Pogge - The International Significance of Human Rights (1)

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 whathuman rights are supports an institutional understanding as suggested by Article 28 of theUniversal Declaration: Human rights are weighty moral claims on any coercively imposedinstitutional order, national or international (as Article 28 confirms). Any such order mustafford the persons on whom it is imposed secure access to the objects of their humanrights. This understanding of human rights is broadly sharable across cultures and narrowsthe philosophical and practical differences between the friends of civil and political andthe champions of social, economic, and cultural human rights. When applied to the globalinstitutional 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 theimposition of this global order if feasible reforms of it would significantly improve therealization of human rights.

KEY WORDS: cosmopolitanism, cultural diversity, democratic governance, foreign lend-ing, global institutions, human rights, international law, justice, nationalism, UniversalDeclaration, universalism

I

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

− the conceptof a human right used by this conception, or what onemight also call itsunderstandingof human rights, and

− the substanceor content of the conception, that is, the objects orgoods it singles out for protection by a set of human rights.

We face then two questions: What are human rights? And what humanrights are there? I believe that these two questions are asymmetricallyrelated, in this sense: We cannot convincingly justify a particular list ofhuman rights without first gaining a clear sense of what human rightsare. Yet wecan justify a particular understanding of human rights withoutpresupposing 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 dohere.

The Journal of Ethics4: 45–69, 2000.© 2000Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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It is worth emphasizing that even a fully comprehensive answer to thefirst question does not preempt the second. The fact that some formulatedright has all the conceptual features of a human right does not entail thatit exists (can be justified as such) any more than the fact that RobinsonCrusoe as described has all the conceptual features of a human beingentails that there is such a person. Settling what human rights there arerequires not merely careful conceptual analysis, but also substantive moralargument pro and con.

The concept of a human right has certain central elements that anyplausible understanding of human rights must incorporate. First, humanrights expressultimate moralconcerns: Persons have a moral duty torespect human rights, a duty that does not derive from a more general moralduty to comply with national or international legal instruments. (In fact, theopposite may hold: Conformity with human rights is a moral requirementon any legal order, whose capacity to create moral obligations dependsin part on such conformity.) Second, human rights expressweightymoralconcerns, which normally override other normative considerations. Third,these moral concerns are focused onhuman beings, as all of them andthey alone have human rights and the special moral status associated there-with. Fourth, with respect to these moral concerns, all human beings haveequal status: They have exactly the same human rights, and the moralsignificance of these rights and their fulfillment does not vary with whosehuman rights are at stake.1 Fifth, human rights express moral concernsthat areunrestricted, i.e., they ought to be respected by all human agentsirrespective of their particular epoch, culture, religion, moral tradition orphilosophy. Sixth, these moral concerns arebroadly sharable, i.e., capableof being understood and appreciated by persons from different epochsand cultures as well as by adherents of a variety of different religions,moral traditions and philosophies. The notions of unrestrictedness andbroad sharability are related in that we tend to feel more confident aboutconceiving of a moral concern as unrestricted when this concern is notparochial to some particular epoch, culture, religion, moral tradition orphilosophy.2

1 This second component of equality is compatible with the view that the weight agentsought to give to the human rights of others varies with their relation to them – that agentshave stronger moral reasons to secure human rights in their own country, for example, thanabroad – so long as this is not seen as being due to a difference in the moral significanceof these rights, impersonally considered. (I can believe that the flourishing of all childrenis equally important and also that I should show greater concern for the flourishing of myown children than for that of other children.)

2 These six central elements are discussed in greater detail in the first two sections ofmy essay, “How Should Human Rights be Conceived?,”Jahrbuch für Recht und Ethik3

THE INTERNATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS 47

Various understandings of human rights are consistent with these sixpoints. Though I cannot here criticize all competing understandings indetail, I want briefly to present three of the more prominent ones as abackdrop to my own. I have tried to arrange the four understandings sothat their sequence can be seen as a dialectical progression.

