Despite a high and growing global average income, billions of human beings are still condemned to lifelong severe poverty, with all its attendant evils of low life expectancy, social exclusion, ill health, illiteracy, dependency, and effective enslavement. This problem is solvable, despite its magnitude.

Worldwide, human lives are rapidly improving. Education, health-care, technology, and political participation are becoming ever more universal, empowering human beings everywhere to enjoy security, economic sufficiency, equal citizenship, and a life in dignity. To be sure, there are some specially difficult areas disfavoured by climate, geography, local diseases, unenlightened cultures or political tyranny. Here progress is slow, and there may be set-backs. But the affluent states and many international organizations are working steadily to extend the blessings of modernity through trade (...) and generous development assistance, and it won't be long until the last pockets of severe oppression and poverty are gone. Heavily promoted by Western governments and media, this comforting view of the world is widely shared, at least among the affluent. Pogge's new book presents an alternative view: Poverty and oppression persist on a massive scale; political and economic inequalities are rising dramatically both intra-nationally and globally. The affluent states and the international organizations they control knowingly contribute greatly to these evils - selfishly promoting rules and policies harmful to the poor while hypocritically pretending to set and promote ambitious development goals. Pogge's case studies include the $1/day poverty measurement exercise, the cosmetic statistics behind the first Millennium Development Goal, the War on Terror, and the proposed relaxation of the constraints on humanitarian intervention. A powerful moral analysis that shows what Western states would do if they really cared about the values they profess. (shrink)

Despite a high and growing global average income, billions of human beings are still condemned to lifelong severe poverty with all its attendant evils of low life expectancy, social exclusion, ill health, illiteracy, dependency, and effective enslavement. We citizens of the rich countries are conditioned to think of this problem as an occasion for assistance. Thanks in part to the rationalizations dispensed by our economists, most of us do not realize how deeply we are implicated, through the new global economic (...) order our states have imposed, in this ongoing catastrophe. My sketch of how we are so implicated follows the argument of my book, World Poverty and Human Rights, but takes the form of a response to the books critics. (shrink)

In this article, the last in the symposium on world poverty and human rights, Pogge replies to his critics Mathias Risse, Alan Patten, Rowan Cruft, Norbert Anwander, and Debra Satz.

This is a short, accessible introduction to John Rawls' thought and gives a thorough and concise presentation of the main outlines of Rawls' theory as well as drawing links between Rawls' enterprise and other important positions in moral and political philosophy.

One-third of all human lives end in early death from poverty-related causes. Most of these premature deaths are avoidable through global institutional reforms that would eradicate extreme poverty. Many are also avoidable through global health-system reform that would make medical knowledge freely available as a global public good. The rules should be redesigned so that the development of any new drug is rewarded in proportion to its impact on the global disease burden (not through monopoly rents). This reform would bring (...) drug prices down worldwide close to their marginal cost of production and would powerfully stimulate pharmaceutical research into currently neglected diseases concentrated among the poor. Its feasibility shows that the existing medical-patent regime (trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights—TRIPS—as supplemented by bilateral agreements) is severely unjust—and its imposition a human-rights violation on account of the avoidable mortality and morbidity it foreseeably produces. (shrink)

Contributors from several countries discuss the central moral issues arising in the emerging global order: the responsibilities of the strongest societies, moral priorities for the next decades, and the role of intellectuals in view of the huge gap between widely expressed moral ambitions and prevailing political and economic realities.

