Global Inequalities and Human Rights

Course Description This seminar will study various forms of and theories about ever-growing inequalities both within and between countries, and their implications for human rights law, policy and advocacy. Existing inequalities powerfully determine who is in a position to avoid harm and even reap profits from human rights violations. In addition to examining the nature and extent of existing inequalities, this seminar will consider whether and how human rights approaches might adequately respond to those inequalities, exacerbate them, or both. The seminar will be organized around the visits of leading scholars and practitioners in the fields of inequality and human rights who will come to the Law School to present their research. Students will spend two weeks considering work by each speaker. In the first week, we will meet in a traditional seminar format to discuss the speaker's work. In the second week, the speakers will present their work in a public forum, and will engage in dialogue with seminar students, as well as with others in the university community who choose to attend the talk. Students will thus have the opportunity both to participate in critical discussion of the work in a small setting and to observe and contribute to a conversation with the authors in a broader audience. Students are expected to participate actively in class discussions, write short critical papers in response to the readings for the seminar, and write a longer essay on a topic related to the themes that arise during the semester. The seminar is open to law students as well as to non-law graduate and professional students with relevant background.

This paper is not an attempt to evaluate global human rights in the context of its practice, achievements, and limitations. Neither is it an inquiry into the theoretical or philosophical foundation of human rights. There is a school of thought which, maintains that it is possible to promote a theory of justice founded on fairness and impartiality without invoking philosophical or metaphysical claims ‘to universal truth, or claims about the essential nature and identity of persons. (John Rawls 1985) I will discuss the historical context of the inception of the concept of human rights, its evolution over centuries, and its relationship with capitalism. I will also examine the status and the role of human rights in the changing global context of neoliberalism and recent institutional responses, particularly some of the main contradictions of contemporary societies and new paths that would lead to a more just and fraternal world.

Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, 2019

Background Socioeconomic inequality has been called "the defining challenge of our time," and "the root of all social evil." 1 Inequalities in income and wealth are growing, and quite clearly affect human rights. They powerfully determine who can avoid harm and reap profits from human rights violations as well as who will bear the cost of and suffer from ongoing harms. But might human rights also affect persistent inequalities? Might they provide useful tools for ameliorating economic inequality? Might they sometimes exacerbate it? These are some of the questions we posed to the interdisciplinary group of contributors to this dossier. 2 We acknowledged that international human rights law and discourse have long focused, at least in principle, on the promotion of what is often termed "status equality," by prohibiting discrimination on the basis of numerous attributes including race, nationality, religion, and sex. More recently, the prohibition has been extended to areas such as disability and sexuality. Notwithstanding the inclusion of property and birth in the Universal Declaration's list of prohibited bases of discrimination, some have argued that human rights law and discourse have largely remained inattentive to inequalities of wealth and income-within countries, among countries, and globally. 3 To the extent that economic issues have entered the human rights arena, the argument goes, they primarily have done so with the aim of poverty reduction, through the deployment of social and economic rights, and the right to development. Moreover, by some accounts, these approaches not only remain on the margins of human rights but also are often embedded in prescriptions for development that focus on economic growth, and neglect the distributive consequences of that growth. To the extent that human rights concentrate only on achieving minimum standards for a dignified existence, they may well ignore the growing distance between the poor and the wealthy. A focus on economic inequality therefore calls for attention to more than poverty reduction or even elimination; it requires interrogating the neoclassical economic and neoliberal paradigms for producing growth. It demands consideration of the structural causes of the maldistribution of wealth, income, and access to resources, both within and among countries. If human rights law, movements, and discourses are to address economic inequality, they will need to attend to the distributional consequences of globalized markets. They will have to engage with international and national policy choices around issues such as natural resource governance, labor, social protection, sovereign and personal debt, austerity, and taxation. 4 Rather than offering a set of legal and other prescriptions for combatting inequality, might human rights even be part of the problem? 5 Some scholars have highlighted that the

Metaphilosophy, 2001

2009

Journal of International Development, 2009

In this paper I shall argue that much of the existing global inequality is unjust, and that this injustice is not only because reducing inequality could serve the important goal of poverty reduction. I reject arguments of John Rawls and Thomas Nagel that limit the importance of distributive egalitarianism to states. I argue in contrast that a commitment to respect for human dignity has egalitarian distributive implications for the global economy. Injustice in the existing institutional order provides reasons for reforming the global institutional structure to reduce inequality.