The first understanding,U1, conceives human rights as moral rightsthat every human being has against every other human being or perhaps,more generally, against every other human agent (where this also includescollective agents, such as groups, firms, or governments).3 Given thisunderstanding 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 imposepositive duties (to protect and/or to aid).4 A human right to freedom fromassault might then give every human agent merely a weighty moral dutyto refrain from assaulting any human being or also an additional weightymoral duty to help protect any human beings from assaults and theireffects.

I do not deny that there are such universal moral rights and duties, butit is clear that we are not referring to them when we speak of human rightsin the modern context. To see this, consider first some ordinary assault,in a pub, perhaps, after some drinking and argument. Though the victimmay 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 toqualify. This suggests that, to engage human rights, conduct must be insome sense official. This suggestion is confirmed by the human rights thathave actually been postulated in various international documents. Manyof 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 ofhuman 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 twoways: (a) by further specifying the concept of human rights through additional elementsand (b) by selectively postulating a list of particular human rights (cf. second paragraphabove).

3 Here is an example ofU1: “A human right, then, will be a right whose beneficiariesare all humans and whose obligors are all humans in a position to effect the right” – DavidLuban: “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 andUtopia (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,fundamentalandbasicrights.U1 would lead to views like theirs but phrasedin terms ofhumanrights.

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they demand appropriately constrained institutional arrangements such asequality before the law (§7), a nationality (§15.1), and equal access topublic service (§21.2).5 Finally, many of the rights postulated in thesedocuments would also seem to be limited in scope to the territory of thestate to which the right holder belongs or in which s/he resides: the rightto equal access to public service in his country (§21.2) and the right to aneducation (§26.1). These rights are generally understood as not imposingduties upon foreigners.6

These shortcomings ofU1 suggest another understanding,U2,according to which human rights are moral rights that human beings havespecifically against governments, understood broadly so as to include theirvarious agencies and officials. This understanding solves the first problemby supporting a distinction between official and unofficial violations,between assaults committed by the secret police and those committed bya petty criminal or a violent husband. It solves the second problem insofaras governments are in a position to underwrite and reform the relevantinstitutional arrangements, at least within their own territory. And it allowsa solution to the third problem in that one can distinguish between humanrights that one has against one’s own government and those one has againstany government. A human right to education is a right that every humanbeing has against his or her own government and therefore one that givesevery government a weighty moral duty to ensure that each national orresident in its territory receives an appropriate education. A right not to besubjected to arbitrary arrest (§9), on the other hand, is presumably meant tobe one that every human being has against every government whatsoeverand therefore one that gives every government a weighty moral duty torefrain from arbitrarily arresting any human being at all.7

5 I use the symbol “§” throughout to refer to articles of theUniversal Declaration ofHuman Rights, which was adopted and proclaimed by the General Assembly of the UnitedNations on December 10, 1948, as resolution 217A(III). By drawing on theUniversalDeclarationfor examples and illustrations, I am not implying that all the rights it lists arehuman rights or that its list is complete. Rather, I am using these rights as evidence for howthe concept of human rights has been understood in the post-W.W.II era, on the assumptionthat any plausible understanding of human rights must be critically developed out of thisestablished and customary notion.

6 The right to equal pay for equal work (§23.2) would seem to be doubly limitedin scope. No duty to help maintain such equality within some country is imposed uponforeigners. 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 componentsthat 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 wellas positive duties to prevent torture. The negative duties are most plausibly construed as


The main problem withU2 is that it completely unburdens privatehuman agents. So long as one is not a government official, one need notworry about human rights at all. In response, it might be said that in ademocracy it is ultimately the people at large who, collectively, constitutethe government. But this response does not solve the problem in regard toother kinds of regimes. Persons who live under an undemocratic govern-ment need not worry about human rights at all, because it is the duty ofthat government alone to fulfill human rights – including the human rightof its subjects to take part in government (§21.1). On this understanding,wealthy and influential nationals would have no moral duty to do anythingto stop or to mitigate human-rights violations that their non-democraticgovernment is committing against their compatriots or against foreigners –at least they would have no moral duty arising from the human rights of thevictims. This limitation is not only morally implausible; it also goes againstcommon parlance in that we speak of a society’s human-rights recordand of how well human rights are respected in some country, therebysuggesting that we do not assign sole responsibility to the government.

