In this work, I have presented an approach to identifying and securing the discharge of duties corresponding to human rights. I have argued for a conception of institutional global citizenship, where current duties are identified in part by reference to a set of global institutions that would plausibly be able to secure the core rights of all individuals. I have highlighted ways in which some aspects of global citizenship are and could be practiced in the current global system, and explored means of moving toward a more concrete and comprehensive global citizenship practice. In closing, I will work to tie the several strands of the argument together and discuss its implications for individual action and institutional transformation.

I began by situating the concept of global citizenship within cosmopolitan political thought. Global citizenship, containing within it a very concrete “legal dimension” of rights and responsibilities enacted within the global human community, fills the theoretical space of individual cosmopolitanism. It serves as a guide for individual moral action within an approach that would view individuals, not states or other groupings, as morally primary. I argued that, while it is formally true that individuals cannot be global citizens in the absence of some overarching set of global governing institutions, they can enact significant aspects of global citizenship by seeking to protect the core rights of others who do not share their state citizenship. Further, they can advocate for the transformation of the current system into one that would more effectively protect the rights of the globally most vulnerable.