Many of us have heard them before: “Urbi et Orbi”, the papal blessings imparted to the city of Rome and the world twice a year, on Easter and Christmas. A message from the Eternal City to the whole world. This year we – supporters of modern direct democracy across the globe – can truly relate to this vibe. At the Rome Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy this year, we started to draft a Magna Charta for an International League of Democracy Cities. A process, which underlines the growing importance of local and regional
communities for the future of the planet, when it comes to critical issues like climate change, transportation, health, education – and last but not least, democracy.
70 years ago, on December 10, the then newly established United Nations gathered in Paris to adopt a very important document: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In this global charter, all parties committed to a set of fundamental and basic human rights, including – in Art. 21.1. – the fundamental right to indirect and direct democracy. This historic agreement was made on the background of two devastating world wars and the Holocaust, the industrial attempt to extinguish all people of a certain faith. Since then the work to implement the Universal Declaration into every day practice has mainly been led by national leaders gathering in international organizations. But this has changed.
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