In the early 21st century, poverty, impoverishment and inequalities are increasing across the European continent. These phenomena not only weaken the social cohesion of European societies, they also violate human rights, including social and civil and political rights, and question the functioning of democracy. How can people living in poverty make their voices heard in polarised societies, where more than 40% of assets and 25% of revenues are held by 10% of the population? This guide is the result of two years of collective discussion held within the framework of the project "The human rights of people experiencing poverty ". It was prepared with the assistance of many individuals and organisations, including people living in poverty, researchers, associations and representatives of public authorities. As well as off ering a critique of the current situation, analysing inequality and poverty through the prism of human rights, democracy and redistributive policies, the guide also invites the reader to explore the possibilities of a renewed strategy to fi ght poverty in order to restore a sense of social justice. It makes proposals that aim to overcome the stigmatisation and categorisation of people, opening pathways of learning to build well-being through sharing, avoiding waste and by enhancing public awareness around the principle of human dignity as a human right for all.

Interchange, 2008

2007

This book sets out a non-ideal theory. 3 It does not provide the complete set of moral principles just institutional systems must satisfy (Buchanan 2004). Nor does it present principles with which all people are expected to fully comply (Rawls 1971). Rather, this book suggests a few implementable principles that constrain the form any acceptable institutional system can take. These principles and policies are ones that can be implemented in the real world for (and by) real people in the foreseeable future. 4 Good principles for development must be compatible with sound practice. This kind of inquiry makes it natural to come to philosophical conclusions from two directions simultaneously: Working down from theoretical considerations and working up from empirical evidence and case studies. This approach to international ethics is similar to the approach of philosophers in other interdisciplinary domains like cognitive science and philosophy of biology. Both the questions addressed and the methodology used in this book span disciplines. What ethical principles should govern the structure of the global institutional system? What are the economic consequences for the poor of different international policies? Is globalization benefiting the global poor? This book examines these and similar questions by looking at the work of philosophers, economists, political scientists, sociologists, and others working on international development. Though most of the book proceeds via philosophical argument, it also uses statistical data, theoretical models, and case studies to make important points. It even includes one simulation and an experiment. 3 I understand non-ideal theory to be roughly equivalent to what economists call theories of the second best or operations researchers call constrained optimization. 4 This does not make my theory conservative in any bad sense. I am not trying to justify the status quo. I am trying to provide a theory that can help us improve the global institutional system. to meet some of their basic needs. So, the global institutional system must at least enable everyone who is capable of securing sufficient autonomy to meet some of their basic needs. An essential premise of this argument is that people must be able to meet some of their basic needs to secure sufficient autonomy. The third chapter defends this premise. It argues that people need whatever will enable them to live minimally good human lives and that, to live minimally good human lives, people must be able to secure sufficient autonomy. It then cashes out the conditions for sufficient autonomy at issue in the Argument from Autonomy. To secure sufficient autonomy people must at least be able to reason about, make, and carry out some simple plans on the basis of their desires. Finally, the third chapter shows that many of the things that will enable people to secure sufficient autonomy constitute some of their basic needs. Since the global institutional system must, insofar as possible, enable people to secure sufficient autonomy, the Argument from Autonomy's conclusion follows. The global institutional system must, insofar as possible, enable people to meet some of their basic needs. Since people need whatever will enable them to live a minimally good human life, the last premise of the Argument from Human Rights also follows. Accepting the first premises of this argument one can conclude that people have a human right to be able to meet their needs. Finally, the chapter gives a bit of concrete content to the account of needs and these arguments. It shows that most people at least need some minimal amount of food, water, shelter, education, health care, and emotional and social support to secure sufficient autonomy. It follows that the global institutional system must do what it can to enable most people to

Human Rights Review, 2021