Photo by Christopher Sardegna via Unsplash
The following text has been translated from Swedish and is going to be published in a new book about peace politics.
From time to time, I think about ideas of world citizenship and what it means to me. I carry this experience with me from my childhood, based on experiences during Bosnia's war-time and post-war period. I was born and raised with parents who taught me to care about what is happening worldwide. Our first home was for me as a kind of oasis in the small town of Teslic, where we lived from 1995 until 2003 in an environment characterized by constant nationalism, corruption, extremism, hatred, conspiracy theories, negativity, and mistrust between people.
Therefore, the home was important for my personal development because literature, music, and symbols made it easier for me to mentally isolate myself from the environment and the local social reality. Through stories and symbols from around the world, I was able to gain other and better insights, ideas, and perceptions about what the world looks like. That was before the Internet and social media, at a time when MTV was truly a music channel and a way to gain a dose of meaning and understanding in a more global sense.
When I think about how things are today, regarding being and acting as a world citizen, I realize that it is easier than ever. I have an Internet connection and work with individuals in America and Africa. On my smartphone, I can use apps like YouTube, Netflix, and Twitter to monitor and experience what is happening globally. I am also active in organizations such as Democracy Without Borders, which work to establish a World Parliament, and active in a cryptocurrency community called SEEDS, where the focus is on climate change, cultivation projects, and food production.
I often reflect on what it actually means to be a world citizen because I am constantly trying to explore new methods to contribute to a better world, help more people and make a difference in everyday life. Speaking in market-liberal terms, it can be said that today I have greater freedom of choice and opportunities to be a part of the world, socially, mentally, and emotionally.
The emotional part is important to me because my approach to the world is based on, for example, memories of humanitarian aid, UN military and civilian personnel, the news on television about the war in Bosnia as well as remember how people like Kofi Annan, Susanne Sontag, Bono, and many other people showed their care about what happened in Bosnia and got involved in different ways. I also remember clearly the moments I experienced when I went with my father in the car to pick up our mother, who was employed as an interpreter for the peacekeeping force.
Another important memory related to my thoughts about identification and citizenship is from an event in 2013. Taking part in UN role-play in Belgrade really made me think about what kind of person I would like to be. I was faced with a choice and existential considerations. Paradoxically, I experienced it in a city that I otherwise associate with the opposite of cosmopolitanism and universal values, given Belgrade's political significance and symbolism during the 1990s wars, conflicts, corruption in relation to the deadly disintegration of Yugoslavia.
My trip to Belgrade began spontaneously with my joining the Swedish UN in 2012. An important reason for this was my interest in war and peace issues. In addition, I hoped to meet more like-minded people and learn more about the UN institutions. After only a couple of months, I received an invitation for a UN role-play sent to me by email. As a new member, I had no idea that such a thing existed, as I had not previously got any information about it. That was even more surprising and fascinating to me that the invitation was to Serbia and Belgrade because the Serbian UN Federation was behind BIMUN - Belgrade International Model United Nations.
At first, I was unsure and a little reluctant at the thought of going to Belgrade. There were several reasons. I had love problems and was in a relationship that I believed in less and less. My self-confidence felt low, I was often stressed, had difficulty sleeping and managing my everyday life. I was also unemployed, or at best had some temporary or weekend job to go to. The situation was indeed not optimal but under control and manageable. Last but not least, I was worried about how I would react in connection with meetings with people in Serbia. My upbringing in Bosnia and later my upbringing in Sweden made me extra aware, worried and stressed about nationalist and extremist ideas, symbols, and behaviors that caused the wars in the former Yugoslavia and which I could now see on the Internet, Facebook, and Youtube. I was also worried that I might end up in fights or in very aggressive verbal quarrels and discussions.
