Advancing a Global Vision of Human Equality
The resurgence of nationalism and the growth of inequality within and across countries are feeding resentment, populism, and authoritarianism around the world. GGD seeks to lift up human equality, fraternity, and solidarity as shared global concerns by bringing perspectives based in the Global South into a wider international conversation.
During the April 2024 launch of the Georgetown Global Dialogues in Washington, DC, several sessions addressed a more a global vision of human equality:
The Multiple Dimensions of Inequality
For decades the global debate about inequality has centered on North-South differences. More recently it has emerged with force in Europe and the United States where—as at the global level—inequality has strong gender and racial as well as economic dimensions. What human equality means and how best to realize it deserves a global conversation incorporating diverse voices and national, regional, cultural, and spiritual traditions.
Nesrine Malik
“People are excluded, othered, minoritized, dehumanized, and devalued in ways that are very similar across the board. Wherever we are, we try and create tribes and hierarchies and pyramids of rights.”
Verónica Gago
“The challenge is how to produce transnational networks, transnational slogans, transnational translations from a very grounded experience.”
Webinar on the Global Histories of Feminism
Webinar on the Global Histories of Feminism Video Player
Featuring Nesrine Malik and Lijia Zhang in conversation with Pankaj Mishra.
Fostering Global Solidarities
The surge of nationalism around the world is undercutting efforts to forge a vibrant global civil society, as autocrats and demagogues seek to mobilize majorities against internal and external enemies. In the face of entrenched divisions we need to cultivate a new cosmopolitan vision that affirms human equality and fraternity as a global imperative and fosters solidarities and collective action across national lines.
Ece Temelkuran
“Cosmopolitanism is only valuable if it serves as the basis for a new form of collective identity, not grounded in religion or ethnicity or other exclusionary ideas, which can appeal to society at large.”
Ranjit Hoskote
"Could an attitude of 'flowering-with' sustain a cosmopolitanism, or, more accurately, a cosmopolitics that is premised on the replenishment of mutuality and which rejects the corrosion of antagonism and the attrition of agonism?"
Cross-linkages with other GGD goals:
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Learning from the Global South: Understanding the challenge of inequality in its complexity will require greater attention to a wider range of global voices.
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Elevating Youth Perspectives on Global Challenges: A passion for human equality and a global horizon are inspiring young people eager to move forward in a divided world.
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Building a Culture of Encounter: Reviving human equality as a global concern requires a greater recognition and respect for those with different and conflicting perspectives.
Social Inequality as a Global Challenge
The principle of equality, while long enshrined in national constitutions and international institutions, remains an unrealized ideal for global humanity. While globalization has generated tremendous wealth, it has not delivered on its promise of prosperity for all, feeding dissatisfaction with democracy and populist and authoritarian reactions. We need a more global conversation about the drivers of inequality and how to address them.
Kohei Saito
"The perpetual injustice and inequality around us are not due to lack of economic development. Our society already has the technology and resources to meet the basic needs of all. But they are concentrated in the hands of remarkably few."
“Against All Odds”
In this GGD Forum essay, Ece Temelkuran argues that neoliberalism’s vision of the human person as fundamentally selfish and competitive has stunted our ability to imagine and pursue the equality and social justice in practice.