Trying to Make Sense of the World's Biggest Challenges

New Global Citizens will be the first to acknowledge that the biggest issues in the world are impossible to describe in a few pages. The underlying causes of suffering are vast and range from geography to irresponsible human decisions. But the aim of this section is to try to give you a simple overview of the “biggest” issues facing the greatest number of people. We hope you will use this part of the guide as a starting point on your exploration of global issues and remember that as big as each problem seems—not one of them is insurmountable.

New Global Citizens focuses on two large areas—poverty and human rights. The two are closely linked.

Poverty exists in every country on some level. There are two main kinds of poverty, “relative” and “extreme.” Relative poverty is what people experience in developed nations. This means poverty relative to the kind of lifestyle many others around them enjoy. Extreme poverty means poverty in any context; it is widely defined as living on $2 (US) per day or less. This means $2 for everything: clothing, food, shelter, medication, water… It is in these conditions that billions of people are forced to make impossible, life-or-death decisions on a daily basis.

In 2000, 198 leaders of countries from around the world met for the United Nations Millennium Summit. They set out a plan to end extreme poverty by 2015. The plan includes eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that set forth an ambitious agenda to significantly improve the way people live by the year 2015. The MDGs set clear targets for reducing poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, child mortality, and discrimination against women, covering many of the most pressing global issues currently facing marginalized populations. Addressing any of these issues is a step towards a more peaceful, just, and sustainable world. New Global Citizens has used the MDGs as a tool for explaining several of the “big issues” people face with respect to poverty. This is just one of many frameworks you can use, and we hope you find it useful.

Human Rights refer to the concept that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” This is how it is described in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted and proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 1948. Of course, a proclamation can be a far cry from reality. Nearly 60 years later, we continue to face human rights violations of all kinds, including imprisonment of people who disagree with the politics of his/her government, enslavement, and forced marriage.

In the following section, you will learn about ten of the world’s biggest issues. All of the issues overlap and affect each other; any project that your club takes on will address more than one of the issues briefly explored in this section. If done well, your club will find itself weaving several of these issues together and gaining an understanding of their relationship to both poverty and human rights.

There are concrete things that can be done to combat global poverty and promote the rights of all people, and we can’t wait for other people to take the lead. We must become leaders in the effort and show our communities that it can be done.

In order to find solutions to these problems, or even to begin to understand them, you will have to take into consideration the historical, political, economic and social factors that have led to and perpetuated these circumstances. This section does not cover all of these – nor does it come close- but is a start to get you thinking about the issues and hopefully will give you the inspiration to take a further, deeper look into their causes and solutions.