Document Library

Global Accountability: Transnational Duties Towards Economic Rights

Author: H Shue
Date: 2003
Size: 23 pages

Access full text: via document delivery

Summary

Do transnational duties towards human rights exist? If it is agreed that a child has a right to food, whose duty is it to fulfil that right? This chapter from The Globalisation of Human Rights argues that the wealthy do have a responsibility to the poor. Indeed, they bear more transnational duties toward economic rights than is currently understood. There are chains of responsibility towards the fulfilment of economic rights, and we all have a role in this chain.

It has been argued that whilst there are universal human rights, there are no transnational duties to enforce them. This claim rests on two grounds: (1) Principled communitarianism, which contends that transnational duties toward economic rights are incompatible with responsibilities to the immediate community (2) Causal ineffectuality, which asserts that because we do not come into contact with most of humanity, we cannot be responsible for those we have not touched.

The concept of ‘global radical inequality’, introduced by Nagel in 1977, and extended by Pogge in 2002, challenges both these assertions:

• Radical inequalities are absolutely extreme, relatively extreme, persistent, pervasive and avoidable. Those at the bottom are worse off in real and comparative terms. This inequality lasts and affects all aspects of life.
• Radical inequality results from both material factors as well as the institutions created to deal with those factors.
• Globalisation is asymmetrical in that the rich can affect the poor but the poor cannot easily affect the rich.
• Global radical inequalities are imposed on those at the bottom through shared institutions that were created and are maintained by those at the top.
• Poverty and wealth occur within a single scheme of shared economic and political institutions. A change in the rules governing these institutions would therefore reverberate around the globe.

The argument for transnational duties toward economic rights rests on recognising a duty to empower, or re-empower, the bearers of primary duties:

• The starving child has a right to food. The primary duties for the fulfilment of that right fall to its parents and relatives. But they may not have food, money or jobs.
• The secondary duties towards the child fall upon their government. Ideally they should provide the economic conditions to create the jobs to allow the parents to feed their child. But the state’s economy may be crippled by foreign debt.
• International financial institutions insist that the interest on debt be paid on time. They control the rules of the game.
• These same rules benefit the wealthy. They are not uninvolved. They are responsible for either accepting the rules or trying to change them. We are all part of the chain of responsibility.

Access full text: via document delivery

Source: Shue, H., 2003, ‘Global Accountability: Transnational Duties Towards Economic Rights’, in Jean-Marc Coicaud et al. (eds), 2003, The Globalization of Human Rights, United Nations University Press, Tokyo, pp. 160-177
Author: Professor Henry Shue , henry.shue[at]merton.ox.ac.uk