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The International Significance of Human Rights

Article  in  The Journal of Ethics · January 2000

DOI: 10.1023/A:1009852018252

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The International Significance of Human Rights Author(s): Thomas Pogge Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of Ethics, Vol. 4, No. 1/2, Rights, Equality, and Liberty Universidad Torcuato Di Tella Law and Philosophy Lectures 1995-1997 (Jan. - Mar., 2000), pp. 45-69 Published by: Springer Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25115635 . Accessed: 23/11/2011 16:16

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THOMAS POGGE

THE INTERNATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS

(Received 15 October 1998; accepted in revised form 17 May 1999)

ABSTRACT. A comparative examination of four alternative ways of understanding what

human rights are supports an institutional understanding as suggested by Article 28 of the

Universal Declaration: Human rights are weighty moral claims on any coercively imposed

institutional order, national or international (as Article 28 confirms). Any such order must

afford the persons on whom it is imposed secure access to the objects of their human

rights. This understanding of human rights is broadly sharable across cultures and narrows

the philosophical and practical differences between the friends of civil and political and the champions of social, economic, and cultural human rights. When applied to the global

institutional order, it provides a new argument for conceiving human rights as universal - and a new basis for criticizing this order as too encouraging of oppression, corruption,

and poverty in the developing countries: We have a negative duty not to cooperate in the

imposition of this global order if feasible reforms of it would significantly improve the

realization of human rights.

KEY WORDS: cosmopolitanism, cultural diversity, democratic governance, foreign lend

ing, global institutions, human rights, international law, justice, nationalism, Universal

Declaration, universalism

I

A conception of human rights may be factored into two main components:

? the concept of a human right used by this conception, or what one

might also call its understanding of human rights, and ? the substance or content of the conception, that is, the objects or

goods it singles out for protection by a set of human rights.

We face then two questions: What are human rights? And what human

rights are there? I believe that these two questions are asymmetrically

related, in this sense: We cannot convincingly justify a particular list of

human rights without first gaining a clear sense of what human rights are. Yet we can justify a particular understanding of human rights without

presupposing more than a rough idea about what goods are widely recog nized as worthy of inclusion. This, in any case, is what I attempt to do

here.

^A The Journal of Ethics 4: 45-69, 2000. ? 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

46 THOMAS POGGE

It is worth emphasizing that even a fully comprehensive answer to the

first question does not preempt the second. The fact that some formulated

right has all the conceptual features of a human right does not entail that

it exists (can be justified as such) any more than the fact that Robinson

Crusoe as described has all the conceptual features of a human being entails that there is such a person. Settling what human rights there are

requires not merely careful conceptual analysis, but also substantive moral

argument pro and con.

The concept of a human right has certain central elements that any

plausible understanding of human rights must incorporate. First, human

rights express ultimate moral concerns: Persons have a moral duty to

respect human rights, a duty that does not derive from a more general moral

duty to comply with national or international legal instruments. (In fact, the

opposite may hold: Conformity with human rights is a moral requirement on any legal order, whose capacity to create moral obligations depends in part on such conformity.) Second, human rights express weighty moral

concerns, which normally override other normative considerations. Third, these moral concerns are focused on human beings, as all of them and

they alone have human rights and the special moral status associated there

with. Fourth, with respect to these moral concerns, all human beings have

equal status: They have exactly the same human rights, and the moral

significance of these rights and their fulfillment does not vary with whose

human rights are at stake.1 Fifth, human rights express moral concerns

that are unrestricted, i.e., they ought to be respected by all human agents

irrespective of their particular epoch, culture, religion, moral tradition or

philosophy. Sixth, these moral concerns are broadly shamble, i.e., capable of being understood and appreciated by persons from different epochs and cultures as well as by adherents of a variety of different religions,

moral traditions and philosophies. The notions of unrestrictedness and

broad sharability are related in that we tend to feel more confident about

conceiving of a moral concern as unrestricted when this concern is not

parochial to some particular epoch, culture, religion, moral tradition or

philosophy.2

1 This second component of equality is compatible with the view that the weight agents

ought to give to the human rights of others varies with their relation to them - that agents

have stronger moral reasons to secure human rights in their own country, for example, than

abroad - so long as this is not seen as being due to a difference in the moral significance

of these rights, impersonally considered. (I can believe that the flourishing of all children is equally important and also that I should show greater concern for the flourishing of my

own children than for that of other children.) 2

These six central elements are discussed in greater detail in the first two sections of

my essay, "How Should Human Rights be Conceived?," Jahrbuch fur Recht und Ethik 3

THE INTERNATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS 47

Various understandings of human rights are consistent with these six

points. Though I cannot here criticize all competing understandings in

detail, I want briefly to present three of the more prominent ones as a

backdrop to my own. I have tried to arrange the four understandings so

that their sequence can be seen as a dialectical progression. The first understanding, U\, conceives human rights as moral rights

that every human being has against every other human being or perhaps, more generally, against every other human agent (where this also includes

collective agents, such as groups, firms, or governments).3 Given this

understanding of human rights, it matters greatly whether one then postu lates human rights that impose only negative duties (to avoid depriving) or whether one instead postulates human rights that in addition impose

positive duties (to protect and/or to aid).4 A human right to freedom from

assault might then give every human agent merely a weighty moral duty to refrain from assaulting any human being or also an additional weighty

moral duty to help protect any human beings from assaults and their

effects.

I do not deny that there are such universal moral rights and duties, but

it is clear that we are not referring to them when we speak of human rights in the modern context. To see this, consider first some ordinary assault, in a pub, perhaps, after some drinking and argument. Though the victim

may be badly hurt, we would not call the assault a human-rights violation.

A police beating of a suspect in jail, on the other hand, does seem to

qualify. This suggests that, to engage human rights, conduct must be in

some sense official. This suggestion is confirmed by the human rights that

have actually been postulated in various international documents. Many of them do not seem to be addressed to individual agents at all in that, rather than forbearance or support of a kind that individuals could provide,

(1995), pp. 103-120. If we can agree that these are indeed elements of the concept of

human rights, then each human right will have these six features. The converse, however,

does not hold, as alternative conceptions of human rights go beyond the shared core in two

ways: (a) by further specifying the concept of human rights through additional elements and (b) by selectively postulating a list of particular human rights (cf. second paragraph above).

3 Here is an example of U\: "A human right, then, will be a right whose beneficiaries

are all humans and whose obligors are all humans in a position to effect the right" - David

Luban: "Just War and Human Rights" in Charles Beitz et al. (eds.), International Ethics

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), p. 209. 4

The first of these possibilities is exemplified in Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and

Utopia (New York: Basic Books 1974), the second in Henry Shue, Basic Rights (Prin

ceton: Princeton University Press, 1996). Nozick and Shue prefer to write in terms of,

respectively, fundamental and basic rights. U\ would lead to views like theirs but phrased in terms of human rights.

