ABSTRACT
WFA’s Policy and Resolutions Committee has recently also been discussing at the initiative of Bill Pace, former Acting Secretary-General of the World Association for World Federation, the principle of direct elections for delegates to the UN General Assembly. The ‘Uniting for Peace’ procedure was also invoked in the 1956 Hungarian crisis and more recently regarding Afghanistan and Nicaragua. It will be argued that making the United Nations more democratic will involve a loss of national sovereignty. Sovereignty is not the issue at all, although it is true that a more democratic Assembly may eventually lead to the sharing of sovereignty between nation-states and the United Nations. The popular election of all the Representatives would, therefore, normally become mandatory twenty-four years after the ratification of the revised Charter and in any case not later than forty years after the revised Charter comes into force.