One‐third of all human deaths are due to poverty‐related causes, to malnutrition and to diseases that can be prevented or cured cheaply. Yet our politicians, academics, and mass media show little concern for how such poverty might be reduced. They are more interested in possible military interventions to stop human rights violations in developing countries, even though such interventions – at best – produce smaller benefits at greater cost. This Western priority may be rooted in self‐interest. But it engenders, and (...) is sustained by, a deeply flawed moral presentation of global economic cooperation. The new global economic order we impose aggravates global inequality and reproduces severe poverty on a massive scale. On any plausible understanding of our moral values, the prevention of such poverty is our foremost responsibility. (shrink)

Cohen seeks to rescue the concept of justice from those, among whom he includes Rawls, who think that correct fundamental moral principles are fact-sensitive. Cohen argues instead that any fundamental principles of justice, and fundamental moral principles generally, are fact-insensitive and that any fact-sensitive principles can be traced back to fact-insensitive ones. This paper seeks to clarify the nature of Cohen's argument, and the kind of fact-insensitivity he has in mind. In particular, it distinguishes between internal and external fact-sensitivity – (...) that is, whether facts are referenced in the content of the principle, or must otherwise be the case in order for the principle to apply at all. Cohen himself seems likely to endorse internally fact-sensitive fundamental principles. This leads to a discussion of Cohen's Platonism about moral principles and the extent to which his arguments cover all its rivals. 1. (shrink)

Moral universalism centrally involves the idea that the moral assessment of persons and their conduct, of social rules and states of affairs, must be based on fundamental principles that do not, explicitly or covertly, discriminate arbitrarily against particular persons or groups. This general idea is explicated in terms of three conditions. It is then applied to the discrepancy between our criteria of national and global economic justice. Most citizens of developed countries are unwilling to require of the global economic order (...) what they assuredly require of any national economic order, for example, that its rules be under democratic control, that it preclude life-threatening poverty as far as is reasonably possible. Without a plausible justification, such a double standard constitutes covert arbitrary discrimination against the global poor. Key Words: contextualism • corruption • discrimination • Rawls • resource exports • world poverty. (shrink)

In a democratic society, the social rules are imposed by all upon each. As “recipients” of the rules, we tend to think that they should be designed to engender the best attainable distribution of goods and ills or quality of life. We are inclined to assess social institutions by how they affect their participants. But there is another, oft-neglected perspective which the topic of health equity raises with special clarity: As imposers of the rules, we are inclined to think that (...) harms we inflict through the rules have greater moral weight than like harms we merely fail to prevent or to mitigate. What matters morally is not merely how we affect people, but how we treat them through the rules we impose. While current (consequentialist and Rawlsian) theorizing is dominated by the first perspective and thus supports purely recipient-oriented moral conceptions, an adequate approach to social justice requires a balancing of both. Such balancing results in a relational conception of justice, which distinguishes various ways in which an institutional scheme may causally affect the quality of life of its participants.This essay argues that the strength of our moral reason to prevent or mitigate particular medical conditions depends not only on what one might call distributional factors, such as how badly off the people affected by these conditions are in absolute and relative terms, how costly prevention or treatment would be, and how much patients would benefit from given treatment. Rather, it depends also on relational factors, that is, on how we are related to the medical conditions they suffer. It then discusses some implications of this view for understanding responsibilities for international health outcomes. (shrink)

Global Ethics, along with its companion volume Global Justice, will aid in the study of global justice and global ethical issues with significant global dimensions. Some of those issues directly concern what individuals, countries, and other associations ought to do in response to various global problems, such as poverty, population growth, and climate change. Others concern the concepts that are commonly used to discuss such issues, such as "development" and "human rights." And still others concern the legitimacy of various phenomena (...) that structure the global scene, such as national borders, the institutions of national sovereignty and self-determination, and attitudes such as nationalism and patriotism. In recent decades, literature on such issues has started to build up in the Western philosophical tradition. Until now, though, no up-to-date sample of this literature has been available to students and other interested parties. These two books, companion volumes sold separately, fill this gap by providing a sample of the best recent work on these themes. (shrink)

Many of our interactions in the twenty-first century - both good and bad - take place by means of institutions, technology, and artefacts. We inhabit a world of implements, instruments, devices, systems, gadgets, and infrastructures. Technology is not only something that we make, but is also something that in many ways makes us. The discipline of ethics must take this constitutive feature of institutions and technology into account; thus, ethics must in turn be embedded in our institutions and technology. The (...) contributors to this book argue that the methodology of 'designing in ethics' - addressing and resolving the issues raised by technology through the use of appropriate technological design - is the way to achieve this integration. They apply their original methodology to a wide range of institutions and technologies, using case studies from the fields of healthcare, media and security. Their volume will be important for philosophical practitioners and theorists alike. (shrink)

