What can one person do?

Word	What it means
Global citizenship	The idea that a person has responsibilities beyond their own country. It does not require giving up national citizenship.
Civil society	Organizations and groups outside government and business: charities, unions, faith groups, community associations, NGOs.
Non-governmental organization	An organization independent of government, usually working on a cause.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights	Adopted 1948. A declaration rather than a treaty, so not directly enforceable.
Universalism	The position that human rights apply to every person regardless of where they live.
Cultural relativism	The position that rights should be understood within each culture's own values.
Fair trade	Certification intended to ensure producers receive a fairer price under agreed standards.
Corporate social responsibility	Businesses accepting obligations to society and the environment beyond profit.
Democratic deficit	The criticism that decisions affecting citizens are made by bodies they cannot vote out.

Consumer choice. One boycott changes nothing; a measurable shift in demand changes what is profitable to produce. Fair trade certification works the same way — it is a market signal, and its effect depends on scale.

Civil society. Joining an organization converts an individual preference into an institution with staff, funding and continuity. That is why NGOs are the main vehicle in this related issue.

Political action. Voting, petitioning, submitting to consultations, running for office. Slow, and the only mechanism with formal authority attached.

The honest limits. Consumer choice requires having a choice, which not everyone does. Boycotts can hurt the workers they intend to help. Awareness campaigns can substitute for action. A good answer concedes the specific limit rather than gesturing at “it is complicated”.

The universalist case. Rights that apply only where they are locally popular are not rights. Relativism can be used to shield abuses by calling them tradition, and the people whose rights are at stake are rarely the ones invoking the culture.

The relativist case. The 1948 Declaration was drafted with limited participation from colonised peoples, and applying one set of standards can itself be a form of Eurocentrism — which Related Issue 2 spent a unit examining.

Why enforcement is hard. Sovereignty is the obstacle: the UN usually cannot compel a state. The Responsibility to Protect, adopted in 2005, was an attempt to address that by reframing sovereignty as a responsibility rather than an immunity — and its uneven application is the standard follow-up point.

The claim. Trade tribunals, global institutions and corporate investment decisions all affect citizens, and none of them can be voted out. That is the democratic deficit.

The reply. The problems being managed cross borders, so the institutions must too. A country that refuses them does not regain control; it loses influence over decisions that affect it anyway.

The Canadian version. Trade agreements constrain what Parliament may do in areas from procurement to drug pricing. Whether that is sovereignty given away or sovereignty exercised by choosing to sign is exactly the argument, and both readings are available in the same facts.

What a strong conclusion does. Says what would change your mind. A position that no evidence could shift is not an argument.

• Ending with “we should all do our part”. Name a mechanism and say how far it goes.
• Strawmanning relativism as an excuse for abuse, or universalism as cultural imperialism.
• Treating NGOs as automatically good or corporations as automatically bad.
• Claiming globalization has ended democracy. The argument is about accountability, and overstating it is easy to refute.