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Global Citizenship Together

admin — Sat, 15 Nov 2025 18:15:17 +0000

In an era where global interconnectivity is at its peak, understanding the responsibilities that come with global citizenship is crucial. As we navigate through pressing global issues, the importance of recognizing our shared humanity cannot be overstated. How does your personal action impact the world around you?

What You Will Learn

Global citizenship transcends nationality, emphasizing our shared humanity and ethical responsibilities.
Engaging with global issues fosters awareness and promotes social justice, equality, and sustainability.
Educational frameworks are essential for cultivating global citizenship among future generations.
Youth play a pivotal role in shaping a global community through activism and engagement.
A personal action plan can guide you in making meaningful contributions to global challenges.
Participating in organizations and networks amplifies your advocacy efforts and connects you with like-minded individuals.

Understanding Global Citizenship in a Connected World

In today’s interlinked world, the idea of global citizenship has gained significant traction. It encompasses the understanding that our actions and decisions affect not just our local communities but the entire planet. Being a global citizen means recognizing our shared responsibility to promote justice, peace, and sustainability across borders.

Global citizenship is about embracing diversity, acknowledging our connections with others, and acting in ways that reflect our understanding of a global community. It encourages us to think beyond our immediate surroundings and consider the broader implications of our actions.

Defining Global Citizenship: A Holistic Perspective

The Concept of Being a Global Citizen

The concept of being a global citizen transcends nationality and emphasizes shared humanity. It invites individuals to engage actively with global issues, such as poverty, climate change, and human rights. Embracing this identity means participating in dialogues that strengthen international solidarity. A 2022 report by the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) highlights that civic and citizenship education is crucial in fostering student awareness of global issues and their role in addressing them.

Recognizing the interconnectedness of all people
Valuing cultural diversity and inclusive practices
Taking responsibility for local and global actions

When we adopt this mindset, we become more aware of the challenges faced by people around the world. Understanding these issues can drive us to make more informed decisions that reflect our commitment to global citizenship.

Philosophical Underpinnings of Global Community

The philosophical foundations of global citizenship are rooted in various traditions that promote unity and solidarity. These ideologies advocate for ethical behavior and social justice, challenging us to think critically about our roles within a global framework.

Utilitarianism emphasizes the greatest good for the greatest number
Humanism focuses on the inherent dignity and worth of every individual
Cosmopolitanism argues for universal values that transcend local boundaries

By understanding these philosophical frameworks, we can better navigate the complexities of our interconnected world and foster a more compassionate society.

Why Global Citizenship Matters

Ethical Responsibilities Toward Social Justice and Equality

Embracing global citizenship requires us to confront ethical challenges, particularly in the realms of social justice and equality. This commitment means advocating for the rights of marginalized communities and addressing systemic inequalities both at home and abroad.

Championing equal access to education and healthcare
Supporting policies that aim to reduce poverty
Fostering inclusive societies that celebrate diversity

By taking a stand on these issues, we not only enhance our own understanding of justice but also contribute to a more equitable world.

Promoting Sustainability and Environmental Stewardship

Global citizenship is also intrinsically linked to our responsibility toward the environment. Protecting our planet requires collaborative efforts that transcend borders, highlighting the importance of sustainable practices.

Advocating for renewable energy solutions
Participating in conservation efforts
Encouraging sustainable consumption and lifestyle choices

Being a global citizen means recognizing that environmental health is a collective concern and actively working to safeguard our planet for future generations.

The Role of Human Rights in Global Citizenship

Human rights are a core aspect of global citizenship, reinforcing the idea that every individual deserves respect, dignity, and freedom. Our role as global citizens involves standing up against human rights violations and advocating for those whose voices are marginalized.

Educating ourselves about human rights issues
Supporting organizations that fight for justice
Participating in campaigns that raise awareness

By prioritizing human rights, we cultivate a global community that values each person’s inherent worth and fosters a culture of peace and respect.

