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Are We Violating the Human Rights of the World’s Poor?

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Ethical Issues in Poverty Alleviation

Part of the book series: Studies in Global Justice ((JUST,volume 14))

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Abstract

In this chapter I argue that we are violating the human rights of the world’s poor. To show this I proceed in two main steps. Section 2.1 sets forth a conception of what it means to violate a human right, arguing that ‘human rights violation’ is a relational predicate, involving right holders as well as duty bearers, with the latter playing an active role in causing the human rights of the former to be unfulfilled. Widely neglected is one very common kind of such violations involving the design and imposition of institutional arrangements that foreseeably and avoidably cause some human beings to lack secure access to the objects of their human rights. Just as one is actively harming people when one takes on the office of lifeguard and then fails to do one’s job, so we are actively harming people when we seize the authority to design and impose social institutions and then fail to shape them so that human rights are realized under them insofar as this is reasonably possible. By examining the empirical evidence then I argue in Sect. 2.2 that we violate the human rights of billions of poor people by collaborating in the imposition of a supranational institutional scheme that foreseeably produces massive and reasonably avoidable human rights deficits. In the concluding part of Sect. 2.2 and the subsequent conclusion I reflect on the moral consequences for citizens in the affluent countries and present some ideas how compensation might work.

I am grateful to Tienmu Ma, John Tasioulas and Lynn Tong for many valuable comments and suggestions. An expanded version has appeared in the (2011) 14(2) Yale Human Rights & Development Law Journal 1.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The data used in this paragraph were kindly supplied by Branko Milanovic, principal conomist in the World Bank’s Development Research Group, in an email on 24 December 2014. He calculated the 2011 median as $965 per person per year and the 25th percentile as $361. Milanovic is the leading authority on the measurement of inequality, and his published work contains similar albeit somewhat less updated information (see Milanovic 2011). Inequality and poverty data are usually adjusted according to purchasing power parities (PPPs). I reject this practice as unjustified in the case of inequality because it conflicts with revealed-preference data: affluent people who could easily move to cheaper locations do not do so, and this shows that they get something of value in return for the higher prices they pay for the goods and services they consume. In the case of poverty measurement, a price adjustment is indeed appropriate. But the PPPs for individual household consumption expenditure commonly used for this purpose are inappropriate here because they reflect the prices of all the goods and services that households worldwide consume and thereby give far too little weight to the prices of basic foodstuffs, which are cheaper in poor countries but not as much cheaper as PPPs suggest. For detailed analysis, see Thomas Pogge (2010b, 79–85, endnote 127 at 213).

  2. 2.

    This topic has been the subject of an exchange between Debra Satz and me (see Satz 2005, 50–51; Pogge 2005, 80–83).

  3. 3.

    Freedom of speech and expression, for example, are important not merely to those who would communicate, but also to all those who have such communications available to them or gain when injustice and ill treatment are deterred by the fear of publicity.

  4. 4.

    Ius cogens is generally taken to include at least norms prohibiting aggressive war, genocide, slavery, torture, military aggression and piracy.

  5. 5.

    Such an account of ‘waves of duties’ is suggested in Waldron (1989, 503, 510; see also the Afterword of Shue 1996, 156). Both authors understand how important attention to the design and reform of institutional arrangements is for human rights fulfilment (see also Pogge 2009b, 113).

  6. 6.

    The number of slaves today is commonly estimated to be around 27 million. ‘There are more slaves today than were seized from Africa in four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The modern commerce in humans rivals illegal drug trafficking in its global reach – and in the destruction of lives’ (Cockburn 2003).

  7. 7.

    For an important milestone in the Anglophone discussion see Bentham (1996[1789]).

  8. 8.

    Part 3 will explore the possibility that Turkish citizens may, through their government, be implicated in the design or imposition of unjust supranational institutional arrangements that contribute to Paraguay’s human rights deficit.

  9. 9.

    John Rawls exemplified this traditional view, limited to the recognition of such a positive duty of assistance (see Rawls 1999, 106–119).

  10. 10.

    As had been done, in the wake of Rawls, by Thomas Nagel (2005).

  11. 11.

