and no independent power...."
**Section I, para. II, 1977 Annual Report
P. 124
century, of the Space Age. And to imagine that humankind and the
world community can endure in an 18th century political system of
separate, exclusive nation-states armed with nuclear weapons is not
only utopic but suicidal.
In the light of the total crisis facing our human race, the exercise of
individual world sovereignty becomes not only legitimate by virtue
of the highest conceptual values taught by humanity's sages from
time immemorial, by the total interdependence of each and all to a
common eco-system as well as to common social needs, and by the
entire plethora of "international instruments" aforementioned
mandating and sanctioning the new planetary role of the individual,
but it is the very price of human survival.
No less than Dr. Waldheim himself on 20 May 1974 admonished us to
accept individual responsibility for world affairs with these words:
"The choice is in our hands. No nation and no individual can be
a bystander at this critical moment in the history of the world.
There are occasions when the magnitude and complexity of the tasks
we face make a sensitive and responsible individual feel dispirited
and helpless. But as the record of the last 30 years shows us, there is
nothing beyond our capacity if we act collectively. That is why it is
so important that every one of you recognize your responsibility not
only as a citizen of your own country, but as a citizen of the world--
and above all, an active one."
We, the WORLD CITIZENS of WORLD GOVERNMENT, have approved
and acted upon the United Nations' Secretary-General's endorsement
of that willful and legitimate civic role.
P. 125