Exploring Educational Frameworks for Global Citizenship

Teaching Global Citizenship: Best Practices and Strategies

Education plays a pivotal role in fostering global citizenship. By incorporating relevant frameworks into curricula, we can prepare future generations to navigate the complexities of our interconnected world. Research published in the American Scientific Research Journal for Engineering, Technology, and Sciences, further emphasizes the importance of understanding global citizenship education (GCED) concepts and their implications for teaching and learning.

Integrating global themes into lesson plans
Encouraging critical thinking and discussion around global issues
Promoting experiential learning through service projects

These strategies not only enhance students’ understanding of global citizenship but also empower them to take an active role in advocating for change.

The Role of Youth in Shaping a Global Community

Youth have a unique position in the global landscape, acting as catalysts for change. Through their engagement and activism, they can significantly shape the future of global citizenship.

Participating in youth-led movements for change
Utilizing social media to amplify voices and raise awareness
Collaborating with peers across borders for shared initiatives

As young leaders, they bring fresh perspectives and innovative solutions to the challenges we face, making their involvement crucial for a sustainable future.

Global Education: Building Intercultural Competence

A focus on global education can help build intercultural competence, enabling individuals to engage effectively with diverse cultures and perspectives. This competency is essential for fostering understanding and collaboration in a globalized world.

Encouraging cultural exchange programs
Incorporating global case studies into education
Promoting language learning as a tool for connection

By prioritizing intercultural competence, we can create a more harmonious global community that values dialogue and mutual respect.

Diverse Perspectives on Global Citizenship

Neoliberal, Radical, and Critical Approaches Explained

Various perspectives on global citizenship offer insights into its complexities. Neoliberal approaches often emphasize market solutions, while radical perspectives advocate for fundamental systemic changes.

Neoliberalism focuses on individual responsibility and market-driven solutions
Radical approaches challenge existing power structures
Critical perspectives analyze the impact of globalization on citizenship

Understanding these diverse viewpoints can help us engage in more meaningful discussions about the future of global citizenship.

Debates Surrounding Global Citizenship Philosophy

The philosophy of global citizenship is not without its debates. Scholars and activists engage in discussions about its implications, effectiveness, and inclusivity.

Is global citizenship a privileged concept?
How does it address local vs. global issues?
What are the ethical implications of global citizenship?

These ongoing debates are essential for refining our understanding and practices surrounding global citizenship.

Understanding Globalization and Its Impact on Citizenship

Globalization has profound implications for citizenship. It influences how individuals view their roles and responsibilities within both local and global contexts. According to the UNESCO International Bureau of Education, an intrinsic global mindset is increasingly necessary to address the complexities of global citizenship by 2025.

It can enhance cultural exchange and understanding
It may also lead to challenges in identity and belonging
Globalization necessitates a rethinking of traditional notions of citizenship

By grappling with these complexities, we can better navigate the realities of citizenship in a globalized world.

We Want to Hear From You!

As we delve deeper into the concept of global citizenship, we’d love to know your thoughts. How do you define global citizenship in your own life? What actions do you take to embody this philosophy?

Frequently Asked Questions About Global Citizenship

What is global citizenship?

People Are ‘Disappearing’ Since Trump Took Office. Here’s What That Means.

admin — Sat, 07 Jun 2025 02:57:13 +0000

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Last month, Frizgeralth de Jesús Cornejo Pulgar, an asylum-seeker from Venezuela, was scheduled for a routine hearing in immigration court.

But as Mother Jones reports, he never made it because he’d been whisked off without due process to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) along with 230 Venezuelan immigrants. (Cornejo Pulgar, who has no known criminal history in the United States or in Venezuela, was reportedly detained due to his tattoos.)

Since President Donald Trump began to carry out what he claimed would be the “largest deportation” campaign in U.S. history earlier this year, there have been a number of cases where immigrants like Cornejo Pulgar have just “disappeared.”

