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Global apartheid is a term for a concept of how Global North countries are engaged in a project of "racialization, segregation, political intervention, mobility controls, capitalist plunder, and labor exploitation" affecting people from the Global South. Proponents of the concept argue that a close examination of the global system reveals it to be a kind of apartheid writ large with striking resemblance to apartheid in South Africa from 1948 to 1994, but based on borders and national sovereignty.
The concept of global apartheid has been developed by many researchers, including Titus Alexander,Titus Alexander, Unravelling Global Apartheid: An Overview of World Politics, Polity Press, 1996 Bruno Amoroso,Bruno Amoroso, Global Apartheid. Economics and Society, Federico Caffè Center, Roskilde, Città di Castello, 2004 Patrick Bond,Patrick Bond, Against Global Apartheid: South Africa Meets the World Bank, IMF and International Finance, Zed Books Ltd; 2nd edition February 2004 Gernot Kohler,Gernot Kohler, Global Apartheid, Working Paper No 7, World Order Models Project, New York, 1978 Arjun Makhijiani,Arjun Makhijiani, From Global Capitalism to Economic Justice, Apex Press, 1992 Ali Mazuri,Ali Mazuri in conversation with Fouad Kalouche, Universalism, Global Apartheid, and JusticeAdekeye Adebajo, James Jonah, Ali A. Mazrui and Tor Sellstrom, From Global Apartheid to Global Village: Africa and the United Nations, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, Aug 2009; Leith Mullings, New Social Movements in the African Diaspora: Challenging Global Apartheid (Critical Black Studies) February 2010 Vandana Shiva,Vandana Shiva, 'The New Environmental Order' Third World Resurgence, 20 April 1992, Third World Network, Penang, Malaysia, p 2 -3 Anthony H. Richmond,Anthony H Richmond, Global Apartheid: Refugees, Racism and the New World Order, Oxford University Press, Ontario, 1995 Joseph Nevins,Joseph Nevins, Dying to Live: A Story of U.S. Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid (Open Media), City Lights Books, October 2008 Muhammed Asadi,Muhammed A. Asadi, Global Apartheid, iUniverse, February 2003 Gustav Fridolin,Per Gustav Edvard Fridolin, Från Vittsjö till världen - om global apartheid och alla vi som vill någon annanstans (From Vittsjö to the world - about global apartheid and everyone of us that want to go somewhere), 2006 and many others. More recent references are in Falk's Re-Framing the International, Amoroso's Global apartheid: globalisation, economic marginalisation, political destabilisation,Bruno Amoroso (2025). 9788773495902, Roskilde University, Dept. of Social Sciences. ISBN 9788773495902 Peterson's A Critical Rewriting of Global Political Economy, Jones's Crimes Against Humanity: A Beginner's Guide and Global Human Smuggling by Kyle and Koslowski, (2025). 9781421401980, Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 9781421401980 and New Social Movements in the African Diaspora: Challenging Global Apartheid. (2025). 9780230104570, Springer. ISBN 9780230104570 and Bosak's Kairos, Crisis, and Global Apartheid
Its best known use was by Thabo Mbeki, then-President of South Africa, in a 2002 speech, drawing comparisons of the status of the world's people, economy, and access to natural resources to the apartheid era.Haviland, William (1993). Cultural Anthropology. Vermont: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers. p. 250-252 Mbeki got the term from Titus Alexander, initiator of Charter 99, a campaign for global democracy, who was also present at the UN Millennium Summit and gave him a copy of Unravelling Global Apartheid.
Alexander claims there are numerous pillars of global apartheid including:
More recently, scholars such as Thanh-Dam Truong and Des Gasper, in Transnational Migration and Human Security and Kyle and Koslowsk in In Global Human Smuggling, analyse the rise of migrant smuggling and human trafficking in terms of the "structural violence generated by the escalation of border interdiction by states as part of the system of global apartheid." (2025). 9781421401980, Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 9781421401980 Political demands for protectionism and physical barriers between the West and the Majority World, such as President Trump's proposed wall between Mexico and the US as well as barriers round the EU follow similar economic pressures to those which entrenched apartheid in South Africa.
Law scholar Dimitry Kochenov argues that citizenship and nationality law is a form of apartheid that creates unequal protection that would never be accepted within the borders of any liberal democracy. "Like slavery, like sexism, like racism, citizenship knows no justification once you leave the purview of those few whom it unduly privileges."
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