The Parliamentarians for Peace (P4P) compose a transnational and transpartisan network of Members of national parliaments committed to prevent new threats for peace. Created and curated by the Open Diplomacy Institute, this program is powered by the Normandy World Peace Forum. The P4P adopted their Peace Policy Platform on October 2nd 2020, at the Forum in Caen: based on principles of international cooperation agreed upon across national and political boundaries, this Platform refers to solutions addressing the most pressing international challenges discussed by the P4P.
On January 7th, 2021, the P4P met with project leaders and policymakers carrying out solutions identified to tackle the current crisis of multilateralism, recalling together that “securing peace requires much more political courage in confronting current geopolitical disruptions”.
First, they led a hearing of Ambassador Alain Le Roy, former United Nations Under-Secretary-General, and agreed to the following propositions he raised to help to revive the UN:
- The limitation of the veto right of UN Security Council permanent members to some specific breaches of the UN Charter can help better dealing with main political and humanitarian crises;
- The reform of the membership of the UN Security Council needs to aim at greater representativeness of emerging powers; in this regard, the main objective is to get consensus at the African Union on the two States which could represent this continent along;
- In the wake of the G20 or the G7, informal multilateral initiatives, such as the Alliance for Multilateralism, are needed to boost the UN with policy innovations stemming from civil society.
Second, the P4P met with Andreas Bummel, Executive Director of Democracy Without Borders, and expressed their support for its campaign for a UN Parliamentary Assembly, aimed at bringing more democracy into diplomacy with a representation of elected MPs of all UN States in a body to create at the Organization.
Third, the P4P met Michael Collins, Executive Director Americas of the Institute for Economics and Peace, and Jake Sherman, Senior Director of Programs of the International Peace Institute, and commended their efforts to develop an Index for Multilateralism, aimed at providing evidence-based mapping on how the crisis of multilateralism is developing across all international institutions.
“We face critical and direct threats to the multilateral order and international law” said the P4P, expressing their regrets that, in the very symbolic year of the 75th anniversary of the UN, global governance was not up to the challenge of addressing the COVID-19 pandemic and its geopolitical consequences.