THE COUNTRY GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP REPORT CARD PROJECT
An initiative to hold nation-states more accountable for their commitments to uphold global agreements, conventions, treaties and best practice standards.
Eighteen months ago when we began The Global Citizenship Report Card Project, we asked ourselves the question: “How can we hold nation-states more accountable for their responsibilities to the global community?” In our inter-dependent and inter-connected world each country now has citizenship responsibilities to the planet as a whole. The global citizenship of nation-states can be measured by the commitments countries make and honor to work together to solve global problems and build a sustainable world community.
We found that the starting point for measuring country global citizenship is to analyze the wide variety of international agreements, conventions, treaties, and best practice standards that have been agreed upon by nation-states over the past seventy-five years; see for example the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Rio Conventions on Biodiversity, Climate Change, and Desertification, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and many more.
We discovered that we could develop a mechanism for assessing country global citizenship by looking at the extent to which different countries had signed, ratified and implemented these agreements. We compiled data on implementation by drawing on the wide variety of existing development indices, such as the Corruption Index, the Rule of Law Index, the Freedom in the World Index, the Human Development Report, and many more. The Report Card integrates and synthesizes the information from these existing databases.
Information related to which countries have signed, ratified and implemented these agreements provides many examples of global commitments ignored. The United States, for example, still has not signed several major international conventions including the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on People with Disabilities. There also are some positive examples. For example, since the passage by the UN General Assembly in 1981 of The Convention Against All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), 186 out of 193 countries have signed and ratified the Convention. More girls are going to school in almost all countries, the life expectancy for women has increased, and more women are earning an income than ever before.
The result of our efforts to date is a research-based methodology and a prototype model for assessing accountability for country global citizenship performance. Our model- The Country Global Citizenship Report Card - focuses on assessing country performance in six leading global development domains - human rights, gender equity, environmental stewardship, poverty alleviation, good governance, and global peace and justice. For each of these six domains we have analyzed information for twelve countries about the signing, ratification, and implementation of relevant international agreements, covenants, and treaties. The countries are: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, Germany, India, Malaysia, Malawi, Madagascar, Peru and the United States. You can see the results of our work by visiting our Project’s website – www.countryreportcard.org
Our methodology also includes a system for ranking countries in terms of their global citizenship status. Countries can score from 0-100 within and across the six domains. A nation is considered a Global Citizenship Leader Country if it scores between 90 and 100 points; a Climber with a score between 70 and 90 points, a Journeyman with a score between 50 and 70 points and a Laggard with a score below 50 points.
Our data analysis of our prototype model has yielded some interesting observations. For example, none of the six countries scored enough points to achieve Leader Citizenship status, reflecting the current low level of collaboration among sovereign states and the need for a more comprehensive collaborative approach to address global issues. The highest single domain score was 77 points (out of a total of 100), while the lowest was 39 out of a possible 100 points. These results make clear that almost every country can do more to honor its global commitments, and that there remains a great deal of work to be to done to improve global cooperation within and across these six important issue areas.
Over the course of the next year we plan to scale-up our prototype model by adding more countries, as well as a poll of global opinion leaders to see to what extent they agree with or add a deeper perspective to our analysis. Over the long-term we hope the Country Global Citizenship Report Card will become a springboard for efforts to advocate for the building of an inclusive community of nation-states with shared values and established processes for working together. The building of such a sustainable world community for all is the most important challenge facing our planet today. -
We welcome your comments and engagement in the Country Global Citizenship Report Card Project. Please contact us at [email protected].
Ron Israel - The Global Citizens’ Initiative
Kent Glenzer - Monterey Institute
John Zogby - Zogby Analytics