Duties to the Distant Needy
Common political and social convention holds that stringent duties to assist those in need ought to be guided according to relational ties. By this tradition, responsibilities to those outside of oneself begin with one’s family, then friends, and from there expand to various communal relationships, ultimately ending with one’s fellow citizens. Beyond these bounded relationships, assistance is often regarded as a matter of beneficence rather than obligation. The global interdependencies of environment, economic exchanges and regulations, and social interactions, coupled with the introduction of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR) which set specified human rights as universally applicable to and by all, stand to challenge the convention. Confronted with gross absolute deprivation amidst great affluence and the widening gap between the global haves and have-nots, the question of what is owed to whom by who has provoked much debate.
Though those outside of one’s...
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