Andreas Bummel is founder and executive director of Democracy Without Borders. He is known worldwide as an expert and advocate for a world parliament. The campaign he has been leading for a Parliamentary Assembly at the UN has been supported by more than 1,500 parliamentarians from over 100 countries. Since 2021, he has been one of the co-convenors of the new “We The Peoples” campaign, which advocates for more democracy at the UN. Over 200 groups from around the world have joined it, including leading environmental and civil rights NGOs. From 1998 to 2018, he served on the Council of the World Federalist Movement, which played a central role in supporting the creation of the International Criminal Court. In 2018, his book A World Parliament: Governance and Democracy in the 21st Century (with Jo Leinen) was published. Since 2023 he is among those promoting a UN Special Rapporteur on Democracy. He has spoken at Yale University, the London School of Economics, the Athens Democracy Forum, and before the Pan-African Parliament, among other venues. In recognition of his work, the Society for Threatened Peoples made him a honorary member. He was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1976.
One hundred years ago, following the First World War, the new revolutionary government of Germany proposed a world parliament. In a piece published in the German newspaper taz, Jo Leinen and
This paper looks into the relationship between the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and the proposed United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA). It outlines the characteristics of these two bodies and provides an
In many countries in the world democracy is under stress. There are more and more signs that a global democratic backsliding may be setting in. Recently, the Varieties of Democracy
The first International Day of Parliamentarism is celebrated on June 30th, 2018, to highlight the role of parliaments worldwide as indispensable cornerstones of democracy. This date was chosen by the United Nations