| As technology advances and governance is increasingly conducted beyond the parameters of the nation-state, the concept of global citizenship remains mysteriously absent. What does the term mean in historical terms and what practices might help its evolution into a coherent and democratic political practice?
A global citizen is someone who identifies with being part of an emerging world community and whose actions contribute to building this community’s values and practices. Such a definition of global citizenship is based on two assumptions which this article explores: (a) that there is such a thing as an emerging world community to which people can identify; and (b) that such a community has a nascent set of values and practices. Historically human beings always have organized themselves into groups and communities based on shared identity. Such identity gets forged in response to a variety of human needs - economic, political, religious, and social. As group identities grow stronger, those who hold them organize into communities, articulate shared values, and build governance structures that reflect their beliefs. Today the forces of global engagement are helping some people identify themselves as global citizens, meaning that they have a sense of belonging to a world community. This growing global identity in large part is made possible by the forces of modern information, communication, and transportation technologies. In increasing ways these technologies are strengthening our ability to connect to the rest of the world: through the internet; through participation in the global economy; through the ways in which world-wide environmental factors play havoc with our lives; through the empathy we feel when we see pictures of humanitarian disasters, civil conflicts and wars in other countries; or through the ease with which we can travel and visit other parts of the world. Those who see ourselves as global citizens are not abandoning other identities; such as allegiances to our countries, ethnicities, and political beliefs. These traditional identities give meaning to our lives and will continue to help shape who we are. However, as a result of living in a globalized world, we find we have an added layer of responsibility. We have concern and a share of responsibility for what is happening to the planet as a whole, and we are members of a world-wide community of people who share this concern. The values being proposed for the world community are not esoteric and obscure. They are the values that world leaders have been advocating for the past 100 years. They include human rights, religious pluralism, gender equity, the rule of law, environmental protection, sustainable worldwide economic growth, poverty alleviation, prevention and cessation of conflicts between countries, elimination of weapons of mass destruction, humanitarian assistance, and preservation of cultural diversity. Since World War II efforts have been undertaken to develop global policies and institutional structures that can support these enduring values. Such efforts have been made by international organizations, sovereign states, transnational corporations, NGOs, international professional associations and others. They have resulted in a growing body of international agreements, treaties, legal statutes, and technical standards. |
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