In January, Ricardo Prada Vásquez, a Venezuelan man working a delivery job and picking up food at a McDonald’s in Detroit, Michigan, was deported and “disappeared” to El Salvador after taking a wrong turn into Canada.

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“Ricardo’s story by itself is incredibly tragic — and we don’t know how many Ricardos there are,” Ben Levey, a staff attorney with the National Immigrant Justice Center who tried to locate Prada Vásquez, told The New York Times.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials ultimately confirmed to Levey that the 32-year-old had been deported but did not divulge his destination. After the abductions, families of men like Prada Vásquez search but the names of their loved ones disappear from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s online detainee locator.

Could what’s happening to immigrants under Trump be classified as “enforced disappearances”? We spoke with academics and researchers who study how rogue states “disappear” people.

First, what does it mean to “disappear” a person?

According to the United Nations, an “enforced disappearance” occurs when agents of the state (or groups acting with its authorization and support) arrest, detain, abduct or in any other way deprive a person of their liberty. The state then refuses to disclose the fate or whereabouts of the person concerned.

If you’re wondering whether this is legal or illegal, it’s actually neither. “The inherent consequence of an enforced disappearance is that the person is placed outside the protection of the law, in a sort of legal limbo,” said Gabriella Citroni, an adjunct professor of international human rights law at the university of Milano-Bicocca in Milan, Italy, and a chair-rapporteur of UN expert group on enforced or involuntary disappearances.

Unlike other crimes under international law, such as torture, enforced disappearances were not prohibited by a universal legally binding instrument before a UN Convention came into effect in 2010.

Disappeared people frequently include political opponents, protesters, human rights defenders and community leaders, students and members of minorities, Citroni said.

The Washington Post via Getty Images

State Assembly member Tony Simone, center, joins other protesters during a rally at the Permanent Mission of El Salvador in Manhattan, New York, NY, April 24, 2025, for Andry José Hernández Romero and other immigrants who were sent by the Trump Administration to El Salvador’s CECOT prison.

“Typically, enforced disappearances are used to suppress freedom of expression or religion, or legitimate civil strife demanding democracy, as well as against persons involved in the defense of the land, natural resources and the environment and to fight organized crime or counter terrorism,” she said.

Enforced disappearance functions as a tool of terror in two ways, said Oscar Lopez, a journalist based in Mexico City working on a book about the origins of forced disappearance during Mexico’s “Dirty War.”

“First, the victim is deprived of due process and often subjected to torture as well as the psychological hell of not knowing what’s going to happen to them and possibly fearing for their life,” he told HuffPost.

Secondly, enforced disappearance forces families and communities into a state of painful uncertainty, Lopez said. “They don’t know whether their relative is alive or dead and toggle between desperate hope and unbearable despair.”

When disappearances occur frequently enough, they can leave entire communities in a state of terror, unsure of who might be taken next, Lopez said.

What has happened to disappeared people in the past?

What happens to people involuntarily disappeared depends “very much on the context” in which they are taken, Lopez said. But generally speaking, if the person is kept alive, they’re held in state custody for an indeterminate amount of time without the ability to communicate with their family or legal counsel ― aka they’re “held incommunicado.”

If the person is killed, their bodies are often disposed of in such a way that it becomes almost impossible for them to be found.

“This can mean burying them in unmarked graves, cremating their remains, or, as happened in Latin America, throwing their corpses out to sea,” he said.

Where have enforced disappearances happened before?

Lopez pointed to a few examples: In Argentina, during the military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983, an estimated 30,000 people were disappeared. In nearby Chile, more than 1,000 people went missing under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, while in Guatemala, some 45,000 people were forcibly disappeared during the country’s civil war, which lasted from 1960 to 1996. In North Korea, instances of enforced disappearances and abductions date back to 1950.

“There are more recent instances of enforced disappearance, too,” he said. “In Syria, for example, it’s estimated that 136,000 people were disappeared under the Assad dictatorship.”