This problem is avoided by yet another understanding,U3, accordingto which human rights are basic or constitutional rights as each state oughtto set them forth in its fundamental legal texts and ought to make themeffective through appropriate institutions and policies.8 So understood, ahuman right might be said to have two quite distinct components: juridifi-cation and observance. Through its juridification component, a humanright toX would entail that every state ought to have a right toX enshrinedin its constitution (or comparable basic legal documents). A human rightto X would contain, then, a moral right to effective legal rights toX, whichgives every citizen of a state a weighty moral duty to help ensure that aneffective and suitably broad legal (or better: constitutional) right toX 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 governmentmust prevent torture on territory it can effectively control, but not elsewhere.

8 Thus, for example, Jürgen Habermas, “The concept of human rights is not of moralorigin, but . . .by nature juridical.” Human rights “belong, through their structure, to ascheme 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 thestatus of constitutional rights.” Jürgen Habermas, “Kants Idee des Ewigen Friedens – ausdem historischen Abstand von 200 Jahren,”Kritische Justiz28 (1995), pp. 293–319. Thequotes are from p. 310 and p. 312, italics are in the original, the translation is mine. ThoughRobert Alexy explicitly refers to human rights as moral rights, he holds an otherwisesimilar position which equates the institutionalization of human rights with their transfor-mation into positive law. See Robert Alexy, “Die Institutionalisierung der Menschenrechteim demokratischen Verfassungsstaat” in Stefan Gosepath and Georg Lohmann (eds.),DiePhilosophie der Menschenrechte(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1997), pp. 244–264.

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within this state.9 Through its observance component, a human right toXwould give a weighty moral duty to each government and its officials toensure that the right toX – whether it exists as a legal right or not – isobserved.

Though a definite improvement overU1 andU2, this understanding stillfaces three problems. First,U3 may render human rights too weak, for evenwhen a human right is appropriately juridified and the corresponding legalrights are observed and reliably enforced by the government and the courts,citizens may still be prevented by social obstacles from enjoying the objectof the human right in question.10 Being illiterate or uneducated, they maynot know what their legal rights are, or they may lack either the knowledgeor the minimal economic independence necessary to claim these rightsthrough the proper legal channels. This problem can be avoided by inter-preting “observance” in a demanding sense as requiring that human rightsbe made fully (not merely legally) effective so as to ensure secure accessto their objects.11 I use the word “fulfillment” for this demanding sense of“observance” and say more about this notion below.

The second problem withU3 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 sosituated and organized that all its members have secure access to adequatenutrition, though not a legal right thereto. Would this leave the humanright unfulfilled? Having the legal rights required by the juridificationcomponent is good, to be sure, but hardly so important that it must be builtinto the concept of a human right. Secure access is what really matters,and if this can be achieved through, for example, a reliable kinship systembacked up by efficient charitable organizations, then an additional legal

9 The expression “suitably broad” alludes to howU2 had solved the third problem withU1. 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 humanrights would not be fully juridified through a constitutional right that prohibits merely thegovernment’s arbitrary arrest of its own citizens or residents but not that of foreigners. Thejuridification component of my human right not to be subjected to arbitrary arrest wouldthen give a weighty moral duty to every citizen of every state to help ensure that his or herstate affords me (and, of course, every other human being) a legal right not to be arbitrarilyarrested by its government.

10 This problem could not arise, if human rights had effective legal (constitutional) rightsas their sole objects. I am assuming here that, for at least some human rights, this is not thecase.

