Announcing… the Global Solidarity Report
For the first time, a fact base to measure the strength and resilience of the international community
Hassan Damluji & Jonathan Glennie, May 2023
The war in Ukraine has decisively demonstrated an impressively high level of global solidarity, with 141 countries voting in favour of a UN resolution condemning the invasion, and only 5 votes against. Russia is now an international pariah, a stark contrast to the impunity that it and other invading superpowers once faced… OR… Russia’s invasion has truly lifted the lid on how divided the world is. Most countries are either neutral or Russia-leaning, and the NATO block has never been more isolated in a world sliding rapidly back into another Cold War.
The COVID-19 pandemic was a rare moment that brought the world together. Despite an unprecedented economic crash, total foreign aid was higher in 2020 than 2019. Ghana received its first, donated vaccine doses just two months after the UK started to roll them out – compared to a usual lag of around a decade… OR… the pandemic revealed the world for the dysfunctional, selfish place that it is. Hoarding by rich countries and India’s export ban meant that only 7% of Africans had been vaccinated by the end of 2021, compared to a large majority in rich countries.
COP27 was a landmark in bringing the world together… OR… OK. Enough.
So which is it? Is the world falling apart? Or are we cooperating better than ever to face threats that cross borders? Opinions abound. There is no shortage of experts on a plethora of interrelated subjects. But for such an important question, so hotly debated, it is extraordinary that there has been no serious attempt to date to answer it methodically with facts and figures.
We are going to do just that, and we want your input.
Last month, at Global Citizen Now, a high-level summit in New York, we announced the Global Solidarity Report, featuring a new scorecard to measure the strength and resilience of the international community. The report itself will be launched this September at the UN’s General Assembly.
This will not be the kind of index you’re used to seeing: a long list of countries, ranked against each other on human development, or climate commitments, in which a Scandinavian country emerges on top, another validation of the post-colonial hierarchy under which the world still suffers. In fact, it will not be a ranking of countries at all.
“What?”, say many of the experts we are speaking to, “It’s not a ranking of countries?”
No, because as important as nation-states are as bundles of sovereignty, identity and power, they are not the only way in which to think of the world. In fact, listing countries on an index as if they are comparable to each other is quite bizarre when you think about it. China has around thirty-five thousand times more people than the Seychelles. If all countries were the size of the Seychelles, there would be a quarter of a million countries in the world; if they were the size of China, there would be just six.
But more than that, we don’t think that a community is best measured by ranking its component parts against each other. Do you measure how strong a soccer team is by gauging how each player performs individually, or measure your organisation’s performance by reviewing how each individual employee is doing? No. You look at performance as a whole. Is there a good team spirit and a common purpose? Is the team well organized? Is it achieving its goals? The Global Solidarity Report will ask exactly these questions of the global community.
Solidarity boils down to three things, which we’ve framed as the three pillars of the scorecard.
The first pillar is public attitudes: do people want to collaborate to solve our greatest crises? Do they feel part of a global community and are they willing to make any sacrifices for that biggest of all teams?
The second is institutions, or mechanisms: are we giving institutions that work across borders the resources and political support they need to drive collaboration?
The third is visible progress: does public support and institutional strength add up to successes people and planet? And do those successes (or failures) feedback into public support and better institutions?
Last month’s summit was a fantastic moment to get input from a stellar cast of characters. There was standing space only in a closed-door breakfast we held to discuss the scorecard in more detail. Former PM’s Erna Solberg and Stefan Löfven, former South African Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, a range of senior leaders from philanthropies, civil society, corporations, and the UN crammed around a big table to share their experiences and give their support.
We’re now finalizing our consultation on the indicators that we’ll use to create an overall score for global solidarity that can be tracked across years, more effectively answering the question: “is the world coming together or falling apart?” We want to give a chance to our substack community to engage with and support this work.
So, please write back to us with your comments on the below set of indicators, and let us know if you are prepared to join your voice with ours. sophie.barbier@globalnation.world
This report will not just be about measurement. It will also be about action. Having set out the state of the world when it comes to global solidarity, we will spell out what we, and our partners, see as the critical “calls to action” – the most urgent tasks that we all must take over the next year, to ensure that solidarity is strengthened, and we face down our challenges more effectively.
Write to us. Tell us what calls of action we should include. Share this with others who have powerful calls to action we should be aware of.
Sometimes, just measuring a problem can make it seem more manageable. Last week at the summit, we previewed some early data about US public opinion from the surveys that have been carried out for us by our partner, Glocalities. More Americans say they have trust in the UN (39%) than in government (29%) and a massive 57% say they want the UN to be strengthened to stop countries bullying other countries. These are surprising expressions of a global solidarity that is often said to have died in the polycrises of the early 21st century.
These glimmers of hope are the impetus to action that an unbiased fact-base can bring. Different views of global solidarity, pessimistic or optimistic, can be validated by marshalling selective data points. We need a more balanced yardstick for how the world is doing, a stronger narrative of global solidarity and community, and clear “calls to action” setting out how we can make progress.
Let’s set the record straight. It’s time for the Global Solidarity Report.