A comparative examination of four alternative ways of understandingwhat human rights are supports an institutional understanding assuggested by Article 28 of the Universal Declaration: Human rightsare weighty moral claims on any coercively imposed institutionalorder, national or international (as Article 28 confirms). Any suchorder must afford the persons on whom it is imposed secure accessto the objects of their human rights. This understanding of humanrights is broadly sharable across cultures and narrows the philosophical and practical differences between the friends ofcivil and (...) political and the champions of social, economic, andcultural human rights. When applied to the global institutionalorder, it provides a new argument for conceiving human rights asuniversal – and a new basis for criticizing this order as tooencouraging of oppression, corruption, and poverty in the developing countries: We have a negative duty not to cooperatein the imposition of this global order if feasible reforms ofit would significantly improve the realization of human rights. (shrink)

We citizens of the affluent countries tend to discuss our obligations toward the distant needy mainly in terms of donations and transfers, assistance and redistribution: How much of our wealth, if any, should we give away to the hungry abroad? Using one prominent theorist to exemplify this way of conceiving the problem, I show how it is a serious error — and a very costly one for the global poor.

Book reviewed in this article:John Rawls, The Law of Peoples.

Following the tradition of classical liberalism, Kant's political philosophy and theory of justice focus on the relation between individual freedom, as the central value of political life, and the state, whose primary normative function is both to restrain and protect individual liberty. In this accessible interpretation of Kant's political philosophy, Allen D. Rosen focuses on the relation among justice, political authority (the state), and individual liberty. He offers interpretations of the ethical bases of Kant's view of justice, of the structure (...) of his taxonomy of duties, and of his understanding of social welfare legislation. Arguing against the grain of much recent scholarly commentary, Rosen asserts that Kant's principles of justice are direct corollaries of the Categorical Imperative and that Kant does not support an absolute or even near-absolute duty of obedience to governments. He also maintains that Kant has principled and important reasons for repudiating a right of revolution and that Kant is not, as he is almost always taken to be, an advocate of the nightwatchman or minimal state. The Kant that emerges from Rosen's pages is an appealing and surprisingly modern philosopher, whose preoccupation with individual freedom still resonates in contemporary political and philosophical debates, and whose attempts to define the proper limits of individual liberty remain relevant even at the end of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Collected here in one volume are fifteen cutting-edge essays by leading academics which together clarify and defend the claim that freedom from poverty is a human right with corresponding binding obligations on the more affluent to practice effective poverty avoidance. This volume is co-published with UNESCO publishing.

It helps ordinary citizens evaluate their options and their responsibility for global institutional factors, and it challenges social scientists to address the causes of poverty and hunger that act across borders.The present volume ...

Numa sociedade democrática, as regras sociais são impostas a cada um por todos. Como “recebedores” de tais regras, tendemos a pensar que elas deviam ser designadas para engendrar a melhor distribuição possível de bens e males ou qualidade de vida. Enquanto autores das regras, tendemos a pensar que os malefícios por nós impostos através de tais regras têm maior peso moral que os danos que nós meramente deixamos de evitar ou mitigar. Embora as atuais teorias sejam dominadas pela primeira perspectiva, (...) uma concepção adequada da justiça exige um balanceamento de ambas tendências. O tema da equidade na saúde é bem apropriado para mostrar como concepções da justiça puramente dirigidas aos recebedores estão fadadas ao fracasso e como esboçar uma alternativa mais promissora. (shrink)

