The Snowball: Why World Federalism Matters to Me
The world is breaking apart, and many of you reading this have surely noticed. The climate crisis is being neglected. Countless people are exploited, oppressed, and killed in the shadow of profits enjoyed by a select few. This world has failed to stop cruelty.
Why? Because the structures of power that govern our world were not designed to serve the well-being of the people who live in it.
Whose interests do they serve, then? Those of a small, wealthy minority. Under the present system this is close to inevitable. Individual citizens have no meaningful way to make their voices heard in international organizations, so the interests reflected in global decision-making are those of states and powerful private actors alone. I call this a global oligarchy. It rests on a structural asymmetry: a few can decide the fate of many, and the many have no way to answer back.
I learned what that feels like long before I had words for it.
When I was in elementary school, I loved standing in front of people. Whenever we had a reading performance in class, I got excited. I loved acting and making people smile. The sight in front of me in those moments was precious.
Then, at some point, I began to be bullied. I still do not know exactly why. Perhaps they simply wanted to silence me. It was vicious. I was subjected to cruel words. I was grabbed and dragged around. I was furious.
One day it snowed. Snow was rare where I grew up, and the familiar landscape turned into a blank white canvas. That day, once again, they dragged me away. My footprints stayed behind in the snow.
Eventually I shook them off and started down the stairs, trying to get away. Then: splat. Something icy ran down the back of my neck. A snowball.
I turned around. They were standing at the top of the stairs, looking down at me and laughing.
That was when I learned what humiliation was. And I understood. These people did not recognize my dignity. They did not see me as their equal. There was no hesitation in them.
Great powers behave the same way. When their own interests are at stake, they disregard dignity, look down on others, and do whatever they please.
So I made a decision, standing on those stairs. I would break it myself: that kind of power, every form of domination, every chain that binds us.
Later I was given another chance to stand in front of the whole school. I stood there to undo what they had tried to accomplish. The smiles of the students in front of me were dazzling.
The world federalist movement is, at its core, a movement for democracy, because it challenges the power of the global oligarchy. How that struggle should be fought has always been debated. My own answer comes from those stairs. If the purpose of pressure is to silence us, we should refuse to be silent. And if we are to confront oligarchy, we should build its opposite: institutions that represent the citizens of the world.
One such institution is already on the table: a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly. Article 22 of the UN Charter allows the General Assembly to establish subsidiary organs as it deems necessary for the performance of its functions, which means a parliamentary assembly could be created without amending the Charter. Even allowing parliamentarians, separate from government representatives, to take part in the oversight and advisory work of the UN would change the balance. And if its members were one day chosen by direct election, the citizens of the world would have a voice of their own in global decisions.
Some will ask whether this simply builds a new power above the nation-state. It is a fair question. What I want to abolish is not collective decision-making but domination: a relationship in which some people determine the lives of others without being answerable to them or replaceable by them. A world parliament must never become that. It should hold only limited powers, on issues no single country can solve alone, such as climate change and disarmament, while everything else stays with the people most directly affected, at the most local level capable of addressing them, whether in workplaces, communities, or countries. Those who sit in it must remain answerable to the people who chose them, including through the power to recall them. Our goal is democratic sovereignty, not a new form of domination.
Even now, when I see a staircase, I sometimes remember that day. The eyes looking down at me. The cold running down my neck. I do not want anyone else to feel what I felt.
That is why I want to stand with everyone who confronts power. We will refuse the systems that try to silence us, and we will raise our voices. Let us democratize the world together.
About the author
Shun Yamagami studies statistics and philosophy at the University of Toronto, learning to analyze the world through data, social structures, and normative questions.
