A New Concept of Citizenship
by Elise Boulding

When the UN was formed in 1945 as "we the peoples...to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war," it was states that were the signatories to the Charter. The people in the 10,000 societies that overlay all the boundaries of the 50 states already formed and the 142 new states in formation, understood very little of what was going on. Many ethnic, social and cultural identity groups, each with their own history, were stripped of access to their traditional resources and excluded from opportunities to participate in the new lifeways of the new states in which they find themselves. Such identity groups include also the diasporas of immigrant communities and victims of past centuries of slave trade. The resulting struggles, fueled by a military technology that multiplies the availability of small arms to angry people and of high-level bombing power to a few major powers, almost makes the dream of putting an end to war seem obsolete.

Yet the capacity to vision a world at peace has been part of humankind’s heritage over the millennia, and is with us still. So are the practical peacemaking skills of the ten thousand societies, present in memory and tradition but missing in practice because of fast-moving developments that outstripped possible strategies of adaptation. So is the capacity for developing and learning new peacemaking practices suited to the complexities of this rapidly changing world. The twentieth century was a century or research and development of such practices, stimulated by the Hague Peace Conference of 1899. Today there are peace teams, the contemporary equivalent of Gandhi’s Shanti Sena (peace army), at work in many conflict-torn areas. But too few, and with too few resources. Military technology has outraced peace technology.

This outracing is the result of another type of heritage: recent centuries of colonial invasion of many of the territories of the ten thousand societies and a large-scale drawing of maps that ignored their own traditional lands. Suddenly there were sovereign states with a ruling group that excluded other ethnic groups within their borders from economic and social opportunities in a world in which everything was changing. Diversity was deplored. Political modernization was all about assimilation and melting pots, but reality was about oppression and exclusion.

Only now, with the twenty-first century threatening ecological, economic and social catastrophes, is there a dawning realization that diversity is valuable, that every language and every lifeway includes some valuable knowledge and skills (as well as undesirable practices, such as clitoridectomy, which are certainly not to e cherished!) UNESCO has played an important role in this realization, especially through its activity in declaring the World Cultural Development Decade (1988-1997),2 which called the attention of all states to the riches of each other’s many cultures. Ethnic groups are finding their voices again, and an increasing number of states, especially in Europe, are following the once-unique Swiss model of a federation of semi-autonomous provinces, each with their own language and culture but also a shared confederal system of governance. Africa, Asia and the Americas all offer examples. On the European continent, the European Union is encouraging this process through the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities adopted in 1995. Scotland and Wales now have their own parliaments in the United Kingdom ( the situation in Northern Ireland is still in process), with similar developments in Belgium, Spain, Italy, and Scandinavia.

A New Model of Citizenship

In fact, a new model of citizenship is emerging for the states of the contemporary international community. This citizenship is rooted in love of one’s own community, one’s own culture, with a deep sense of civic responsibility for its well-being, but extends the feelings of community and civic responsibility to all those who live within the borders of one’s country. It resonates to the symbols of citizenship--the flag, the constitution, and the institutions and processes of governance of that country. This is different from the assimilation model of citizenship because it values and respects the sister identity groups within the border of the country.

However, citizenship that limits its loyalties to those within its borders leaves us with 192 states each focused on maintaining sovereignty in relation to the other 191 states. This passion for sovereignty curbs the willingness of states to sign treaties limiting their freedom of action. And yet behavior-limiting treaties are essential if states are to deal with conflicting interests without going to war. How to create a responsible system of mutually limited governance among sovereign states.

The new model of citizenship that hovers on the horizon is not only multicultural, involving respect for all groups of fellow citizens within the state, but is multinational and multidimensional: a three-fold citizenship. The first dimension, one’s local community, has already been emphasized as a part of one’s citizenship in the state, which in turn is the second dimension of citizenship. The third dimension of citizenship has yet to be recognized and explore: citizenship in the United Nations itself. The United Nations was formed as an association of "We, the peoples," as quoted at the beginning of this essay, not as "we, the states." I do not mean to make this simply a play on words but, rather, to suggest that all six billion of us humans (and our fellow creatures in the biosphere) have a direct stake in the survival of the United Nations. The willingness of our national representatives to sign treaties to protect the security of all life is dependent on our civic activity in promotion of such treaties.

