The Committee for a Democratic UN grieves for Vaclav Havel. The former President of the Czech Republic passed away at the age of 75 on 18 December 2011.

He will be remembered as one of the great European leaders of the 20th century and as a courageous intellectual whose dedication to democracy has set an inspiring example far beyond his country. As one of the main drafters and supporters of the Charter 77, Havel was a key opponent to Communist rule in Czechoslovakia and was imprisoned many times, the longest from 1979 to 1984.

Drawing on the example of the Charter 77, over 350 dissident Chinese intellectuals and democracy activists published the Charter 08 in December 2008 and called for democratic reforms and adherence to human rights in China.

Vaclav Havel speaking at the United Nations

Vaclav Havel believed in the United Nations but also recognized the need to democratize the world organization. He was one of the signatories of the international “Appeal for the Establishment of a Parliamentary Assembly at the United Nations” that was first published in 2007. Many years before, speaking in his capacity as President of the Czech Republic at the historic UN Millennium Summit in 2000, this subject was already his main message:

“What will this world, and the United Nations, look like a hundred years from now? …

First of all, it should probably quickly change from a scene of clashes among particular interests of various states into a platform of joint, solidarity based, decision-making – by the whole of humankind – on how best to organize our stay on this planet. Even more definitely, it should transform itself from a large community of governments, diplomats and officials into a joint institution for each inhabitant of this planet – who would all see it as their very own Organization for which they spend money not only in order that it defend them as individuals but also in order that, on the authority of the people, it looks for ways toward a lasting well-being of the humanity and toward a genuine quality of life.

Such a United Nations would probably have to rest on two pillars: one constituted by an assembly of equal executive representatives of individual countries, resembling the present plenary, and the other consisting of a group elected directly by the globe’s population in which the number of delegates representing individual nations would, thus, roughly correspond to the size of the nations. These two bodies would create and guarantee global legislation. Answerable to them would be the Security Council – or its successor-which would serve as an executive organ handling, on a continuous basis, some of the crucial problems of the world. The composition of this organ would, of course, have to be different from that of the present Security Council. …”

This vision of Vaclav Havel is and will remain an important guideline and inspiration for our work.