11 As the examples indicate, my notion ofsecure accessinvolves a knowledge condi-tion: A person has secure access to the object of some human right only when she is notprevented by social obstacles from acquiring the knowledge and know-how necessary tosecure this object for herself.


right to adequate food when needed would not seem to have the essentialimportance we rightly associate with demands made in behalf of humanrights. The juridification component ofU3 is likely to lead to a conceptionof human rights diluted by elements that are not truly essential.12 Insistenceon the juridification of human rights also provokes the communitarian andEast Asian criticism that human rights lead persons to view themselves asWesterners: atomized, autonomous, secular and self-interested individualsready to insist on their rights no matter what the cost may be to others orthe society at large.13

The third problem withU3 is that it excessively unburdens agents withregard to human-rights fulfillment abroad. According toU3, our task asprivate citizens or government officials is to ensure that human rightsare juridified and fulfilled in our own society and also observed by ourgovernment abroad. We have no human-rights based duties to promote thefulfillment of human rights in other countries or to help suppress human-rights violations by foreign governments – though it may be morallypraiseworthy, of course, to work on such projects. But, you will ask, whatis wrong with this unburdening? How can, and why should, we be heldresponsible for the extent to which human rights remain unfulfilled in otherparts of the world?

II

We find the beginnings of an answer to these questions in what may wellbe the most surprising and potentially most consequential sentence of theentireUniversal Declaration: “Everyone is entitled to a social and interna-tional order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declarationcan be fully realized” (§28). This article has a peculiar status. As itsreference 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 withoutcorresponding legal or even constitutional protections. This is clearly true, for example, ofa human right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violatingfundamental rights granted by the constitution or by law (§8). It is also hard to imaginea society under modern conditions whose members are secure in their property or havesecure access to freedom of expression even while no legal right thereto exists. I assumebelow that secure access to the objects of civil and political human rights generally requirescorresponding legal protections.

13 This criticism has been voiced, for instance, by Singapore’s patriarch Lee Kuan Yewand by Mary Ann Glendon:Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse(NewYork: The Free Press, 1991).

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the concept of a human right, says something about what human rightsare. It is then consistent with any substantive account of the objects thata scheme of human rights ought to protect – even while it significantlyaffects the meaning of any human rights postulated in the other Articles oftheUniversal 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,U4. According toU4, postulating a human right toX is tantamount todeclaring that every society (and comparable social system) ought to beso organized that all its members enjoy secure access toX. To be sure, nosociety can make the objects of all human rightsabsolutelysecure. Andmaking them as secure as possible would constitute a ludicrous drain onsocietal resources for what, at the margins, might be very minor benefitsin security. To be plausible, any conception of human rights that usesthe concept I propose must therefore incorporate an idea of reasonablesecurity thresholds: Your human rights are fully realized (fulfilled) whentheir objects aresufficientlysecure – with the required degrees of securitysuitably adapted to the means and circumstances of the relevant socialsystem.15

U4 can be further specified through two plausible assumptions: (1)Social and international orders that do not satisfy the condition of §28can be ranked by how close they come to fully realizing human rights:Social systems ought to be structured so that human rights can be realizedin them as fully as possible. (2) One can judge how fully human rightscanbe realized 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 thatthe 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 thatany institutional order imposed upon them be one in which their postulated rights andfreedoms can be fully realized. §28 would seem to make the additional statement thathuman beings have a claim that such an order be newly established in any (state-of-natureor “failed state”) contexts in which no institutional order exists.

15 Thus, your human right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association is fulfilledby some institutional order, when it issufficientlyunlikely that your attempts to associateor assemble with others would be thwarted or punished by official or nonofficial agents oragencies. Of course, what is unlikely may nevertheless happen. According toU4, a personmay 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 taskof specifying, for the object of each particular human right, acceptable probabilities forthreats from various sources belongs to the second, substantive component of a conceptionof human rights.


much better or worse human rights are or would be fulfilled in it than in itsfeasible alternatives.

