Universal and global citizenship

Universal citizenship and stateless people. We often assume everyone who lives and works in a country, or applies, should be able to become a full member. But every state fixes criteria for citizenship in its laws and uses its power to keep unwanted visitors out, even with walls and fences.

• People are still displaced by war, persecution, famine and other causes. If no state accepts them and they cannot return home, they become refugees or stateless people: living in camps or as illegal migrants, often unable to work legally, educate their children or own property.
• The problem is so large that the UN has appointed a High Commissioner for Refugees.
• Deciding how many people to absorb is a hard humanitarian and political question: many countries accept those fleeing persecution or war, but not unlimited numbers or security risks.
• India prides itself on giving refuge to the persecuted, as it did for the Dalai Lama and his followers in 1959. People have entered across all of India's borders; many remain stateless for years or generations, and only a few eventually become citizens.
• This challenges the promise of democratic citizenship that rights and identity would be available to all people; for the stateless, no alternative identity exists.

Global citizenship. We live in an interconnected world. The internet, television and mobile phones let us see disasters and wars as they happen, building sympathy and shared concern across countries.

• Supporters point to the worldwide outpouring of help after the 2004 tsunami in South Asia as a sign of an emerging global society, and want to strengthen this into global citizenship.
• States face many problems they cannot solve alone: international terrorist networks, the threat of pandemics such as bird flu. Global citizenship might make cross-border cooperation easier, including securing basic rights for migrants and stateless people wherever they live.
• But a world community does not yet exist, and inequalities within a country can only be solved by its own government and people. So full and equal membership of a state remains important.
• Global citizenship reminds us that national citizenship may need to be supplemented by awareness of our links with people everywhere and readiness to work across borders.

Example (new): when a fire destroys a hospital in another country and people around the world crowd-fund medicines for it, they act as 'global citizens', yet the hospital will still be rebuilt by that country's own government and people.