    This paragraph draws on my reply to Matthias Risse in Pogge (2005) ‘Severe Poverty as a Violation of Negative Duties’. For a more extensive discussion of baselines for assessing institutional harm, see Pogge 2007b.

  12. 12.

    These data were kindly supplied by Milanovic, Branko of the World Bank in a personal email communication. See Email from Branko Milanovic (n 1).

  13. 13.

    This accords roughly with the World Bank’s PPP-based tally which counted 3.085 million people as living in severe poverty in 2005 and estimated their collective shortfall – the global poverty gap – at 1.13 % of world income (see Pogge 2010b, 69).

  14. 14.

    For a more extensive discussion, see Pogge 2010a.

  15. 15.

    World Bank, GDP per capita growth (annual per cent), http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD.ZG/countries/1W-XQ-EG-SYMA-IR-SA?display=graph Accessed 25 October 2015.

  16. 16.

    Calculated from World Bank data by dividing each year’s GNI (in current RMB) by China’s population that year, then using China’s GDP deflator to convert into constant 2005 Yuan.

  17. 17.

    Distribution data for 1990 from the World Bank as cited in Minoiu, Camelia and Reddy, Sanjay (2008, 572, 577, Table 1) Distribution data for 2004 is from World Bank (2008, 68, Table 2.8.).

  18. 18.

    The top five rows of the table present data from Saez and Piketty (2003), Tables and Figures Updated to 2014 in Excel format, June 2015, available at http://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez (accessed 25 October 2015). The remaining three rows present data provided by Robyn, Mark and Prante, Gerald 2011. ‘Tax foundation, summary of latest federal individual income tax data’ (Table 5). http://taxfoundation.org/article/summary-latest-federal-individual-income-tax-data-0 (accessed 25 October 2015). Because the data come from different sources, columns two to four do not quite sum up correctly. But this should not disturb the table’s point which is to display the rapid polarization of the US income distribution documented in the rightmost column.

  19. 19.

    For comparison, official development assistance during this period averaged $124 billion annually,of which only $13.5 billion was allocated to ‘basic social services’, United Nations, ‘Millennium Development Goal Indicators’, available at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/mdg/Search.aspx?q=bss%20oda (accessed 25 October 2015).

  20. 20.

    That this headwind is at most weak and uncertain has been forcefully argued by Cohen (2010). See also my reply (Pogge 2010a). With luck, this dispute will stimulate more and better empirical research on what the effects of various supranational institutional design decisions actually are.

  21. 21.

    A recent CNN poll (21–23 January 2011) found that 81 % of Americans are in favor of reductions in foreign aid. CNN. 2011. ‘Opinion Research Corporation Poll – Jan 21 to 23, 2011’. http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2011/images/01/25/rel2d.pdf. Accessed 4 March 2011.

  22. 22.

    This calculation should be refined in various ways. First, even a just supranational institutional order, carefully designed towards human rights realization, would not avoid poverty completely, so we may not be collectively responsible for the entire poverty gap. Second, some have job-related reasons to live in an area with high prices (especially for shelter) which may reduce their fair share. Third, some people poorer than ourselves, those in the third and fourth ventiles at least, might also be expected to make compensating contributions. Fourth, people richer than ourselves should be expected to contribute more than a proportional (3.2 %) share of their incomes. You can easily find reasons for reducing your fair share. But in view of the horrendous deprivations suffered by the world’s poor, in view of the near universal failure of our peers to make the required compensating contribution, and in view of our undeserved good fortune to be born among the privileged (and perhaps to be more privileged than anyone would be under just institutional arrangements), we have every reason to err on the side of overcompensation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Yale University, 313 Saint Ronan Street (B2), New Haven, CT, 06511-2327, USA

    Thomas Pogge

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Correspondence to Thomas Pogge .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Ethics and Poverty Research, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria

    Helmut P. Gaisbauer

  2. Centre for Ethics and Poverty Research, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria

    Gottfried Schweiger

  3. Centre for Ethics and Poverty Research, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria

    Clemens Sedmak

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Pogge, T. (2016). Are We Violating the Human Rights of the World’s Poor?. In: Gaisbauer, H., Schweiger, G., Sedmak, C. (eds) Ethical Issues in Poverty Alleviation. Studies in Global Justice, vol 14. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41430-0_2

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