CONTEMPORARY

WORLD
2:30-3:45
Global citizen
• What is a Global Citizen?
• "An ethic of care for the world." Hannah ArendtThere is a
great deal of debate and discussion around this question,
as there is around the whole concept of globalisation. A
useful working definition, however, is offered by Oxfam:
• A Global Citizen is someone who:
• is aware of the wider world and has a sense of their own
role as a world citizen
• respects and values diversity
• has an understanding of how the world works
• is outraged by social injustice
• participates in the community at a range of levels, from
the local to the global
• is willing to act to make the world a more equitable and
sustainable place
• takes responsibility for their actions.
• To be effective Global Citizens, young people need to be
flexible, creative and proactive. They need to be able to
solve problems, make decisions, think critically,
communicate ideas effectively and work well within teams
and groups. These skills and attributes are increasingly
recognised as being essential to succeed in other areas of
21st century life too, including many workplaces. These
skills and qualities cannot be developed without the use of
active learning methods through which pupils learn by
doing and by collaborating with others.
Why is Global Citizenship education needed?

• With the interconnected and interdependent nature of our

world, the global is not ‘out there’; it is part of our
everyday lives, as we are linked to others on every
continent:
• socially and culturally through the media and
telecommunications, and through travel and migration
• economically through trade
• environmentally through sharing one planet
• politically through international relations and systems of
regulation.
globalization
• the process by which businesses or other organizations
develop international influence or start operating on an
international scale.
• "fears about the increasing globalization of the world
economy"
WTO
• t’s an organization for liberalizing trade. It’s a forum for
governments to negotiate trade agreements
• It’s a place for them to settle trade disputes. It operates a
system of trade rules
Above all, it’s a negotiating forum
• Essentially, the WTO is a place where member
governments go, to try to sort out the trade problems they
face with each other. The first step is to talk. The WTO
was born out of negotiations, and everything the WTO
does is the result of negotiations. The bulk of the WTO's
current work comes from the 1986-94 negotiations called
the Uruguay Round and earlier negotiations under the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The
WTO is currently the host to new negotiations, under the
“Doha Development Agenda” launched in 2001.
• Where countries have faced trade barriers and wanted
them lowered, the negotiations have helped to liberalize
trade. But the WTO is not just about liberalizing trade, and
in some circumstances its rules support maintaining trade
barriers — for example to protect consumers or prevent
the spread of disease.
It’s a set of rules …
•   At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and
signed by the bulk of the world’s trading nations. These
documents provide the legal ground-rules for international
commerce. They are essentially contracts, binding
governments to keep their trade policies within agreed
limits. Although negotiated and signed by governments,
the goal is to help producers of goods and services,
exporters, and importers conduct their business, while
allowing governments to meet social and environmental
objectives.
And it helps to settle disputes
• Trade relations often involve conflicting interests.
Agreements, including those painstakingly negotiated in
the WTO system, often need interpreting. The most
harmonious way to settle these differences is through
some neutral procedure based on an agreed legal
foundation. That is the purpose behind the dispute
settlement process written into the WTO agreements.
Born in 1995, but not so young

• The WTO began life on 1 January 1995, but its trading system is half
a century older. Since 1948, the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade (GATT) had provided the rules for the system. (The second
WTO ministerial meeting, held in Geneva in May 1998, included a
celebration of the 50th anniversary of the system.)
• It did not take long for the General Agreement to give birth to an
unofficial, de factointernational organization, also known informally as
GATT. Over the years GATT evolved through several rounds of
negotiations.
• The last and largest GATT round, was the Uruguay Round which
lasted from 1986 to 1994 and led to the WTO’s creation. Whereas
GATT had mainly dealt with trade in goods, the WTO and its
agreements now cover trade in services, and in traded inventions,
creations and designs (intellectual property).
•    
• ... OR IS IT A TABLE?
• Participants in a recent radio discussion on the WTO were full of ideas.
The WTO should do this, the WTO should do that, they said.
• One of them finally interjected: “Wait a minute. The WTO is a table.
People sit round the table and negotiate. What do you expect the table
to do?”
• ‘Multilateral’ trading system ...
• ... i.e. the system operated by the WTO. Most nations — including
almost all the main trading nations — are members of the system. But
some are not, so “multilateral” is used to describe the system instead of
“global” or “world”.
• In WTO affairs, “multilateral” also contrasts with actions taken
regionally or by other smaller groups of countries. (This is different from
the word’s use in other areas of international relations where, for
example, a “multilateral” security arrangement
ECOSOC at a Glance

• The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) is the

United Nations’ central platform for reflection, debate, and
innovative thinking on sustainable development.
• one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN),
responsible for the direction and coordination of the
economic, social, humanitarian, and cultural activities
carried out by the UN. It is the UN’s largest and most
complex subsidiary body.
• READ MORE ON THIS TOPIC
ECOSOC was established by the UN Charter
(1945), 
• . ECOSOC membership is based on geographic
representation: 14 seats are allocated to Africa, 11 to Asia,
6 to eastern Europe, 10 to Latin America and the
Caribbean, and 13 to western Europe and other areas. 
• main venue for the discussion of international economic and
social issues. ECOSOC conducts studies; formulates resolutions,
recommendations, and conventions for consideration by the
General Assembly; and coordinates the activities of various UN
organizations. Most of ECOSOC’s work is performed in functional
commissions on topics such as human rights, narcotics,
population, social development, statistics, the status of women,
and science and technology; the council also oversees regional
commissions for Europe, Asia and the Pacific, Western Asia, Latin
America, and Africa. The UN charter allows ECOSOC to grant
consultative status to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
Beginning in the mid-1990s, measures were taken to increase the
participation of such NGOs, and by the early 21st century more
than 2,500 NGOs had been granted consultative status.
Established in 1944
• The World Bank is a vital source of financial and technical
assistance to developing countries around the world. We
are not a bank in the ordinary sense but a unique
partnership to reduce poverty and support development.
The World Bank Group comprises five institutions
 managed by their member countries.
The World Bank Group has set two goals for the world to achieve
by 2030:
• End extreme poverty by decreasing the percentage of
people living on less than $1.90 a day to no more than 3%
• Promote shared prosperity by fostering the income growth
of the bottom 40% for every country
• We provide low-interest loans, zero to low-interest credits,
and grants to developing countries. These support a wide
array of investments in such areas as education, health,
public administration, infrastructure, financial and private
sector development, agriculture, and environmental and
natural resource management. Some of our projects are
cofinanced with governments, other multilateral
institutions, commercial banks, export credit agencies,
and private sector investors.
• We also provide or facilitate financing through trust fund
partnerships with bilateral and multilateral donors. Many 
partners have asked the Bank to help manage initiatives
that address needs across a wide range of sectors and
developing regions.