48 THOMAS POGGE

they demand appropriately constrained institutional arrangements such as

equality before the law (?7), a nationality (?15.1), and equal access to

public service (?21.2).5 Finally, many of the rights postulated in these

documents would also seem to be limited in scope to the territory of the

state to which the right holder belongs or in which s/he resides: the right to equal access to public service in his country (?21.2) and the right to an

education (?26.1). These rights are generally understood as not imposing duties upon foreigners.6

These shortcomings of U\ suggest another understanding, Uj_,

according to which human rights are moral rights that human beings have

specifically against governments, understood broadly so as to include their

various agencies and officials. This understanding solves the first problem

by supporting a distinction between official and unofficial violations, between assaults committed by the secret police and those committed by a petty criminal or a violent husband. It solves the second problem insofar

as governments are in a position to underwrite and reform the relevant

institutional arrangements, at least within their own territory. And it allows

a solution to the third problem in that one can distinguish between human

rights that one has against one's own government and those one has against

any government. A human right to education is a right that every human

being has against his or her own government and therefore one that gives

every government a weighty moral duty to ensure that each national or

resident in its territory receives an appropriate education. A right not to be

subjected to arbitrary arrest (?9), on the other hand, is presumably meant to

be one that every human being has against every government whatsoever

and therefore one that gives every government a weighty moral duty to

refrain from arbitrarily arresting any human being at all.7

5 I use the symbol "?" throughout to refer to articles of the Universal Declaration of

Human Rights, which was adopted and proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United

Nations on December 10, 1948, as resolution 217A(IH). By drawing on the Universal

Declaration for examples and illustrations, I am not implying that all the rights it lists are

human rights or that its list is complete. Rather, I am using these rights as evidence for how

the concept of human rights has been understood in the post-W.W.II era, on the assumption

that any plausible understanding of human rights must be critically developed out of this

established and customary notion. 6 The right to equal pay for equal work (?23.2) would seem to be doubly limited

in scope. No duty to help maintain such equality within some country is imposed upon

foreigners. And the principle needs to be satisfied only within each state, not internation

ally: Equal work may be more highly rewarded in Switzerland than in Bangladesh. 7

This distinction will not be clear-cut as some human rights may have components

that differ in scope. The human right not to be subjected to torture (?5), for example,

is presumably meant to give each government negative duties not to use torture as well

as positive duties to prevent torture. The negative duties are most plausibly construed as

THE INTERNATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS 49

The main problem with U2 is that it completely unburdens private human agents. So long as one is not a government official, one need not

worry about human rights at all. In response, it might be said that in a

democracy it is ultimately the people at large who, collectively, constitute

the government. But this response does not solve the problem in regard to

other kinds of regimes. Persons who live under an undemocratic govern ment need not worry about human rights at all, because it is the duty of

that government alone to fulfill human rights -

including the human right of its subjects to take part in government (?21.1). On this understanding,

wealthy and influential nationals would have no moral duty to do anything to stop or to mitigate human-rights violations that their non-democratic

government is committing against their compatriots or against foreigners -

at least they would have no moral duty arising from the human rights of the

victims. This limitation is not only morally implausible; it also goes against common parlance in that we speak of a society's human-rights record

and of how well human rights are respected in some country, thereby

suggesting that we do not assign sole responsibility to the government. This problem is avoided by yet another understanding, J73, according

to which human rights are basic or constitutional rights as each state ought to set them forth in its fundamental legal texts and ought to make them

effective through appropriate institutions and policies.8 So understood, a

human right might be said to have two quite distinct components: juridifi cation and observance. Through its juridification component, a human

right to X would entail that every state ought to have a right to X enshrined

in its constitution (or comparable basic legal documents). A human right to X would contain, then, a moral right to effective legal rights to X, which

gives every citizen of a state a weighty moral duty to help ensure that an

effective and suitably broad legal (or better: constitutional) right to X exists

general: A government must not order or authorize the torture of any human being at all.

But the positive duties are most often construed as being limited in scope: A government

must prevent torture on territory it can effectively control, but not elsewhere. 8

Thus, for example, Jurgen Habermas, "The concept of human rights is not of moral

origin, but ...

by nature juridical." Human rights "belong, through their structure, to a

scheme of positive and coercive law which supports justiciable subjective right claims.

Hence it belongs to the meaning of human rights that they demand for themselves the

status of constitutional rights." Jurgen Habermas, "Kants Idee des Ewigen Friedens - aus

dem historischen Abstand von 200 Jahren," Kritische Justiz 28 (1995), pp. 293-319. The

quotes are from p. 310 and p. 312, italics are in the original, the translation is mine. Though

Robert Alexy explicitly refers to human rights as moral rights, he holds an otherwise

similar position which equates the institutionalization of human rights with their transfor

mation into positive law. See Robert Alexy, "Die Institutionalisierung der Menschenrechte

im demokratischen Verfassungsstaat" in Stefan Gosepath and Georg Lohmann (eds.), Die

Philosophic der Menschenrechte (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1997), pp. 244-264.

50 THOMAS POGGE

within this state.9 Through its observance component, a human right to X

would give a weighty moral duty to each government and its officials to

ensure that the right to X - whether it exists as a legal right or not

- is

observed.

Though a definite improvement over U\ and ?/2, this understanding still

faces three problems. First, C/3 may render human rights too weak, for even

when a human right is appropriately juridified and the corresponding legal rights are observed and reliably enforced by the government and the courts,

citizens may still be prevented by social obstacles from enjoying the object of the human right in question.10 Being illiterate or uneducated, they may not know what their legal rights are, or they may lack either the knowledge or the minimal economic independence necessary to claim these rights

through the proper legal channels. This problem can be avoided by inter

preting "observance" in a demanding sense as requiring that human rights be made fully (not merely legally) effective so as to ensure secure access

to their objects.11 I use the word "fulfillment" for this demanding sense of

"observance" and say more about this notion below.

The second problem with J/3 is that, in regard to some human rights, its juridification component would seem to be excessively demanding.

Consider a human right to adequate nutrition (?25.1). A society may be so

situated and organized that all its members have secure access to adequate

nutrition, though not a legal right thereto. Would this leave the human

right unfulfilled? Having the legal rights required by the juridification component is good, to be sure, but hardly so important that it must be built

into the concept of a human right. Secure access is what really matters,

and if this can be achieved through, for example, a reliable kinship system backed up by efficient charitable organizations, then an additional legal

9 The expression "suitably broad" alludes to how U2 had solved the third problem with

U\. Some human rights - such as the human right not to be subjected to arbitrary arrest (?9)

- are meant to protect every human being regardless of location or citizenship. Such human

rights would not be fully juridified through a constitutional right that prohibits merely the

government's arbitrary arrest of its own citizens or residents but not that of foreigners. The

juridification component of my human right not to be subjected to arbitrary arrest would

then give a weighty moral duty to every citizen of every state to help ensure that his or her

state affords me (and, of course, every other human being) a legal right not to be arbitrarily

arrested by its government. 1 ? This problem could not arise, if human rights had effective legal (constitutional) rights

as their sole objects. I am assuming here that, for at least some human rights, this is not the

case. 1 ]

As the examples indicate, my notion of secure access involves a knowledge condi

tion: A person has secure access to the object of some human right only when she is not

prevented by social obstacles from acquiring the knowledge and know-how necessary to

secure this object for herself.