But enforced disappearances aren’t always carried out directly by state agents. said Adam Isacson, who leads border and migration work at the Washington Office on Latin America.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been disappeared each by irregular groups in Colombia and Mexico, operating with the tacit permission or even assistance of government officials.

“Sometimes, as with the anti-communist paramilitaries in Colombia and death squads in 1980s El Salvador, the officials colluded with the groups out of some ideological alliance,” he said. “Sometimes, as with corrupt Mexican cops who assist organized crime, they do it because they profit from it.”

VICTOR ROJAS via Getty Images

A boy holds a banner with pictures of some of the people killed or disappeared during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship from 1973 to 1990.

Could what’s happening in the U.S. now with immigrants be considered “enforced disappearances”?

In spite of existing court orders and legal challenges, the Trump administration continues its deportation policy in El Salvador, in partnership with the county’s President Nayib Bukele.

Venezuelan migrants have been targeted in particular for deportation, many on unproven allegations of gang affiliation. That said, Trump has also repeatedly said he’s “all for” looking for ways to detain U.S. citizens in foreign jails.

Should we be calling what’s happening now “forced disappearances”? A report released by the UN in April suggests yes.

The incommunicado detentions appeared to involve “enforced disappearances, contrary to international law,” the report said.

“Many detainees were unaware of their destination, their families were not informed of their detention or removal, and the U.S. and Salvadoran authorities have not published the names or legal status of the detainees,” the UN experts wrote. “Those imprisoned in El Salvador have been denied the right to communicate with and be visited by their family members.”

Isacson agrees that we should be calling a spade a spade here.

“The only difference between that and what was done in 1970s Chile or Argentina is that loved ones have more reason to believe that their relatives are still alive and haven’t been killed,” he said.

But even that certainty is not complete, he said: “Can you say with 100% confidence that Andry Hernandez ― the gay Venezuelan stylist that disappeared two months ago ― is still alive right now? He probably is, but you absolutely cannot guarantee that, and no one will confirm it.”

The raids and deportations have certainly struck fear into American communities ― another classic characteristic of enforced disappearances. The Trump administration has openly said that its goal is to try to make life so difficult for immigrants that they “self-deport.”

Fear of being sent to a notorious El Salvador prison, where inmates never see the light of day, plays into that goal, said Rod Abouharb, an associate professor of international relations who researches forced disappearances at the University College London.

“These raids send out a chilling effect on those individuals who may be undocumented and even those who are legally in the United States: that they may be caught up in one of these raids, disappear into the prison system, and deported to a third country they may have no connection with,” he told HuffPost.

Alex Peña via Getty Images

A prison officer guards a cell at maximum security penitentiary CECOT (Center for the Compulsory Housing of Terrorism) on April 4, 2025 in Tecoluca, San Vicente, El Salvador..

What can regular citizens do in response to enforced disappearances?

The best thing Americans can do to object to efforts like this is to draw as much attention as possible to individual cases, Lopez said.

“Whether that’s by holding protests, creating online petitions or posting on social media, ensuring that a person who the government has tried to disappear remains visible and in the public discourse can be a powerful way to draw national attention to their plight and the plight of others like them.” he said.

Isacson thinks it’s important to encourage Senate and congressional Democrats who’ve stood up and made headlines, like Sen. Chris Van Hollen (Md.). Back in April, Van Hollen pushed for a face-to-face meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia ― a Salvadoran native living in Maryland who was deported in March to El Salvador despite a 2019 court order barring his deportation to that country due to fear of persecution.

“Democrats will actually help themselves politically if they keep making a lot of righteous noise about this,” he said.

Americans should also write to Republican moderates who seem quietly uncomfortable about forced disappearances and might be persuaded to action, Isacson said.

“All of us to stay vocal about this,” he said. “Keep protesting, keep writing about it and keep calling your legislators.”

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