Although it leaves open which purported human rights we ought toaccept as such,U4 is nevertheless normative, and this not merely in thetrivial sense that it presents itself as the most plausible explication of acommonly used expression. It is normative also in that – on the assumptionthat human rights express weighty moral concerns – it entails a significantmoral thesis (whose precise content depends, however, on which particularhuman rights will be included in our conception):Any institutional order isto be assessed and reformed principally by reference to its relative impacton the fulfillment of the human rights of those on whom it is imposed.16

Pursuant toU4, human rights are then the paramount elements inthe comparative assessment of institutional schemes. A human right tofreedom of peaceful assembly and association, for example, implies thathuman beings have a moral claim that their society be structured in sucha way that they can securely exercise these two freedoms. To honor thisclaim, we must ensure not merely that our government and its officialsrespect these freedoms, but also that limitations and violations of them onthe part of other persons are effectively deterred and prevented.

This last point is a crucial element of the institutional understandingof human rights. An institutional order fails to fulfill human rights evenif it merely fails sufficiently to protect their objects.17 And yet, insecureaccess to the objects of human rights is nevertheless more serious whenits source is official. It is, other things equal, more important that our lawsand the agents and agencies of the state should not themselves endanger theobjects of human rights than that they should protect these objects againstother social dangers.18

16 Relative, because we are making a comparative judgment: about how much better orworse human rights are fulfilled in this institutional order than they would be fulfilled inits feasible alternatives.

17 One may think here of the, still common, official tolerance for domestic violenceagainst 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 pointcan 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. Thefollowing illustration uses six different scenarios, arranged in order of their intuitive moralsignificance, in which, due to prevailing social institutions, certain innocent persons areavoidably deprived of some vital nutrients V (the vitamins contained in fresh fruit, say):First-class shortfalls areofficially mandated, paradigmatically by the law (legal restrictionsprevent certain persons from buying foodstuffs containing V). Second-class shortfalls arisefrom legally authorizedconduct of private subjects (sellers of foodstuffs containing Vlawfully refuse to sell to certain persons). Third-class shortfalls areforeseeably engendered

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If a society’s institutional order avoidably fails to fulfill human rights,then those of its members who do not support the requisite institutionalreforms are violating a negative duty of justice: the duty not to cooperatein the imposition of an unjust institutional order without making seriousefforts within their means toward initiating and supporting appropriateinstitutional reforms. OnU4, your human rights are then not only moralclaimson any institutional order imposed upon you, but also moral claimsagainst those (especially: more influential and privileged) persons whocontribute to its imposition.19

III

U4 could be rather close toU3, if “institutional order” were interpretednarrowly as referring only to national schemes of social institutions.However, §28 explicitly rules out this reading by insisting that humanrights 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 mentionthem (certain persons, suffering severe poverty within an ill-conceived economic order,cannot afford to buy foodstuffs containing V). Fourth-class shortfalls arise from privateconduct that islegally prohibited but generally tolerated(sellers of foodstuffs containingV illegally refuse to sell to certain persons, but enforcement is lax and penalties are mild).Fifth-class shortfalls arise fromnatural factors whose effects social rules avoidably leaveunmitigated(certain persons are unable to metabolize V due to a treatable genetic defectbut are not receiving the treatment that would correct their handicap). Sixth-class short-falls, finally, arise fromself-caused factors whose effects social rules avoidably leaveunmitigated(certain persons are unable to metabolize V due to a treatable self-causeddisease – brought on, perhaps, by their maintaining a long-term smoking habit in fullknowledge 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 thesedistinctions lies the idea that our social institutions and their political and legal organsshould not merely serve justice, but also symbolize it. The point is important, because itundermines the plausibility of consequentialist (e.g., utilitarian) and hypothetical-contract(e.g., Rawlsian) conceptions of justice which assess social institutions from the standpointof prudent prospective participants, who, of course, have no reason to care about thisdistinction among sources of threats. My critique of such recipient-oriented conceptionsof justice is presented in “Three Problems with Contractarian-Consequentialist Ways ofAssessing Social Institutions,”Social Philosophy and Policy12 (1995), pp. 241–266, esp.Section 5 [and in “Gleiche Freiheit für alle?” in Otfried Höffe (ed.),Rawls’ “Theorie derGerechtigkeit”(Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997)].

