Global citizenship via Self-Sovereign Identity

Source: Markus Spiske 


Every human is born free with human rights as to life and property. We do not choose our place of birth, and we should have full freedom to choose our location of self-development. Therefore, we need a global citizenship that not only is given but also owned by us as sovereign individuals. At the moment, this could be done with technology as SSI. Regardless of how global governance functions as in the future in principle, every human should own its identification. Nobody should be without ID, paperless or a stateless person. This is especially vital when it comes to mobility. Thanks to global citizenship, humans can always move from point A to point B to conduct legal agreements, interactions and self-development with respect for freedom, dignity and human rights. Categories as immigrants and emigrants could be abolished since there will only be mobility of world citizens.

Development of an individually owned global citizenship is also vital for affections and participation. Citizenship has three main components which are legal (rights, freedoms), affiliation (community, polity) and engagement (democracy, lobby). Such elements are still oriented around national citizenships for political and historical reasons as development of national-state institutions as education, military organisation and democratic governance. That is among the reason why EU-citizenship is not regarded as a “real citizenship” since it is I mostly based on its legal meaning while affiliation and participatory aspects are weaker. Therefore, the creation of global citizenship should be based on inspiration and experience from EU-citizenship. Global citizenship should include the possibility to vote on local and global levels as regarding commune/municipality and the World Parliament (or a global democratic governance institution). It also has to be part of civic participation in the sense of symbolic meaning that as a global citizen, one is active in initiatives as lobby, civic activism and supporting of solving global problems and challenges.

Finally, being a global citizen would also include “glocal” behaviours and civic orientation. Local institutions and governance levels are, in fact much more critical when it comes to global problems and challenges since they can operate with global governance levels and institutions directly rather than going via state or union levels. Establishment of a world federation would demand that more sovereignty is being conducted on local levels in areas as climate and ecology, humanitarian and refugee help, law enforcement and human security aspects. Being a global citizen is therefore as much as being a locally oriented individual who regardless of its local areas in the world has the possibility and freedom to operate in agreements with other individuals and with relations to local and global institutions.