UNU Lecture Series: Emerging Thinking on Global Issues

1
UNU Lecture Series Emerging Thinking on Global
Issues

• Human Rights
• The Second 60 Years
• Thomas Pogge
• Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International
  Affairs, Yale University
• with additional affiliations at
• the Australian Centre for Applied Philosophy and
  Public Ethics (CAPPE) and
• the University of Oslo Centre for the Study of
  Mind in Nature (CSMN)

2
Realizing Human Rights

• Five tasks toward a sharper understanding
• 1 For each HR, what does it mean for this right
  to be fulfilled for some person?
• 2 What deficits exist for each human right?
• 3 How should HR deficits be weighted?
• 4 What are the various causes of the persistence
  of human right deficits?
• 5 Who bears what responsibilities for removing or
  neutralizing these causes?

3
FDR on 6 January 1941

• Freedom means the supremacy of human rights
  everywhere, particularly freedom of expression,
  liberty of conscience, freedom from armed
  aggression, and freedom from want, which,
  translated into world terms, means economic
  understandings which will secure to every nation
  a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants
  everywhere in the world. These four HRs are
  attainable in our own time and generation.

4
The Most Underfulfilled HR

• Everyone has the right to a standard of living
  adequate for the health and well-being of himself
  and of his family, including food, clothing,
  housing and medical care and necessary social
  services, and the right to security in the event
  of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood,
  old age or other lack of livelihood in
  circumstances beyond his control (Article
  25(1)).
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights

3
5
Human Cost of Poverty Today
 
 

• Among ca. 6800 million human beings, about
• 800 million are undernourished (UNDP 2007, p.
  90), 1 bn now (FAO)
• 2000 million lack access to essential drugs
  (www.fic.nih.gov/about/plan/exec_summary.htm),
• 1085 million lack access to safe drinking water
  (UNDP 2007, p. 254),
• 1000 million lack adequate shelter (UNDP 1998, p.
  49),
• 2000 million have no electricity (UNDP 2007, p.
  305),
• 2600 million lack adequate sanitation (UNDP 2007,
  p. 254),
• 774 million adults are illiterate
  (www.uis.unesco.org),
• 211 million children (aged 5 to 17) do wage
  work outside their household often under
  slavery-like and hazardous conditions as
  soldiers, prostitutes or domestic servants, or in
  agriculture, construction, textile or carpet
  production (ILO The End of Child Labour, Within
  Reach, 2006, pp. 9, 11, 17-18).

6
30 Percent of all Human Deaths

• some 18 (out of 57) million per year or 50
  000 daily are due to poverty-related causes,
  cheaply preventable through safe drinking water,
  better sanitation, more adequate nutrition,
  rehydration packs, vaccines or other medicines.
  In thousands
• diarrhea (1798) and malnutrition (485),
• perinatal (2462) and maternal conditions (510),
• childhood diseases (1124 mainly measles),
• tuberculosis (1566), meningitis (173), hepatitis
  (157),
• malaria (1272) and tropical diseases (129),
• respiratory infections (3963 mainly
  pneumonia),
• HIV/AIDS (2777), sexually transmitted diseases
  (180)
• (WHO World Health Report 2004, 120-5).

7
Millions of Deaths
8
HR and Human Responsibilities

• Insofar as HR deficits are not humanly avoidable,
  no one is responsible for them.
• Insofar as HR deficits are avoidable through
  active intervention, there are unmet
  responsibilities to protect and to fulfill
  (positive duties).
• Insofar as HR deficits are caused or aggravated
  through active intervention, there are HR
  violations, unmet responsi-bilities to respect
  (negative duties).

9
Human Rights Violators

• 1. Interactional Cases
• (a) Unfulfilled human rights
• (b) Causally traceable to human agent(s)
• (c) Active agency
• (d) Official capacity
• (e) Intends, foresees, or should foresee.

10
(1c) Active Agency Condition

• can be satisfied by someone who accepts, or
  remains in, some position and then fails to
  fulfill responsibilities associated with it in a
  way that leads to unfulfilled human rights.
• Examples life guard ignoring emergency, police
  officer ignoring crimes.

11
(1b) Collective HR Violations (Relevance of other
Contributors)

• HR violators may make contributions that
  are neither necessary nor sufficient for harm
  (many acting together each with marginal
  contribution zero division of labor such that,
  but for another, ones contribution would have
  been harmless)
• Extends to upstream contributors and to
  chain-of-command situations.
• Extends to facially harmless contributions
  (tank navigator)
• Extends to democratically authorized decisions.

