Global Poverty and Human Rights

One of the current issues of our time is global injustice and its causes.   Over the last 250 years, our moral values have changed considerably, and our moral codes to protect the weak and vulnerable have become increasingly effective. Behaviors and forms of social organization that have been accepted and practiced for millennia, shaped by violence, slavery, autocracy, colonialism and genocide, are now prohibited, outlawed and cited as examples of injustice. In spite of all this, communities are weak on a global scale. Today, 46% of the world's population lives below the World Bank's poverty line of $2 a day. Every year, 18 million of the world's population die at a very early age from poverty-related causes. Every day, fifty thousand people, including thirty-four thousand children under the age of five, die from poverty-related causes. 

On the other side of the world, especially in developed countries, there is enormous and growing wealth. The rich are getting richer every day and the poor are increasing rapidly. When we juxtapose the great progress in our moral code and behavior with this appalling moral situation, we are faced with two questions. How is it that, despite tremendous progress in economics and technology, half of humankind remains in severe poverty? Why don't people in developed countries see this situation as troubling? People in developed countries do not see poverty and inequality as morally important issues for them. 

According to Marx's historical materialism, dominant conceptions of justice are shaped around the common interests of the dominant group, and these interests are shaped by that group's role in controlling the means of economic production. In the simplest terms, changes in our moral codes are in line with changes in the interests of those who own capital, technology, land and natural resources. Any protection that the moral code provides for the weak and the poor is almost incidental. The rich western states no longer practice enslavement, colonialism and genocide, but they still maintain their cruel economic, political and military domination over the rest of the world, and most of humankind still only gets enough to survive. 

The governments of most third world countries today are not sufficiently responsive to the interests of the poor. On the one hand, the poor say that they cannot fairly choose who governs them, and on the other hand, rich developed countries support those elected in the third world. Developed countries give authoritarian poor country representatives the support they need to stay in power. On the one hand, developed country companies cooperate with those close to power, while the rulers give tax breaks to these companies. Those in power have the power to dispose of the country's natural resources and the power to borrow, and they use this power. In a world where third world countries and their representatives pursue their own interests on a global scale, representatives of developed countries also act zealously in their own interests, causing developed countries to take a passive stance and defend their stance against global poverty and injustice. 

One of the causes of global injustice is concession agreements.  International concession agreements turn the resources of third world countries into an opportunity for the rich developed countries and autocrats of third world countries, while the poor masses of people do not get what they deserve. Such a system leads to inequality between third world countries and developed countries.  In other words, it is this global order that is the source of inequality, the basis of the poverty of many people who are unable to resist the imposition by the governments of developed countries.  Developed countries are the architects or accomplices of inequality in the Third World. What is the solution to this problem? The principle to solve this problem is based on Locke's ideas. With a Lockean approach, all human beings are free, equal and independent from birth. No one can be expelled from his or her property or subjected to the political power of another without his or her consent. This principle prohibits all efforts by developed countries to deny the global poor a relative or equivalent share of natural resources against their will. This principle also prohibits all deprivations that developed countries subject the global poor to in the interest of making natural resources cheap, and all gains derived from such deprivations. 

There are other reasons for developed countries to ignore global poverty other than those mentioned above. The first of these is the approach that poverty in the world is decreasing. There is a partial truth in this approach. Another approach is that if poverty-related deaths are prevented, poverty and related deaths will increase as long as poverty remains unpreventable. This approach of developed countries is not correct. This is because food production on a global scale has been increased through various methods and access to food has also increased. 

Another reason for ignoring global poverty is the claim that global poverty cannot be solved at a cost that can be borne by developed countries, because poverty is enormous. However, it is not money that is required from developed countries to alleviate global poverty. It is better to teach someone how to fish than to give them fish. The tariffs imposed by rich countries on textiles, clothing and agricultural products from developing countries are 4 times higher than those imposed on other rich countries. Developed countries want to perpetuate this poverty for their own benefit. If it were not for this regulation, developing countries would have exported 700 billion dollars more in 2005. 700 billion dollars is 11% of the total gross national income of developing countries. Or 12.5 times the donations made by developed countries for the poor of developing countries.

It is possible to eliminate inequality in the global order we have described above and to determine a criterion of justice that will be accepted worldwide with human rights. In everyday usage, justice is about moral conformity and treating people equally. Justice is most commonly used in the moral evaluation of social institutions. The more fundamental institutions of a social system that affect our lives are called the institutional order or basic structure of that system.  In today's world, people's lives are influenced by many institutions of the non-national international community, such as the rules of global governance, economics, international trade and diplomacy. It is meaningless to measure the fairness of each social institution individually. A partial solution is to consider the institutional structure of each country individually. Especially for third world countries, the effectiveness of national institutions that seek to ensure, for example, the rule of law or adequate food access for all depends on stronger countries with stronger national institutions. 

In this context, we need an inclusive approach. Assessments in this context should not lose sight of the global order. Human rights should be conceived in this context as claims against social institutions and, secondly, against those who support such institutions. There is a different understanding of human rights from the institutional understanding of human rights as a moral right. That is, the government and citizens of each society must ensure that all human rights are enshrined in legal texts and monitored and enforced through an effective legal system within its jurisdiction. While we believe that human rights should be secured through legal rights, we will need to allow for human rights to be secured through means other than the law. It makes no sense to insist that access to rights should be ensured by international law in the same way everywhere in the world. 

The main thing to say here is that legal rights can be an effective means of realizing human rights. But such legal rights need not have the same content as the human rights they help to secure. Legal rights to food may not be the best means of realizing human rights to adequate nutrition. Instead, laws against usury and hoarding, laws on education and childcare, and unemployment benefits are examples of such legal rights. Secondly, the following can be said. It is at least theoretically possible to include certain legal rights in what a human right refers to. Instead of telling government officials what they should and should not do, the concept of human rights should regulate how we all together should shape the basic rules of our common life.

Note: This article is a short review of the book "Global Poverty and Human Rights" by Prof. Thomas Pogge, a German political philosopher who completed his PhD program at Harvard University under the supervision of John Rawls and worked on Moral and Political Philosophy, translated into Turkish by Istanbul Bilgi University in 2006.