19 This understanding of human rights is laid out more extensively in my “How ShouldHuman Rights Be Conceived?,”Jahrbuch für Recht und Ethik3 (1995), pp. 103–120. Thatearlier essay applied the idea only to the case of national institutional schemes, while thepresent one applies it mainly to our global institutional order.


essay will concentrate on this more specific moral thesis: thatour globalinstitutional order is to be assessed and reformed principally by refer-ence to its relative impact on human rights fulfillment. This is one wayof saying that human rights in our time have global normative reach: Aperson’s human rights entail not merely moral claims on the institutionalorder of her own society, which are claims against her fellow citizens, butalso analogous moral claims on the global institutional order, which areclaims against her fellow human beings. Our responsibilities entailed byhuman rights are engaged by our participation in any coercively imposedinstitutional order in which some persons avoidably lack secure access tothe objects of their human rights, and these (negative) responsibilities areextended, then, through the emergence of a global institutional order inwhose coercive imposition we collaborate.20

This thesis must be distinguished from another, more common but alsoless plausible, moral assertion, which emerges when, in the context ofU1,human rights are interpreted as entailing (positive) duties to protect – theassertion, namely, that we ought to defend, as best we can, the objectsof the human rights of any person anywhere. While postulating merelypositive (and thus presumably weaker) responsibilities, this thesis is alsostronger than mine in that it does not make the global normative reachof human rights conditional upon the existence of a worldwide institu-tional order through which our political and economic decisions have asignificant impact on the lives of persons all over the world. My thesisdoes involve this conditionality: What §28 is asking of the citizens andgovernments of the developed states is not that we assume the role of aglobal police force ready to intervene to aid and protect all those whosehuman rights are imperiled by brutal governments or (civil) wars, but thatwe support institutional reforms toward a global order that would stronglysupport the emergence and stability of democratic, rights-respecting andpeaceful regimes and that would also tend to reduce radical economicdeprivations and inequalities, which now engender great vulnerabilities

20 On the stronger reading of §28 (cf. footnote 14), we would have such responsibilitiesto establish a global institutional order that fulfills human rights even if no such orderexisted at present. It is doubtful, however, whether these responsibilities could, in such acontext, be considered to be negative ones. Immanuel Kant suggests that they may be: “Ahuman being (or a people) in a mere state of nature robs me of this assurance and injuresme through this very state in which he coexists with me – not actively (facto), but throughthe lawlessness of his state (statu iniusto) through which I am under permanent threat fromhim – and I may compel him either to enter with me into a common juridical state or toretreat from my vicinity” [Immanuel Kant, “Zum ewigen Frieden” (1795), inPreußischeAkademieausgabe, Vol. VIII(Berlin: de Gruyter, 1923), 349n (my translation)].

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to civil rights violations as well as massive premature mortality frommalnutrition and easily curable diseases.

I have encountered much resistance to this moral thesis, especiallyfrom social theorists. It is not the case, of course, that these critics areopposed to human-rights fulfillment. Not at all. Rather, they dispute theempirical presuppositions of my moral thesis, which are thatthe fulfill-ment of human rights importantly depends on the structure of our globalinstitutional orderand thatthis global institutional order is to some extentsubject to intelligent (re)design by reference to the imperative of humanrights fulfillment. Let me then try to make plausible that these empiricalpresuppositions hold.