After thinking about the trip to Belgrade for a couple of weeks, I decided to take the chance anyway. One factor that helped me get there was also that my grandmother in Bosnia felt bad, weak, and lying on her deathbed. It made me combine the trip to Belgrade, where I could stay with my cousins, with traveling to Bosnia to visit my father and the other family members. When I arrived in Belgrade in March 2013, it was warmer than in Stockholm, and I was also happy to meet my cousins
I had not met in years. Before coming to Belgrade, I spent several hours or, better to say, days reading about BIMUN, UN role-plays, diplomacy, international relations, global governance, and many more relevant things that could strengthen my self-confidence, self-control, and self-insight.
A few weeks before BIMUN, I was told about my upcoming role - the representative and delegate of Sudan. That felt extra stressful to me because I was hoping to play a role of a delegate belonging to a nation in the Security Council. The reason was that I actually selected the Security Council and Luxembourg in my choice of organizations and delegations. For the role play in the Security Council, the theme concerning the conflict between Sudan and South Sudan was at the center of discussion, including the possible negotiations to form a new nation (South Sudan). This meant that I would role-play a delegate who would simply talk more than most of the others in the role-play. It did not end there as I was also told that the other two role players, who were supposed to be my fellow delegates, had canceled their trips to Belgrade and attendance at the role play. In other words, I would act completely alone as a representative of Sudan.
Once in Belgrade, I initially experienced a lot of stress and anxiety. I remember, among other things, that during my first speech, I was shaky, insecure, and spoke fast. This led several participants to ask me to raise my voice, speak more clearly and closer to the microphone. I had a very hard time concentrating and focusing and experienced that emotions “flew up and down” my body. It felt almost like being constantly itchy, like getting a minor electric shock or a food allergic reaction. Therefore, my first day at the role-playing game felt like a small failure, but I also learned several important things and obtained some important insights. For example, that no party could reach an optimal solution because the final decision would be more or less a compromise and that I did not always have to defend my position. After all, I could leave it to delegates from China and Russia to focus more on their roles.
The second day of the role-playing game went better, and during the third day, my self-confidence had improved a lot. In retrospect, what felt very exciting and interesting was that our role play ended up in almost the same, similar decisions, processes, and final results as in the real negotiations concerning Sudan and South Sudan. In that way, I felt that my participation in the conference was very rewarding and meaningful. I also realized that participating in BIMUN had resulted in me learning something much more important and decisive regarding my continued development and actions in society. While participating in BIMUN, I contacted many people with whom I had really pleasant and interesting conversations. Today, some of them are NGO activists, experts in think tanks, district mayors in big cities, diplomats, and academics.
During the three days in Belgrade, I also tried to understand and observe the different participants' interests, feelings and behaviors. It was right there that I felt very uncomfortable, and it made me think even more existentially and more deeply about how I should relate to it. In connection to that, I was struck by the following thought: on the one hand, I was in an environment where one could feel that we all shared the same interests in favor of pluralism, openness, and global collaboration, while on the other hand, I also felt that some conflicting ideas and behaviors were being present. According to these ideas and behaviors, we were expected to work for nations' governments in the future, safeguard “national interests,” and be more like officials and administrators of existing systems at the embassies and the missions.
In connection with BIMIUN, I concluded that my conviction of being an active world citizen was decisive and necessary. I realized that a country's function requires active citizens, but the function of the world requires active world citizens who are democratically minded and committed. States and nations still need their officials to be able to perform various functions related to enforcing laws and institutions and utilizing resources. However, a challenge for the world at large is that most states still function according to the idea that a certain nation exists for a certain state, that a certain state exists for a certain nation, just as we as individuals are expected to exist for a certain state and nation.
For the world to function better as a democratic whole and as a society, it is necessary that public institutions are universalist and exist for the world, as well as that the planet exists for us as humans and that we as humans do what we can for the planet's economy, climate, energy, peace and human security for all. Without global solidarity, empathy, and interpersonal cooperation, it will be difficult or impossible to cope with all common problems and challenges. In the end, it also depends on what choices we make as human beings. We do not choose our places of birth, but we can always choose our actions and stories which motivate us and help us work together for each other's success, the planet's sustainability, and human progress.
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