With each of our three criminal-law topics—defining offenses, apprehending suspects, and establishing punishments—we feel, I believe, strong moral resistance to the idea that our practices should be settled by a prospective-participant perspective. This becomes quite clear when we look at how the “reforms” suggested by institutional viewing might combine once we consider all three topics together: imagine a more extensive and swifter use of the death penalty in homicide cases coupled with somewhat lower standards of evidence; or think of backing (...) a strict-liability criminal statute with the death penalty. Of course, such “reforms” would increase the execution of innocents; but, their proponents will tell us, any penal system involves the punishment of some innocents, and, if it provides for the death penalty, the execution of some innocents. Moreover, why is it worse for innocents to be punished than for innocents to suffer an equivalent harm in some other way? Formulated from a prospective-participant perspective: Why not run a small risk of being innocently executed in exchange for reducing, much more significantly, the risk of dying prematurely in other ways? (shrink)

Professor Thomas Pogge, Professorial Fellow, Centre for Applied Philosophy, LPO Box 8260, Canberra. Tel.: +61 261255485; Email: tp6{at}columbia.edu ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> Abstract I would pay three million to go into space, says the banker to his attorney. — I wouldn't go if you paid me, the latter laughs, for me the French Riviera is quite exciting enough. Ah, I would pay a million for an extra year of life , the elderly tourist effusively (...) tells his lover. — We have never had even a hundred dollars , the Cambodian teenager replies, we are a large family. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

David Miller is right that weak cosmopolitanism is undistinctive and strong cosmopolitanism implausibly curtails associative duties. But there are intermediate views that avoid both of these problems. One such view holds that compatriotism makes no difference to our most important negative duties and that among these is the duty not to impose unjust social institutions upon other human beings. On this view, our duty not to impose an unjust institutional order on foreigners is exactly as stringent as our duty not (...) to impose an unjust institutional order upon our compatriots. This view is not trivial; it has important consequences for our moral responsibilities in the world as it is. And it is compatible with associative duties insofar as these increase what we owe to some without decreasing what we owe to persons at large. (shrink)

In this comprehensive collection of essays, most of which appear for the first time, eminent scholars from many disciplines—philosophy, economics, sociology, political science, demography, theology, history, and social psychology—examine the causes, nature, and consequences of present-day consumption patterns in the United States and throughout the world.

This book brings together a team of leading theorists to address the question 'What is the right measure of justice?' Some contributors, following Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, argue that we should focus on capabilities, or what people are able to do and to be. Others, following John Rawls, argue for focussing on social primary goods, the goods which society produces and which people can use. Still others see both views as incomplete and complementary to one another. Their essays evaluate (...) the two approaches in the light of particular issues of social justice - education, health policy, disability, children, gender justice - and the volume concludes with an essay by Amartya Sen, who originated the capabilities approach. (shrink)

Governments and their international agencies (FAO, World Bank) conceive of the eradication of hunger and poverty as a worthy wish that will eventually be realized through economic growth. They also make great cosmetic efforts to present as good-looking trend pictures as they can. Citizens ought to insist that the eradication of severe deprivations is a human rights correlative duty that permits no avoidable delay. Academics ought to collaborate toward providing a systematic alternative monitoring of what progress has really been made (...) against undernourishment and other povertyrelated deprivations. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Why Two Theories at All? Why Exclude the Interests of Persons? Why Cut Out the Middle Tier? Is Each Society Master of its Own Fate? Do the Asymmetries Get Rawls the Result He Wants? Conclusion Notes.

One important aspect of globalization is the increasingly dense and influential regime of global rules that govern and shape interactions everywhere. Covering trade, investment, loans, patents, copyrights, trademarks, labor standards, environmental protection, use of seabed resources, production and marketing of weapons, maintenance of public security, and much else, these rules—structuring and enabling, permitting and constraining—have a profound impact on the lives of human beings and on the ecology of our planet. It is therefore important to think carefully, in moral terms, (...) about their design. (shrink)

In GIVING WELL: THE ETHICS OF PHILANTHROPY, an accomplished trio of editors bring together an international group of distinguished philosophers, social scientists, lawyers and practitioners to identify and address the most urgent moral questions arising today in the practice of philanthropy.

