Global citizenship: what is it, and what are our ethical obligations as global citizens
What is “global citizenship”? The term “global citizenship” is increasingly heard, especially in Canada, but rarely defined. This leads to confusion because it is often not clear what a particular writer or speaker means by the term. One thing leaps out at us though. Global citizenship does not refer to a legal status. My Canadian citizenship gives me rights which are legally enforceable against the Canadian government, such as, to live in Canada, to vote here, to obtain a Canadian passport, and to enter the country freely. There are no analogous rights at the world level: as Michael Byers says in Are You a ‘Global Citizen’?, “If such a thing as global citizenship exists, it clearly doesn’t amount to the rights of national citizenship, transposed to the planetary level.” Why? Because “[t]here is no world government …” Sometimes what people have in mind is no more than an attitude towards the rest of the world, an acknowledgement of global interdependence.