THE INTERNATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS 51

right to adequate food when needed would not seem to have the essential

importance we rightly associate with demands made in behalf of human

rights. The juridification component of t/3 is likely to lead to a conception of human rights diluted by elements that are not truly essential.12 Insistence

on the juridification of human rights also provokes the communitarian and

East Asian criticism that human rights lead persons to view themselves as

Westerners: atomized, autonomous, secular and self-interested individuals

ready to insist on their rights no matter what the cost may be to others or

the society at large.13 The third problem with f/3 is that it excessively unburdens agents with

regard to human-rights fulfillment abroad. According to t/3, our task as

private citizens or government officials is to ensure that human rights are juridified and fulfilled in our own society and also observed by our

government abroad. We have no human-rights based duties to promote the

fulfillment of human rights in other countries or to help suppress human

rights violations by foreign governments -

though it may be morally

praiseworthy, of course, to work on such projects. But, you will ask, what

is wrong with this unburdening? How can, and why should, we be held

responsible for the extent to which human rights remain unfulfilled in other

parts of the world?

II

We find the beginnings of an answer to these questions in what may well

be the most surprising and potentially most consequential sentence of the

entire Universal Declaration: "Everyone is entitled to a social and interna

tional order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration

can be fully realized" (?28). This article has a peculiar status. As its

reference to "the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration" indi

cates, ?28 does not add a further right to the list, but rather addresses

12 This is not to deny that some human rights are difficult or impossible to fulfill without

corresponding legal or even constitutional protections. This is clearly true, for example, of

a human right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating

fundamental rights granted by the constitution or by law (?8). It is also hard to imagine a society under modern conditions whose members are secure in their property or have

secure access to freedom of expression even while no legal right thereto exists. I assume

below that secure access to the objects of civil and political human rights generally requires

corresponding legal protections. 13

This criticism has been voiced, for instance, by Singapore's patriarch Lee Kuan Yew

and by Mary Ann Glendon: Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse (New

York: The Free Press, 1991).

52 THOMAS POGGE

the concept of a human right, says something about what human rights are. It is then consistent with any substantive account of the objects that

a scheme of human rights ought to protect - even while it significantly

affects the meaning of any human rights postulated in the other Articles of

the Universal Declaration: They all are to be understood as claims on the

"order," or institutional structure, of any comprehensive social system.14

?28 suggests then a fourth, institutional understanding of human rights,

I/4. According to C/4, postulating a human right to X is tantamount to

declaring that every society (and comparable social system) ought to be

so organized that all its members enjoy secure access to X. To be sure, no

society can make the objects of all human rights absolutely secure. And

making them as secure as possible would constitute a ludicrous drain on

societal resources for what, at the margins, might be very minor benefits

in security. To be plausible, any conception of human rights that uses

the concept I propose must therefore incorporate an idea of reasonable

security thresholds: Your human rights are fully realized (fulfilled) when

their objects are sufficiently secure - with the required degrees of security

suitably adapted to the means and circumstances of the relevant social

system.15

E/4 can be further specified through two plausible assumptions: (1)

Social and international orders that do not satisfy the condition of ?28 can be ranked by how close they come to fully reaUzing human rights: Social systems ought to be structured so that human rights can be realized

in them as fully as possible. (2) One can judge how fully human rights can be reaUzed in some institutional order by how fully they generally are,

or (in the case of a hypothetical order) generally would be, realized in it.

In light of these two assumptions, ?28 is then interpreted as holding that

the assessment of an institutional order is to be based primarily on how

14 My reading of ?28 emphasizes its statement that all human beings have a claim that

any institutional order imposed upon them be one in which their postulated rights and

freedoms can be fully realized. ?28 would seem to make the additional statement that

human beings have a claim that such an order be newly established in any (state-of-nature

or "failed state") contexts in which no institutional order exists.

15 Thus, your human right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association is fulfilled

by some institutional order, when it is sufficiently unlikely that your attempts to associate

or assemble with others would be thwarted or punished by official or nonofficial agents or

agencies. Of course, what is unlikely may nevertheless happen. According to U4, a person

may actually be assaulted even while his human right to physical security (?3) is fulfilled, and another's like right may be unfulfilled even while she suffers no actual attack. The task

of specifying, for the object of each particular human right, acceptable probabilities for

threats from various sources belongs to the second, substantive component of a conception

of human rights.

THE INTERNATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS 53

much better or worse human rights are or would be fulfilled in it than in its

feasible alternatives.

Although it leaves open which purported human rights we ought to

accept as such, U4 is nevertheless normative, and this not merely in the

trivial sense that it presents itself as the most plausible explication of a

commonly used expression. It is normative also in that - on the assumption

that human rights express weighty moral concerns - it entails a significant

moral thesis (whose precise content depends, however, on which particular human rights will be included in our conception): Any institutional order is

to be assessed and reformed principally by reference to its relative impact on the fulfillment of the human rights of those on whom it is imposed.16

Pursuant to t/4, human rights are then the paramount elements in

the comparative assessment of institutional schemes. A human right to

freedom of peaceful assembly and association, for example, implies that

human beings have a moral claim that their society be structured in such

a way that they can securely exercise these two freedoms. To honor this

claim, we must ensure not merely that our government and its officials

respect these freedoms, but also that limitations and violations of them on

the part of other persons are effectively deterred and prevented. This last point is a crucial element of the institutional understanding

of human rights. An institutional order fails to fulfill human rights even

if it merely fails sufficiently to protect their objects.17 And yet, insecure

access to the objects of human rights is nevertheless more serious when

its source is official. It is, other things equal, more important that our laws

and the agents and agencies of the state should not themselves endanger the

objects of human rights than that they should protect these objects against other social dangers.18

16 Relative, because we are making a comparative judgment: about how much better or

worse human rights are fulfilled in this institutional order than they would be fulfilled in its feasible alternatives.

17 One may think here of the, still common, official tolerance for domestic violence

against women.

18 This differential weighing is deeply rooted in our moral thinking and shows itself, for instance, in our attitudes toward the criminal law and the penal system. The point can be illuminated most economically, perhaps, by distinguishing, in a preliminary way,

six ways in which a social order may affect the goods and ills of its participants. The

following illustration uses six different scenarios, arranged in order of their intuitive moral

significance, in which, due to prevailing social institutions, certain innocent persons are

avoidably deprived of some vital nutrients V (the vitamins contained in fresh fruit, say): First-class shortfalls are officially mandated, paradigmatically by the law (legal restrictions

prevent certain persons from buying foodstuffs containing V). Second-class shortfalls arise

from legally authorized conduct of private subjects (sellers of foodstuffs containing V

lawfully refuse to sell to certain persons). Third-class shortfalls &?zforeseeably engendered

54 THOMAS POGGE

If a society's institutional order avoidably fails to fulfill human rights, then those of its members who do not support the requisite institutional

reforms are violating a negative duty of justice: the duty not to cooperate in the imposition of an unjust institutional order without making serious

efforts within their means toward initiating and supporting appropriate institutional reforms. On C/4, your human rights are then not only moral

claims on any institutional order imposed upon you, but also moral claims

against those (especially: more influential and privileged) persons who

contribute to its imposition.19

Ill

I/4 could be rather close to U3, if "institutional order" were interpreted

narrowly as referring only to national schemes of social institutions.