What weaves the local, national and UN dimensions of our citizenship together in a common fabric is the existence of 25,000 international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs). These INGOs bring concerns for peace, justice, human rights, and the environment from our local chapters to the national and on to the UN level, with specific access points at the UN, including especially the UN conferences and commission hearings on critical world issues. These INGOs are a new development of the twentieth century and are still in a learning mode, particularly in terms of learning how to relate international INGO offices to local situations, to learn from locals, and to learn from and cooperate with each other in this still new action sphere of international nongovernmental bodies. This is all part of a wider learning process as the new concept of citizenship evolves.

An important aspect of learning how to exercise that citizenship involves overcoming the vast public ignorance about the UN which exists in every country. The concept of national citizenship as encompassing active awareness of the diversity of peoples and need within our own country already requires a major new educational effort, and the added challenge of learning how to work within the UN is daunting, to say the least. If we want to enable the development of a workable UN system of governance to solve the many types of economic, cultural and environmental conflicts already being faced within the international community of states, we have no alternative.

The body of existing conventions and treaties that binds the states of the UN together is the product of thousands of hours of citizens’ time (in their role as representatives of INGOs) put into continuing dialogue with diplomats and representatives of member states and UN officials over the nature of the problem to be solved, and what can be agreed to in the way of solutions that are in the common interest of states with different needs. This process, slow and frustrating as it is, bring into being new norms in the common human interest. The UN treaties on the law of the sea, the banning of land mines, and the establishment of the International Criminal Court are all recent achievements of this process. 3

US Resistance to International Treaties

The United States, one of the original funding states of the UN itself, has in recent years been notably resistant to signing and ratifying many of these treaties, especially regarding arms limitations and the environment. It also withdrew from the UNESCO (United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organization) in the 1980s, in protest over the report of UNESCO’s MacBride Commission on the New World Information Order (1980), which emphasized two-way information flows between countries of the North and countries of the South to replace a one-way flow from North to South.

All citizens of the United States must share the blame for this withdrawal because we have not activated our citizenship in the UN itself to prevent the withdrawal. How could this be done? A specific opportunity at this time is to become involved in the UN Culture of Peace Decade, 2001-2010.

Activities associated with this decade are strongly recommended to us by the collective voice of Nobel Peace Laureates. Since the theme is educational materials have been developed for kindergarten through high school, for faith groups and community social action groups of all kinds. 4 Peace studies programs to support learning about peacebuilding already exist in many colleges and universities in the United States and around the world and will contribute to the Decade’s work. This focus on peace education will not only help develop the skills of listening and dialogue but the skills of civic participation through grassroots organizations and INGOs. Educational materials about the UN itself are available directly from the United Nations Association of the U.S.

Imagine how different the world would be if everyone read the quarterly UN Chronicle, 6 which reports on UN activities! Invisible as the UN is to the general public, there is a lot going on, on any particular day, in the UN system. Few realize what that system consists of: six major UN operating organs, 13 associated bodies, 16 specialized agencies, five regional commissions, and fluctuating numbers of peacekeeping and observer missions, as well as 20 research institutes, other divisions and special programs which continually evolve to meet new needs in various parts of the world, two UN Universities (one in Japan, one in Costa Rica), and about 50 worldwide information centers, plus special offices where new field programs are located. The research institutes publish their own newsletters and research reports. What a difference it could make if all disarmament activists read the reports of the United Nations Institute of Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), or development activists read the reports of the United Nations Research Institute on Social development (UNRISD), to name just two valuable UN research bodies.7 It is a tragedy that all the creativity and problem-solving activity which goes on in the UN, side by side with the more publicized bureaucratic inefficiency, is unknown to most civic activists. So many missed opportunities for support of important peace, human rights, development and environment initiatives that, if carried out, would make the UN a more effective body!