Global Dignity is an autonomous non-profit, non-criticism and non-partisan project. We wish to be inspiration-based; commending and encouraging best practice and dignity centered leadership rather than criticizing shortcomings.

The mission of the Dignity Project is to implement globally the universal right of every human being to lead a dignified life. This is a paradigm shift in thinking about our global challenges, a new language and a mindset to approach issues of poverty, peace, and progress.

Largely, we know the main problems of global development. The issue is to be able to phrase them in a language and with metaphors that inspire action. The formulation of this new language is the task of the Dignity Project. It is formulating a globally shared dream to unite the development, joining the forces of public, private, and citizen sectors.

Global Dignity is linked to the 2020 process of the World Economic Forum where young global leaders from politics, business, academia, and civil society have joined together to work for the improvement of the state of the world and people (the group ranges from Presidents of African countries to socially conscientious business leaders such as the founders of Google, from leaders of the most influential civil society movements like Make Poverty History to leading academics and cultural figures of our time; for more information (see www.younggloballeaders.org).

The co-founders of the Dignity Project are Crown Prince Haakon of Norway, John Bryant from Operation HOPE, and Professor Pekka Himanen, University of Art & Design Helsinki and Visiting Professor at Oxford University.

New vocabulary and mindset for thinking about issues

Currently, we can say that there is a dignity gap in the world. According to the UN, 50 000 people die every day for easily preventable causes, such as malnutrition and simple diseases like diarrhoea, pneumonia, malaria, and tuberculosis. If the same amount of lives was lost in rich countries on any day we would react immediately and we would find the resources to tackle the problem right away. This fact means that we actually do not give the same value to African and Western lives. And this is possible only because dignity is not really adopted as the fundamental basis of our action in public, private, and civil sectors. The result is a world where hurt dignity leads not only to suffering through poverty but also to violence undermining the long-term basis for peaceful progress.

Therefore the Dignity Project is formulating dignity principles to be adopted as a foundation for new action.