However, ?28 explicitly rules out this reading by insisting that human

rights involve claims on institutional schemes in general and on our global

("international") institutional order in particular. The remainder of this

through the uncoordinated conduct of subjects under rules that do not specifically mention

them (certain persons, suffering severe poverty within an ill-conceived economic order,

cannot afford to buy foodstuffs containing V). Fourth-class shortfalls arise from private

conduct that is legally prohibited but generally tolerated (sellers of foodstuffs containing V illegally refuse to sell to certain persons, but enforcement is lax and penalties are mild).

Fifth-class shortfalls arise from natural factors whose effects social rules avoidably leave

unmitigated (certain persons are unable to metabolize V due to a treatable genetic defect

but are not receiving the treatment that would correct their handicap). Sixth-class short

falls, finally, arise from self-caused factors whose effects social rules avoidably leave

unmitigated (certain persons are unable to metabolize V due to a treatable self-caused

disease -

brought on, perhaps, by their maintaining a long-term smoking habit in full

knowledge of the medical dangers associated therewith - and are not receiving the treat

ment that would correct their ailment). Behind the moral significance we attach to these

distinctions lies the idea that our social institutions and their political and legal organs

should not merely serve justice, but also symbolize it. The point is important, because it

undermines the plausibility of consequentialist (e.g., utilitarian) and hypothetical-contract

(e.g., Rawlsian) conceptions of justice which assess social institutions from the standpoint

of prudent prospective participants, who, of course, have no reason to care about this

distinction among sources of threats. My critique of such recipient-oriented conceptions

of justice is presented in "Three Problems with Contractarian-Consequentialist Ways of

Assessing Social Institutions," Social Philosophy and Policy 12 (1995), pp. 241-266, esp.

Section 5 [and in "Gleiche Freiheit fiir alle?" in Otfried Hbffe (ed.), Rawls' "Theorie der

Gerechtigkeit" (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997)]. 19

This understanding of human rights is laid out more extensively in my "How Should

Human Rights Be Conceived?," Jahrbuch fur Recht und Ethik 3 (1995), pp. 103-120. That earlier essay applied the idea only to the case of national institutional schemes, while the

present one applies it mainly to our global institutional order.

THE INTERNATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS 55

essay will concentrate on this more specific moral thesis: that our global institutional order is to be assessed and reformed principally by refer ence to its relative impact on human rights fulfillment. This is one way of saying that human rights in our time have global normative reach: A

person's human rights entail not merely moral claims on the institutional

order of her own society, which are claims against her fellow citizens, but

also analogous moral claims on the global institutional order, which are

claims against her fellow human beings. Our responsibilities entailed by human rights are engaged by our participation in any coercively imposed institutional order in which some persons avoidably lack secure access to

the objects of their human rights, and these (negative) responsibilities are

extended, then, through the emergence of a global institutional order in

whose coercive imposition we collaborate.20

This thesis must be distinguished from another, more common but also

less plausible, moral assertion, which emerges when, in the context of U\, human rights are interpreted as entailing (positive) duties to protect

- the

assertion, namely, that we ought to defend, as best we can, the objects of the human rights of any person anywhere. While postulating merely

positive (and thus presumably weaker) responsibilities, this thesis is also

stronger than mine in that it does not make the global normative reach

of human rights conditional upon the existence of a worldwide institu

tional order through which our political and economic decisions have a

significant impact on the lives of persons all over the world. My thesis

does involve this conditionality: What ?28 is asking of the citizens and

governments of the developed states is not that we assume the role of a

global police force ready to intervene to aid and protect all those whose

human rights are imperiled by brutal governments or (civil) wars, but that

we support institutional reforms toward a global order that would strongly

support the emergence and stability of democratic, rights-respecting and

peaceful regimes and that would also tend to reduce radical economic

deprivations and inequalities, which now engender great vulnerabilities

20 On the stronger reading of ?28 (cf. footnote 14), we would have such responsibilities

to establish a global institutional order that fulfills human rights even if no such order

existed at present. It is doubtful, however, whether these responsibilities could, in such a

context, be considered to be negative ones. Immanuel Kant suggests that they may be: "A

human being (or a people) in a mere state of nature robs me of this assurance and injures

me through this very state in which he coexists with me - not actively (facto), but through

the lawlessness of his state (statu iniusto) through which I am under permanent threat from

him - and I may compel him either to enter with me into a common juridical state or to

retreat from my vicinity" [Immanuel Kant, "Zum ewigen Frieden" (1795), in Preufiische

Akademieausgabe, Vol. VIII (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1923), 349n (my translation)].

56 THOMAS POGGE

to civil rights violations as well as massive premature mortality from

malnutrition and easily curable diseases.

I have encountered much resistance to this moral thesis, especially from social theorists. It is not the case, of course, that these critics are

opposed to human-rights fulfillment. Not at all. Rather, they dispute the

empirical presuppositions of my moral thesis, which are that the fulfill ment of human rights importantly depends on the structure of our global

institutional order and that this global institutional order is to some extent

subject to intelligent (re)design by reference to the imperative of human

rights fulfillment. Let me then try to make plausible that these empirical

presuppositions hold.

Talk of "our global institutional order" sounds horribly abstract and

requires at least a brief explication. There is, first and foremost, the insti

tution of the modern state. The land surface of our planet is divided into

a number of clearly demarcated and non-overlapping national territories.

Human beings are matched up with these territories, so that (at least for

the most part) each person belongs to exactly one territory. Any person or group effectively controlling a preponderant share of the means of

coercion within a territory is recognized as the legitimate government of both the territory and the persons belonging to it. This government is

entitled to rule "its" people through laws, orders and officials, to adjudicate conflicts among them, and to exercise ultimate control over all resources

within the territory ("eminent domain"). It is also entitled to personify its people against the rest of the world: to bind them vis-a-vis outsiders

through treaties and contracts, to regulate their relations with outsiders, to

declare and prosecute wars in their name, and to control outsiders' access

to the country's territory. In this second role, a government is considered

continuous with its predecessors and successors: bound by the undertak

ings of the former, and capable through its own undertakings of binding the latter. There are, of course, various minor deviations21 and also many

further, less essential features of our global order. But these most basic

features will suffice for now.

I will try to show through two examples that there are feasible reforms

of our global order that would, quite clearly, lead to substantial gains in

terms of human rights fulfillment. My first example concerns the currently

21 There are stateless persons, persons with multiple nationalities and those who are

citizens of one country but reside in or are visiting another. We have Antarctica, continental

shelves, disputed areas and areas that are contracted out (such as Guantanamo Bay and

Hong Kong, though the latter case is also a beautiful illustration of the continuity condi

tion). And groups are sometimes recognized as the legitimate government even though they

do not control a preponderant share of the means of coercion within the relevant territory

(Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge in the 1980's or Bertrand Aristide in the 1990's).

