Building a constituency of 50,000 UN activists


Issue Area: UN-US Relations

The United Nations Foundation and the Better World Campaign have worked for the past three years to build a strong and active constituency for the United Nations. Our activists are a critical voice in letting elected leaders know that a strong U.S.-UN relationship—including full funding for the UN—is a priority for Americans. 

This constituency was built through innovative and compelling campaigns that speak to individuals and utilize modern tools of communication to their fullest extent. Two of these campaigns that have had substantial impacts on U.S.-UN relations are “Resolve the Crisis: Don’t Shut Down the UN” and “Price of Peace.”

“Resolve the Crisis: Don’t Shut Down the UN” was a collaborative effort launched by the Better World Campaign to engage individuals and organizations committed to averting a political crisis at the United Nations. We urged the 191 Member States of the UN to take the steps necessary to ensure continuation of the reform process and ensure there was no interruption in the UN’s operations because of a lack of necessary resources. In all, more than 14,000 individuals from 146 countries signed a petition to world leaders. Thanks in part to those individuals and the success of this campaign, the crisis at the United Nations was diffused, and the organization’s life-saving activities were able to continue without interruption.

“Price of Peace” was a Web-based campaign designed to engage Americans and encourage the U.S. government to pay its fair share of crucial peacekeeping missions. The Web site hosted a wealth of information on UN peacekeeping, including the value of UN peacekeeping operations to the United States, and a petition asking Congress to fully fund UN peacekeeping efforts, which was sent to members of Congress with nearly 36,000 signatures representing constituents from all 50 U.S. states.

We will continue to employ the power of its constituents in support of the United Nations and to create new and innovative campaigns that demonstrate to policymakers in the U.S. and around the globe that international cooperation is the key to a better world.

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  1. Submitted by Brother Martin at: January 21, 2009

    The economic crunch has fallen into a domino effect world wide.Today president obama urged americans to contribute to the betterment of the nation in anyway one can.The Obama/Biden movement has been successful because it utilizes both donation and sweat equity. The global consciousness of people is at an all time high. In the way that the grassroot approach to domestic politics has been successful, the same principles can be applied to meet the need for global change. Groups can be formed world wide that can interact via the internet to better inform a network of volunteers that support the initiatives of the U.N. In this way, citizens of membership nations of the U.N. can encourage their leadership to adopt and cooperate with U.N. initiatives. Such a movement would increase the influence of U.N. abroad and reduce or at least decelerate the increasing overhead of U.N. operations. More of the donations can be utilized for humanitarian efforts and resourcing for U.N. peace keeping troops.

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