12
Human Rights Violators

• 2. Institutional Cases
• (a) Human rights deficit (may be statistical)
• (b) Causally traceable to social rules /
  institutional order
• (c) Active individual contribution to designing
  or imposing social rules that harm
• (d) Official character of rules, with claim to
  moral legitimacy and moral duty of compliance.
• (e) Agent intends, foresees or should foresee
  that rules produce human rights deficit and that
  there is an alternative institutional design that
  would not.

13
Human Rights as Moral Claims on (Global)
Institutional Arrangements

• Everyone is entitled to a social and
  international order in which the rights and
  freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be
  fully realized (Article 28)
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights

14
Article 28 Entails Positive Duties

• Human rights entail (positive) duties of
  assistance responsibilities to protect and to
  fulfill HRs. We ought to contribute
  to the eradication of human right deficits, e.g.
  through helping to establish social institutions
  that alleviate severe poverty.

15
Article 28 Entails Negative Duties

• Human rights entail (negative) duties of
  justice responsibilities to respect HRs. We must
  not contribute to designing or to imposing on
  others (international) social institutions under
  which their HRs fore-seeably and avoidably remain
  unfulfilled.

16
When is an Institutional Order HR-Violating?

• If and only if the following four conditions all
  hold
• The institutional order is associated with a
  massive human-rights deficit among its
  participants.
• This association is reasonably avoidable through
  some alternative design of that institutional
  order.
• The association in (1) is foreseeable.
• Its avoidability (2) is also foreseeable We can
  know that the alternative institutional design
  would do much better in terms of giving
  participants secure access to the objects of
  their human rights.

17
Moral Responsibility

• When an institutional order is unjust (by
  foreseeably producing massive and foreseeably
  avoidable human-rights deficits), then those who
  without compensating reform and protection
  efforts are actively cooperating in designing
  or imposing this order are harming (violating the
  human rights of, violating a human-rights-correlat
  ive negative duty toward) those who suffer the
  avoidable human-rights deficits.

16
18
Three Claims

• Today, most premature human deaths and other
  deprivations manifest injustice
• for which we (citizens of the more powerful
  countries) are co-responsible
• in violation of basic negative duties of justice.

19
Counter-Argument

• Poverty is evolving differently in the various
  developing countries and regions. This shows that
  local (e.g., national) factors account for the
  persistence of severe poverty where it persist.

20
Conceptual Answer to the Counter-Argument

• It merely shows that local factors are
  co-responsible for the persistence of severe
  poverty. It does not show that local factors are
  solely responsible. Example Differential
  learning success of students/pupils in the same
  class.

21

• .

22
Empirical Answer to the Counter-Argument

• Protectionism against the poor
• Pharmaceuticals at monopoly prices
• Privileges Borrowing, Resources, Treaties, Arms
  conferred on the basis of effective power alone
  entrenchment and perverse incentives

23

• Global Institutional Order

4 Privileges
Protectionism Pharmaceuticals
24
Trends in Poverty and Inequality

• Growth in international inequality has stalled
  except wrt the poorest countries (the bottom
  billion).
• Global inequality still increasing, mainly
  because of what is happening within countries
  (many more are trapped in severe poverty than
  just those bottom billion).

25
Pro-poor Globalisation?
26
Shares of Global Wealth2000 poorest versus
richest households
Calculated in terms of market exchange rates so
as to reflect the avoidability of poverty. Decile
Ineq. 28371. Quintile Ineq. 851. Year 2000,
125 trillion total. (James B Davies et al.
WIDER 2006)
25
27
Global Wealth Inequality

• At current exchange rates, the poorest half of
  the worlds population, some 3,400 million
  people, have about 1 percent of global wealth ?
  as against 3 percent owned by the worlds 1125
  billionaires.

26
28
Global Income Inequality

• At current exchange rates, the poorest half of
  world population, some 3,400 million people, have
  less than 3 of world income ? as against 6
  received by the most affluent one percent of US
  households consisting of 3 million people.

27
29
How Large are the Poverty Gaps Today?

• Relative to its newest international poverty
  line (1.25 per day or 38 per month, in
  2005-dollars), the World Bank counts 1,400
  million poor people living 30 below this line on
  average. Total deficit 0.33 of world income.
• Relative to a more HR-realistic poverty line of
  2.00 per day or 61 per month (in 2005-dollars),
  the Bank counts 2,600 million poor people living
  40 below this line on average. Total deficit
  1.30 of world income.