THE INTERNATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS 57

prominent topic "transition to democracy." Much has been written on how

a new democratic government should deal with the crimes committed by an evil predecessor. Much less, and far too little, has been written about

how a new democratic government might reduce the likelihood of demo

cratic institutions being overturned once again in the future. Yet, even

more important is the extension of this forward-looking question to our

global institutional order: How can global institutions be reshaped so as to

become more supportive of democratic government? So long as the inter

national criterion for the legitimacy of governments is effective control,

there are strong incentives (e.g., for military commanders) to overthrow

a democratic government: Once in power, putschists can count on all the

rewards of international recognition. They can, for example, control and

hence profit from the sale of the country's natural resources.22 They can

also borrow funds abroad in the name of the whole country (the "interna

tional borrowing privilege") and then spend these funds to entrench their

rule. Foreign bankers need have no special worries about being repaid in

the event that democracy returns, because any future government will be

considered obligated to repay the loans of any predecessor and will have

to comply on pains of being shut out of the international credit markets.

Could we modify our global order so that it exerts a more favorable

influence on the stability of democratic governments? One might begin

by proposing, as a principle of international law, that a people need not

repay loans incurred by a government that ruled them in violation of

constitutionally recognized democratic procedures. This principle prevents neither putschists from coming to power nor lenders from loaning money to putschists. But it does render such loans considerably more risky and

thereby entails that putschists can borrow less - and this on less favorable

terms. It thus reduces the staying power of undemocratic governments and

the incentives for attempting a coup in the first place. This proposal needs refinement, especially in two respects. First, it

requires the instituting of a neutral council that would determine, in

an internationally authoritative way, whether a particular government is

constitutional or not.23 This council might be fashioned on the model

2 The great importance of this "international resource privilege" is extensively

discussed in my lecture "On International Redistribution" (Stanford University, April 16.,

1999). 23

This council would work only in the interest of democratic constitutions. Its deter

minations would have consequences not only for a government's ability to borrow abroad,

but also for its domestic and international standing. A government that has been officially

declared illegitimate would be handicapped in myriad ways (trade, diplomacy, investments,

etc.) - a fact that would contribute to the deterrent effect of the proposed institution and

hence to its tendency to reduce the frequency of coup attempts and civil wars.

58 THOMAS POGGE

of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, but it should also

have specially trained personnel for observing - and in special cases even

conducting - national elections. Democratic governments could facilitate

the work of the council, and thereby contribute to the stability of democ

racy in their country, by incorporating into their written constitutions or

basic laws clear legitimacy criteria that also fix precisely how these criteria

can be legitimately revised.

Second, a destabilizing influence on existing democratic governments must be ruled out. Such an influence might come about as follows. If

an officially illegitimate government cannot, in any case, borrow abroad

in the name of the entire country, it may see no reason to service debts

incurred by democratic predecessors. This fact might make borrowing abroad more difficult for democratic governments perceived to be in

danger of being overthrown - which would not be, of course, in the

spirit of my proposal.24 This difficulty might be overcome through an

international loan insurance fund that services the debts of democratically

legitimate governments whenever illegitimate successors refuse to do so.

This fund, just as the council proposed above, should be financed jointly

by all democratic states. This would require some states, the enduringly stable democracies, to contribute to a fund from which they will hardly ever profit directly. Their financial contribution would, however, be small,

because my proposal would render the overthrow of democratic regimes much less frequent, and it would also be well justified in view of the gain for democratization, which would bring with it gains for the fulfillment of

human rights and the avoidance of wars and civil wars.25

24 I want to thank Ronald Dworkin for seeing this difficulty and for articulating it

forcefully. 25

An existing alternative proposal would allow each country to authorize military

interventions against itself for the event that a future government significantly violates

democratic principles (Farer) or human rights (Hoffmann) [see Tom J. Farer, "The United States as Guarantor of Democracy in the Caribbean Basin: Is There a Legal Way?" Human

Rights Quarterly 10 (1988), pp. 157-176; "A Paradigm of Legitimate Intervention" in Lori Fisler Damrosch (ed.), Enforcing Restraint: Collective Intervention in Internal Conflicts

(New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1993), pp. 316-347; and Stanley Hoff

mann, "Delusions of World Order," New York Review of Books 39 (1992), pp. 37-43],

Proposals of this kind have two drawbacks: Military interventions will, sometimes at

least, be bloody, and decisions about intervention will generally be co-determined by extraneous (e.g., strategic) interests of the potential intervening states. Without rejecting

(or supporting) such proposals, I have here suggested a less radical and less risky modifi

cation which shows more clearly I believe (though I could not present all its details and all

significant objections against it) that our current world order could, with some good will on

the part of the rich countries, be modified so that it would exert a significant force toward

democratization.

THE INTERNATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS 59

My other example concerns severe and widespread poverty in the

context of extreme socioeconomic inequality. In the existing global order, which allocates property rights in natural resources territorially to the

various states or their governments, hundreds of millions suffer severe

poverty and malnutrition26 and all the associated, easily and cheaply curable but still often deadly diseases.27 I have argued elsewhere that this

suffering could be abolished rather quickly through the introduction of a

Global Resources Dividend (GRD).28 This proposal is modest in that it

accepts the existing state system and, in particular, leaves each national

government in control of the natural resources in its territory. Governments

are required, however, to pay a proportional dividend on any resources

they decide to use or sell. The word "dividend" indicates that the proposal

regards all human beings, including those whose access to resources is now

severely restricted, as owning an inalienable stake in all limited natural

resources. As with preferred stock, this stake confers no control over

whether or how natural resources are to be used, but merely a claim to

share in their economic benefits. The GRD could cover all mineral wealth

as well as the use of soil (in agriculture) and of air and water (e.g., for

discharging pollutants).

26 1.3 billion persons, that is 22 percent of the world's population, live below the inter

national poverty line, which means that their daily income has less purchasing power than

one Dollar had in the US in 1985, less purchasing power than $1.53 has in the US today. As a consequence of such severe poverty, 841 million persons (14 percent of humankind)

are today malnourished, 880 million (15 percent) are without access to health services, one

billion (17 percent) are without adequate shelter, 1.3 billion (22 percent) are without access

to safe drinking water, two billion (33 percent) are without electricity and 2.6 billion (43 percent) are without access to sanitation [UNDP: Human Development Report 1998 (New

York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 49]. As a further consequence of such severe

poverty, a quarter of all children between 5 and 14, 250 million in all, are compelled to

work, often under cruel conditions in mines, quarries and factories as well as in agriculture,

construction, prostitution, textile and carpet production: "At least 120 million children

between the ages of 5 and 14 work full time. The number is 250 million, or more than

twice as many, if we include those for whom work is a secondary activity" (International

Labor Organization: http://www.ilo.org/public/english/270asie/feature/ch ild.htm). ^

About one third of all deaths, some 50,000 daily, are due to poverty-related causes

such as measles, pneumonia and diarrhea, which could easily be prevented through

adequate nutrition and safe drinking water or be cured through cheap rehydration packs

and antibiotics [United Nations Children's Fund: The State of the World's Children 1998

(New York: Oxford University Press 1998)]. 28

Thomas W. Pogge, "A Global Resources Dividend" in David A. Crocker and Toby Linden (eds.), Ethics of Consumption: The Good Life, Justice, and Global Stewardship

(Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998). This essay discusses the details of the proposals, reasons for and against, as well as an important alternative to it: the so-called Tobin Tax.