Despite some clear positives, the draft text of the Sustainable Development Goals does not fulfill its self-proclaimed purpose of inspiring and guiding a concerted international effort to eradicate severe poverty everywhere in all of its forms. We offer some critical comments on the proposed agreement and suggest 10 ways to embolden the goals and amplify their appeal and moral power. While it may well be true that the world's poor are better off today than their predecessors were decades or centuries (...) ago, to judge whether this is moral progress, we must bring into view what was possible then and what is possible now. We may well find that there have never been so many people avoidably subjected to life-threatening deprivations as there are today, and if this is the case, we should insist that our governments end this oppression immediately through appropriate institutional reforms to be prominently outlined in their post-2015 agenda. (shrink)

On September 30–October 2, 2005, a group of individuals drawn from civil society organizations, governments, international agencies, and academic institutions came together in Montréal, Québec, Canada, for an international workshop entitled “Human Rights and Access to Essential Medicines: The Way Forward.” At the conclusion of the workshop, we drafted the “Montréal Statement on the Human Right to Essential Medicines.” This “Statement” is reprinted at the end of this comment, which offers some background on the problem addressed at the workshop.

In contrast to his own "freestanding" liberalism, Rawls has characterized the liberalism of Kant's Rechtslehre as comprehensive, i.e., as dependent on Kant's teachings about good will and ethical autonomy or on his transcendental idealism. This characterization is not borne out by the text. Though Kant is indeed eager to show that his liberalism is entailed by his wider philosophical worldview, he is not committed to the converse, does not hold that his liberalism presupposes either his moral philosophy or his transcendental (...) idealism. Rather, Kant bases the establishment and maintenance of Recht solely on persons' fundamental a priori interest in external freedom. His liberalism is then, if anything, more freestanding than Rawls's, central elements of which-such as his postulate of certain moral powers with corresponding higher-order interests-are justified by appeal to fundamental ideas he finds to be prevalent in the public culture of his society. (shrink)

Una violación de los derechos humanos implica un no cumplimiento de los derechos humanos y una relación causal activa entre agentes humanos y tal incumplimiento. Esta relación causal puede ser de interacción, pero también puede ser institucional, como cuando los agentes colaboran en el diseño y la imposición de arreglos institucionales que de manera previsible y evitable causan el no cumplimiento de los derechos humanos. Cierta evidencia de fácil acceso sugiere que (a) derechos humanos sociales y económicos básicos siguen siendo (...) incumplidos en casi la mitad de la población del mundo y (b) que el diseño de arreglos institucionales supranacionales juega un papel decisivo en la explicación de por qué la mitad más pobre de la humanidad está sufriendo un rápido descenso en su participación (ahora por debajo de tres por ciento) en el ingreso doméstico global. Se puede, entonces, argumentar con plausibilidad que ciudadanos como yo –ciudadanos pudientes de estados influyentes– violan colaborativamente los derechos humanos de los pobres del mundo a una escala masiva. (shrink)

Hunger continues to be one of humanity's greatest challenges despite the existence of a more-than-adequate global food supply equal to 2,800 kilocalories for every person every day. In measuring progress, policy-makers and concerned citizens across the globe rely on information supplied by the Food and Agriculture Organization , an agency of the United Nations. In 2010 the FAO reported that in the wake of the 2007–2008 food-price spikes and global economic crisis, the number of people experiencing hunger worldwide since 2005–2007 (...) had increased by 150 million, rising above 1 billion in 2009. However, in its State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012 the FAO presented new estimates, having revamped its methods and reinterpreted its hunger data back to 1990. The revised numbers for the period 1990–1992 to 2010–2012 reverse the trend to a steadily falling one. Based on the FAO's new calculations, extreme undernourishment peaked in 1990 at a record-breaking one billion, followed by a significant decline through 2006, when progress stalled but did not reverse. (shrink)