30
The Grand Initiative to Halve Poverty by 2015
Three Versions

• 1996 World Food Summit in Rome the number of
  extremely poor is to be halved during 1996-2015.
  This implies an annual reduction by 3.58.
• We pledge our political will and our common and
  national commitment to achieving food security
  for all and to an on-going effort to eradicate
  hunger in all countries, with an immediate !
  view to reducing the number of undernourished
  people to half their present level no later than
  2015.
• www.fao.org/docrep/003/w3613e/w3613e00.htm

31
The Grand Initiative to Halve Poverty by 2015
Three Versions

• 1996 World Food Summit in Rome the number of
  extremely poor is to be halved during 1996-2015.
  This implies an annual reduction by 3.58.
• 2000 Millennium Development Goal 1 (MDG-1) the
  proportion of extremely poor among the worlds
  people is to be halved 2000-2015. This implies an
  annual reduction by 3.40.
• to halve, by the year 2015, the proportion of
  the worlds people whose income is less than one
  dollar a day and the proportion of people who
  suffer from hunger.
• www.un.org/millennium/declaration/ares552e.htm

32
The Grand Initiative to Halve Poverty by 2015
Three Versions

• 1996 World Food Summit in Rome the number of
  extremely poor is to be halved during 1996-2015.
  This implies an annual reduction by 3.58.
• 2000 Millennium Development Goal 1 (MDG-1) the
  proportion of extremely poor among the worlds
  people is to be halved 2000-2015. This implies an
  annual reduction by 3.40.
• MDG-1 as subsequently interpreted by the UN the
  proportion of extremely poor among the population
  of the developing countries is to be halved
  1990-2015. This implies an annual reduction by
  1.28 (-27.5 over 25 years).

33
www.un.org/millenniumgoals/MDG-Page1.pdf
32
34
Updating the World Banks International Poverty
Line

• The Bank initially fixed its IPL at 1.02
  1985-dollars per day, noting that the domestic
  poverty lines of eight poor countries were close
  to this amount. Soon rounded down to 1.00
  1985-dollar per day.
• The Bank later reset its IPL to 1.08
  1993-dollars, noting that this was the median of
  the ten lowest domestic poverty lines.
• In August 2008 the Bank reset its IPL again to
  1.25 2005-dollars, noting that this is the mean
  of the domestic poverty lines of the 15 poorest
  countries.
• The rationale behind this ever-shifting
  anchoring of IPLs in domestic poverty lines
  (many of which are themselves fixed by the Bank)
  is obscure.

35
Updating the World Banks International Poverty
Line

• Used from 1990 until 1999
• 1.00 1985-Dollar per day, today 2.04 in US
• Used from 2000 until 2008
• 1.08 1993-Dollars per day, today 1.63 in
  US
• Used since August 2008
• 1.25 2005-Dollars per day, today 1.40 in
  US
• If projected backward, does it matter?

36
Poverty Definition and MDG-1
37
(No Transcript)
38
37
39
Shares of Global Income2005 poorest households
versus richest countries
Calculated in terms of market exchange rates so
as to reflect the avoidability of poverty. Per
capita Pie chart rich/poor ratio over 2001.
(Decile inequality ratio 3201, Milanovic 2005,
pp. 111-12.)
40
(As-If) Historical Defenses

• Historical legitimating actual historical
  process
• As-if historical status quo could have been
  reached through such a process rationally
  consented to by all (Lockean defense)
• My interest in these defense merely negative
  they fail to overcome the presumption against our
  entitlement

41
Harm and Wrongdoing

• Three empirical notions of harm distinguished
  by diverse baselines diachronic, subjunctive,
  state-of-nature. Common idea it is wrong to
  harm, i.e. to render others worse off than they
  would otherwise be. H ? W
• Alternative account The global institutional
  arrangements through which we maintain and expand
  our advantages are unjust, and their imposition
  is therefore a harm done to the poor. W ? H
  (moralized notion of harm).

42
Whats Happening in the US?

• During the 2002-06 economic expansion in the US,
  average household income rose at a 2.8 annual
  rate on average.
• Disaggregated, this increase was 11 per annum in
  the top one percent of the US population and 0.9
  per annum in the remainder. Fully three-quarters
  of all real US growth in this period went to the
  top one percent of the population (Saez, Table 1,
  from official tax return data).

43
Whats Happening within the US?

• The income share of the bottom half declined
  from 26.4 to 12.8 (1979-2005). Meanwhile, the
  income share of the top one percent rose from
  8.95 to 22.90 that of the top tenth percent
  from 2.65 to 11.58 and that of the top
  hundredth percent from 0.86 to 5.46 (1978-2006
  Saez Table A3). The top 30,000 now have nearly
  half as much income as the bottom 150 million.

44
Whats Happening in China?

• In China, 1990-2004, the income share of the
  bottom half declined from 27 to 18 ? while that
  of the top tenth rose from 25 to 35.