60 THOMAS POGGE

Proceeds from the GRD are to be used toward the emancipation of the

present and future global poor so that finally all human beings will be able

to meet their basic needs with dignity. The point is then not merely to

improve the nutrition, medical care and sanitary conditions of the global

poor, but also to ensure that they themselves can take care of their basic

interests and defend these effectively against the ambitions of politically and economically more powerful persons and groups. To achieve this, they

must be free from relations of personal dependence and be literate, they must have certain basic rights and be able to understand and defend them, and they must be able to learn a profession and to participate as equals in

the economy as well as in politics. In an ideal world, GRD payments could be made directly to the govern

ments of the poorest societies, which could use them to free their poorest citizens from taxes and debts, to improve their education, medical care and

infrastructure, and to offer them, or their organizations, land, capital, or

low-interest loans. So long as governments are prone to corruption, it will

often be more efficient to use other channels for the same purpose: inter

national organizations such as UNICEF, UNDP, WHO, or Oxfam, which

would need to be reorganized in light of their new tasks and whose perfor mance, like that of governments, would have to be continuously monitored.

The inefficiency of conventional development aid29 underscores the need

for these organizations to be oriented exclusively toward poverty eradica

tion and hence to be insulated, as far as possible, from the strategic and

economic interests of all governments. A government may make it entirely impossible to improve the circum

stances of the poor in its country. In such cases, the funds should go

elsewhere, where they will make a difference in reducing poverty and

disadvantage. The point of the GRD is, after all, to secure for the poorest

persons (not states) their fair share of the benefits from natural resources.

GRD payments will, indeed, not merely improve the conditions of their

intended beneficiaries, but indirectly also those of their governments and

compatriots. The rules of the GRD scheme should take advantage of this

fact. The more effectively a government reduces poverty in its country, the

more of this country's theoretical GRD share should be allocated to this

country and the more of this allocated share should be paid out directly to its government. In this way the governments and economic elites of the

29 There are various studies showing how development aid often benefits those capable

of reciprocation, i.e., the "elites" in the politically more important developing countries.

In addition, such aid is often focused on expensive high-visibility projects in which firms

of the donor country can profitably participate. For more on this theme and for relevant

references, see the cover story "Why Aid is an Empty Promise," The Economist, May 7,

1994, pp. 13-14 and 21-24.

THE INTERNATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS 61

poor countries have a clear incentive to contribute to the success of the

GRD regime. This incentive may not always be effective, because at least

some of those in power will also have an interest in keeping the domestic

poor ignorant, impotent, dependent and exploitable. The incentive would

nonetheless shift the political balance of forces in the right direction:

With the GRD regime, reforms would be pursued more vigorously and

in more countries, and would also succeed faster and more often, because

this regime would stimulate a peaceful competition in effective poverty eradication among governments and international organizations.

IV

These brief remarks on two examples illustrate the following important

points. (1) The fulfillment of human rights in most countries is strongly affected not merely by national factors (culture, power structures, natural

environment, level of technical and economic development), but also by

global ones. (2) Explanations in terms of national and global factors do

not simply compete with each other. Only their synthesis: one explanation that integrates factors of both kinds, can be a true explanation. This is

so, because the effects of national factors are often strongly affected by

global factors (and vice versa) and because global factors strongly shape those national factors themselves (though the inverse influence is gener

ally slight). (3) The influences emanating from our global order are not

necessarily the way they are, but are co-determined by relatively minor

and humanly controllable institutional features (such as the presence or

absence of the two institutions I have proposed). That these facts are so often overlooked is due to the following circum

stances: In contrast to the often dramatic institutional developments within

national societies (such as recently in Eastern Europe), change in our

global order has been glacial. In contrast to the colorful variety of national

institutional schemes, our global order also has no simultaneous alterna

tives with which it might be compared. These circumstances explain the

tendency to perceive this order as natural and inert. Great international

variations in the fulfillment of human rights tend furthermore to draw

our attention to factors with regard to which countries differ. Through an

exhaustive analysis of these factors, it seems, all phenomena relevant to

the fulfillment of human rights can be explained. And yet, it is not so:

When human rights are better fulfilled in one country than in another,

then there must be, of course, some difference that contributes to this

discrepancy. But an explanation that merely points to this difference leaves

many questions open. One question concerns the broader context which

62 THOMAS POGGE

determines that national factors have these effects rather than others. It is

quite possible that in the context of another global order the same national

factors, or the same international differences, would have quite another

impact on the fulfillment of human rights.30 Another question concerns

the explanation of the national factors themselves. It is quite possible that, within a different global order, national factors that tend to undermine the

fulfillment of human rights would occur much less often or not at all.31

These considerations show that the global level of human rights fulfillment

cannot be explained in terms of national factors alone.

Our two examples thus illustrate the empirical background against which the global demand of ?28 makes sense. It is the point of human

30 An analogous point plays a major role in debates about the significance of genetic vis

a-vis environmental factors: Factors that are quite unimportant for explaining the observed

variation of a trait (e.g., height, IQ, cancer) in some population may be very important

for explaining this trait's overall level (frequency) in the same population. Suppose that,

in some province, the observed variation in female adult height (54-60 inches) is almost

entirely due to hereditary factors. It is still quite possible that the height differentials among these woman are minor compared to how much taller they all would be (67-74 inches) if

it had not been the case that, when they were growing up, food was scarce and boys were

preferred over girls in its distribution. Or suppose that we can predict quite accurately, on

the basis of genetic information, who will get cancer and who will not. It is still quite

possible that, in a healthy environment, cancer would hardly occur at all.

31 This point is frequently overlooked

- by John Rawls, for example, when he attributes

the human rights problems in the typical developing country exclusively to local factors:

"The problem is commonly the nature of the public political culture and the religious and

philosophical traditions that underlie its institutions. The great social evils in poorer soci

eties are likely to be oppressive government and corrupt elites" [John Rawls, "The Law

of Peoples" in Stephen Shute/Susan Hurley (eds.), On Human Rights (New York: Basic

Books, 1993), p. 77]. This superficial explanation is not so much false as incomplete. As

soon as one asks (as Rawls does not), why so many developing countries ("LDC's") have

oppressive governments and corrupt elites, one will unavoidably hit upon global factors -

such as the ones discussed in my two examples: Local elites can afford to be oppressive and

corrupt, because, with foreign loans and military aid, they can stay in power even without

popular support. And they are so often oppressive and corrupt, because it is, in light of

the prevailing extreme international inequalities, far more lucrative for them to cater to the

interests of foreign governments and firms rather than those of their impoverished compa

triots. Examples abound: There are plenty of LDC governments that came to power and/or

stay in power only thanks to foreign support. And there are plenty of LDC politicians and

bureaucrats who, induced or even bribed by foreigners, work against the interests of their

people: for the development of a tourist-friendly sex industry (whose forced exploitation

of children and women they tolerate and profit from), for the importation of unneeded,

obsolete, or overpriced products at public expense, for the permission to import hazardous

products, wastes, or productive facilities, against laws protecting employees or the environ

ment, etc. It is perfectly unrealistic to believe that the corruption and oppression in the

LDC's, which Rawls rightly deplores, can be abolished without a significant reduction in

international inequality.

