Reform of the Security Council should have been a precondition for
Switzerland joining the UN as an official member. Unfortunately, when
the Swiss people went to the polls, they didn't comprehend the short
term significance and long term insignificance of joining - and failed
the long term interest of the UN by joining before the concept of veto
rights in the Security Council had been replaced by truly stabilizing
mechanisms more compatible with Swiss neutrality and political
philosophy: qualified minority veto rights.
Speaking at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday
, Peter Maurer, the Swiss ambassador to the United Nations, called for
"stronger and more specific wording" of the proposal to make the
Security Council "more representative, more transparent, more
accountable and more inclusive". A very, very first babystep towards qualified minority veto rights? Wishful thinking. I'm sure.
In the United Nations, a qualified minority veto should replace the current post-world-war-II veto rights in the security council and get UN reforms moving towards global democratisation. Already on a local and national level there may be needs to protect
ethnic, religious, geographic or language minorities from being
overpowered by the majority. Harmonization and consensus development
tends to be easier to achieve on local levels and will probably need
some help by design on hierarchical levels further removed from the
individual.
Certain decisions could for example require a qualified majority in order to override a qualified minority veto. If 2/3 of the nations in one world region reject a proposal then it will be blocked even if it is backed by the majority of the global voters - unless the approval exceeds 2/3 overall. Or the rule might simply be that the percentage of overall approval has to exceed the percentage of minority disapproval.
With fine tuned systems like this, I believe even a global direct democracy will be possible.
22.06.2005, 21:24