THE INTERNATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS 63

rights, and of official declarations thereof, to ensure that all human beings have secure access to certain vital goods. Many persons currently lack

such security.32 We can assign responsibility for such insecurity to the

governments and citizens of the countries in which it occurs; and doing so makes good sense. But leaving it at this does not make good sense. For

the hope that these countries will, from the inside, democratize themselves

and abolish the worst poverty and oppression is entirely naive so long as

the institutional context of these countries continues to favor so strongly the emergence and endurance of brutal and corrupt elites. And the primary'

responsibility for this institutional context, for the prevailing world order, Ues of course with the governments and citizens of the wealthy countries, because we maintain this order, with at least latent coercion, and because

we, and only we, could relatively easily reform it in the directions indi

cated. ?28 must be read as a recognition of these points: a clear repudiation of the common and ever so convenient conviction that human rights do not

reach beyond national borders, that the human rights of foreigners (living

abroad) normally involve no moral claims against me.33

The institutional understanding of human rights thus tends to under

mine the self-satisfied detachment with which the governments and

peoples of the wealthy West tend to look down upon the sorry state of

human rights in many of the so-called less developed countries: This

disaster is the responsibiUty not only of their governments and populations, but also ours, in that we continuously impose upon them an unjust global order instead of working toward a reformed one in which the human rights of all could be fully realized.34

32 This is so no matter which of the available substantive accounts of human rights one

might endorse. 33

For a different argument, which attacks the same conviction by appeal to the inher

ently regrettable incentives it provides, see my "Loopholes in Moralities," Journal of

Philosophy 89 (1992), pp. 79-98.

Participants in an institutional order will be differentially responsible for its moral

quality: Influential and privileged participants should be willing to contribute more to the

maintenance of a just, or the reform of an unjust social order. Moreover, we must here

distinguish responsibility from guilt and blame. That we share a negative responsibility for an injustice means that we contribute to it causally and that we can and should act

differently. It does not follow from this that we are also guilty or blameworthy on account

of our conduct. For there might be applicable excuses such as, for instance, factual or moral

error or ignorance.

64 THOMAS POGGE

V

Having shown that the global moral thesis embedded in the institutional

understanding of human rights makes sense, let me now say a little more

about the advantages of this understanding. Some important advantages

emerge from the discussion of U\-Uy. The institutional understanding is more suitable for singling out the truly essential elements in human

quality of life and, in particular, avoids any conceptual connection with

legal rights. Even those who are hostile to a legal-rights culture can share

the goal of establishing for all human beings secure access to certain vital

goods (the objects of our human rights). In this section and the next, I will

try to lay out two further important advantages of the institutional under

standing through which it can facilitate agreement on the specification of

that goal and on how to pursue it on the global plane. The first of these additional advantages is that the institutional under

standing of human rights greatly reduces the gap between civil and

political rights, on the one hand, and social, economic and cultural rights, on the other - a gap that has led to much discord in the UN and elsewhere.

On the institutional understanding, it is not true that civil and political

rights require only restraint, while social, economic and cultural rights demand positive efforts and costs. Rather, the division of negative and

positive duties now cuts across the various categories of rights: Every

person has a negative duty not to collaborate in the avoidable imposition

upon others of an institutional order in which they lack secure access to the

objects of their human rights.35 Moreover, when our duty is to fulfill human

rights in my sense, then there is no straightforward correlation of means

and ends. In fact, there is no way of telling in advance what the fulfillment

of any given human right will require. In order to fulfill the classical civil

right to freedom from inhuman and degrading treatment, for instance, the

political and economic elite of India may have to do much more than create

and enforce appropriate criminal statutes. They may also need to establish

adequate social and economic safeguards, ensuring perhaps that domestic

servants are literate, know about their rights and options, and have some

economic security in case of job loss. Conversely, in order to fulfill a

human right to adequate nutrition, perhaps all that is needed is an effective

criminal statute against hoarding of, and speculation in, foodstuffs.

These considerations greatly narrow the philosophical gap between

those who, like many Western governments, want to highlight civil

35 Being negative, this duty is of considerably greater weight than any positive duty we

may have to seek to improve the conditions of those upon whom such an order is imposed

by others without our collaboration.

THE INTERNATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS 65

and political rights and those who, like most socialist and developing

states, want to single out social, economic and cultural rights for special

emphasis. Let me now show how the institutional understanding of

human rights would also greatly reduce the practical significance of such

controversies.

Suppose that only civil and political human rights are worthy of

the name, that the social, economic and cultural rights set forth in the

Universal Declaration (foremost, of course, the much ridiculed right to "periodic holidays with pay" of ?24) should hence be repudiated..

Conjoining this view with the institutional understanding of human rights, we get the moral assertion that every human being is entitled to an interna

tional order in which his or her civil and political human rights can be fully realized. Our global order falls far short in this respect, and does so largely on account of the extreme poverty and inequality it reproduces: In most

developing countries, the legal rights of ordinary citizens cannot be effec

tively enforced. For many of these countries are so poor that they cannot

afford properly trained judges and police forces in sufficient numbers; and

in many of them social institutions as well as politicians, officials and

government agencies are in any case (partly through foreign influences) so

thoroughly corrupted that the fulfillment of civil and political human rights is not even seriously attempted. In those few developing countries where

the legal rights of ordinary citizens can be effectively enforced, too many citizens are under too much economic pressure, too dependent on others, or too uneducated to work on the enforcement of their rights. Thus, even

the goal of fulfilling only the recognized civil and political human rights - if only they were interpreted in the light of ?28

- suffices to support the

demand for global institutional reforms that would reduce global poverty and inequality.

Or suppose that only social, economic and cultural human rights are

worthy of the name. Conjoining this view with my reading of ?28, we

get the moral assertion that every human being is entitled to an inter

national order in which his or her social, economic and cultural human

rights can be fully realized. Our global order falls far short in this respect: More than one billion persons today live in abject poverty, without the

most elementary education and health care, and without reserves for even

a minor emergency. Several ten thousand of them, mainly children and

women, die every day from malnutrition and easily curable diseases. This

suffering is in large part due to the fact that the global poor live under

governments that mostly do very little to alleviate their deprivations and

often even contribute to them. The global poor are dispersed over some

150 states, which are ruled, mostly, not by general and public laws, but

66 THOMAS POGGE

by powerful persons and groups (dictators, party bosses, military officers,

landlords), often sponsored or supported from abroad. In such states, they are unable to organize themselves freely, to publicize their plight, or to

work for reform through the political or legal system. Thus, even the goal of fulfilling only the usual social and economic human rights

- if only

they were interpreted in the light of ?28 - suffices to support the call for a

global order that would strongly encourage the incorporation of effective

civil and political rights into national constitutions.36

I certainly did not mean to contend, in this section, that it makes no

difference which rights we single out as human rights. I merely wanted to

show that both the philosophical and practical-political importance of the

actual controversies about this question would diminish, if human rights were understood not in the conventional sense, but in mine: as moral

claims on social institutions. Even if we have rather diverse views about

which goods should be placed under the protection of a conception of

human rights, we will then -

provided we really care about the fulfillment

36 A global order could give such encouragement through centrally determined

economic (trade, loans, GRD payments) and diplomatic privileges and penalties. Stronger

sanctions, like embargoes and military interventions, should probably be triggered only in

cases of extreme oppression. Some of the governments that profess allegiance solely to social, economic and cultural

human rights maintain that (legal) civil and political rights are currently unnecessary in their country: unhelpful, or even counterproductive (distracting and expensive). But most

of these governments would, I believe, concede that more extensive civil and political rights

would often be helpful elsewhere or at other times. The Chinese government, for example,

would certainly maintain that instituting more extensive civil and political rights in China

today would not work to the benefit of the Chinese poor, for whom the Party and the

government are already doing all they can. But the same government might acknowledge,

if only unofficially, that there are other regions today -

Africa, perhaps, or Latin America,

Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Indonesia - where more extensive civil arid

political rights would help the poor and ethnic minorities to fend for themselves. Even more

privately, it would probably also have to concede that the Chinese famine of 1958-1961,

whose staggering death toll of nearly 30 million has become widely known only recently,

could not have occurred in a country with independent mass media and a competitive

political system. Compare an analogous domestic case. A decent police officer, who cares

deeply about the suffering caused by crime, may see no good reason why she and her fellow

officers at her station should not just do everything they can to nail a suspect they know to

be guilty, without regard to procedural niceties. But would she also advocate a civil order

in which the police in general can operate without procedural encumbrances? She must

surely understand that not all officers would always use their greater powers in a decent,

fair and judicious fashion, and also that some persons with criminal intentions would then

have much greater incentives to try to join the police force. This example shows that one

may consistently believe of certain safeguards that their observance should be strongly

encouraged by social institutions and that they are unnecessary or even counterproductive

in this or that particular case.

THE INTERNATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS 67

of human rights, and not about ideological propaganda victories - work

together on the same institutional reforms rather than argue over how much

praise or blame is deserved by this state or that.

VI

The other important advantage of the institutional understanding lies in its

profound implications for the debate about the universal validity of human

rights. One often hears that human rights are the expression of a provin

cial, i.e., European, moral conception whose worldwide imposition would

manifest a new form of imperialism: "Do not the Chinese, the Indians

and the Zulus have traditions of their own from which they can construct

their own moral conception -

perhaps wholly without the individualistic

concept of rights? If you Westerners want to make a conception of human

rights the centerpiece of your political philosophy and realize it in your

political institutions, then go ahead, by all means. But do leave others the

same freedom to define their values within the context of their own culture

and national discourse."

Even if such admonitions are often put forward in bad faith,37 they nevertheless require a reasoned response. Once human rights are viewed

as moral claims on global institutions, a novel and much more plausible such response becomes available, as follows: When we think of human

rights as a standard for assessing only national institutions and/or govern

ments, then it makes sense to envision a plurality of standards for states

that differ in their history, culture, population size and density, natural

environment, geopolitical context and stage of development. But when we

think of human rights as a standard for assessing global institutions, we can

no longer accommodate international diversity in this way. There can be,

at any given time, only one global institutional order. If it is to be possible to justify this global order to persons in all parts of the world and also

to reach agreement on how they should be adjusted and reformed in the

light of new experience or changed circumstances, then we must aspire to

a single, universal standard which all persons and peoples of this world

can accept as the basis for moral judgments about our global order.

Attaining such a common standard for assessing shared social institu

tions does not presuppose thoroughgoing agreement on all or even most

37 As when we were told by Ernest Lefevre, former US President Ronald Reagan's

candidate for Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, that torture is an accepted

part of Argentinean culture or still are told by other Westerners that child prostitution is

essential to the Thai way of life.

68 THOMAS POGGE

moral issues. It may merely demand that global institutions be so designed

that, as far as possible, everyone has secure access to a few goods that

are vital to all human beings. Now it is true that designing social institu

tions with an eye to a few key values will have collateral effects on the

prevalence of other values. Global institutions designed to encourage the

fulfillment of human rights may affect the cultural life in various societies

or the popularity of the various religions. But this problem of collateral

effects is simply unavoidable: Any institutional order can be criticized on

the grounds that some values do not optimally thrive in it. Yet, we can

mitigate the problem by choosing our moral standard in such a way that

the institutional order it favors will allow a wide range of values to thrive

locally. The standard of human rights meets this condition, because it can

be fulfilled in a wide range of countries that differ greatly in their culture, traditions and national institutions.

The crucial thought here is this: Once we view human rights as moral

claims on global institutions, there simply is no attractive, tolerant and

pluraUstic alternative to conceiving them as valid universally. While the

world can contain societies that are structured in a variety of ways, some

Uberal and some not, it cannot itself be structured in a variety of ways. If

the Algerians want their society to be organized as a religious state and we

want ours to be a liberal democracy, we can both have our way.38 But if the

Algerians want global institutions to be designed on the basis of the Koran

and we want them to render secure the objects of human rights for all, then we cannot both have our way. With respect to our global institutional

order, one conception will necessarily prevail -

through reason or force.

There is no room for accommodation here, and, if we really care about

human rights, then we must be wilUng to support the global order they

favor, even against those who, perhaps by appeal to other values, support an alternative world order in which the objects of human rights would be

less secure.

We might, of course, understand human rights as a standard for

assessing only national (institutions and) governments and then accept that

other states use other such standards. But such "modesty" is pointless, For we cannot behave neutrally with regard to the future development of

the global institutional order. Our political and economic decisions will

certainly co-determine its development. It is, for the future of humankind,

the most important and most urgent task of our time to set this develop ment upon an acceptable path. It would be entirely irresponsible to deprive

38 Mutual toleration with regard to this question is at least possible. This is not to say

that we ought to tolerate the national institutions of other countries no matter how unjust

they may be.

THE INTERNATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS 69

ourselves of any moral basis for the assessment and reform of our global order. And the only such basis that could be both plausible and capable of

wide international acceptance today is a conception of human rights.

VII

According to a widely held opinion, the content of international law

is settled by actual government conduct and rhetoric as recorded and

interpreted by the foremost international lawyers. By that criterion, my

explication of ?28 and my theses about the concept and reach of human

rights may well be far-fetched. But my ambition here was not to satisfy that criterion - but rather to keep alive, against the living examples of

actual government conduct and rhetoric, an understanding of human rights as moral claims on global institutions. Though marginalized, this under

standing is no less compelling today than it was fifty years ago. And it

does not rule out viewing human rights also as moral claims on national

institutions and on the conduct of governments and their officials.

Department of Philosophy Columbia University New York, NY 10027

USA

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