Talk of “our global institutional order” sounds horribly abstract andrequires 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 intoa number of clearly demarcated and non-overlapping national territories.Human beings are matched up with these territories, so that (at least forthe most part) each person belongs to exactly one territory. Any personor group effectively controlling a preponderant share of the means ofcoercion within a territory is recognized as the legitimate governmentof both the territory and the persons belonging to it. This government isentitled to rule “its” people through laws, orders and officials, to adjudicateconflicts among them, and to exercise ultimate control over all resourceswithin the territory (“eminent domain”). It is also entitled to personifyits people against the rest of the world: to bind themvis-à-visoutsidersthrough treaties and contracts, to regulate their relations with outsiders, todeclare and prosecute wars in their name, and to control outsiders’ accessto the country’s territory. In this second role, a government is consideredcontinuous with its predecessors and successors: bound by the undertak-ings of the former, and capable through its own undertakings of bindingthe latter. There are, of course, various minor deviations21 and also manyfurther, less essential features of our global order. But these most basicfeatures will suffice for now.

I will try to show through two examples that there are feasible reformsof our global order that would, quite clearly, lead to substantial gains interms of human rights fulfillment. My first example concerns the currently

21 There are stateless persons, persons with multiple nationalities and those who arecitizens of one country but reside in or are visiting another. We have Antarctica, continentalshelves, disputed areas and areas that are contracted out (such as Guantanamo Bay andHong 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 theydo 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).


prominent topic “transition to democracy.” Much has been written on howa new democratic government should deal with the crimes committed byan evil predecessor. Much less, and far too little, has been written abouthow a new democratic government might reduce the likelihood of demo-cratic institutions being overturned once again in the future. Yet, evenmore important is the extension of this forward-looking question to ourglobal institutional order: How can global institutions be reshaped so as tobecome 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 overthrowa democratic government: Once in power, putschists can count on all therewards of international recognition. They can, for example, control andhence profit from the sale of the country’s natural resources.22 They canalso borrow funds abroad in the name of the whole country (the “interna-tional borrowing privilege”) and then spend these funds to entrench theirrule. Foreign bankers need have no special worries about being repaid inthe event that democracy returns, because any future government will beconsidered obligated to repay the loans of any predecessor and will haveto comply on pains of being shut out of the international credit markets.

Could we modify our global order so that it exerts a more favorableinfluence on the stability of democratic governments? One might beginby proposing, as a principle of international law, that a people need notrepay loans incurred by a government that ruled them in violation ofconstitutionally recognized democratic procedures. This principle preventsneither putschists from coming to power nor lenders from loaning moneyto putschists. But it does render such loans considerably more risky andthereby entails that putschists can borrow less – and this on less favorableterms. It thus reduces the staying power of undemocratic governments andthe incentives for attempting acoupin the first place.

This proposal needs refinement, especially in two respects. First, itrequires the instituting of a neutral council that would determine, inan internationally authoritative way, whether a particular government isconstitutional or not.23 This council might be fashioned on the model

22 The great importance of this “international resource privilege” is extensivelydiscussed 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 officiallydeclared illegitimate would be handicapped in myriad ways (trade, diplomacy, investments,etc.) – a fact that would contribute to the deterrent effect of the proposed institution andhence to its tendency to reduce the frequency ofcoupattempts and civil wars.

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of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, but it should alsohave specially trained personnel for observing – and in special cases evenconducting – national elections. Democratic governments could facilitatethe work of the council, and thereby contribute to the stability of democ-racy in their country, by incorporating into their written constitutions orbasic laws clear legitimacy criteria that also fix precisely how these criteriacan be legitimately revised.

Second, a destabilizing influence on existing democratic governmentsmust be ruled out. Such an influence might come about as follows. Ifan officially illegitimate government cannot, in any case, borrow abroadin the name of the entire country, it may see no reason to service debtsincurred by democratic predecessors. This fact might make borrowingabroad more difficult for democratic governments perceived to be indanger of being overthrown – which would not be, of course, in thespirit of my proposal.24 This difficulty might be overcome through aninternational loan insurance fund that services the debts of democraticallylegitimate governments whenever illegitimate successors refuse to do so.This fund, just as the council proposed above, should be financed jointlyby all democratic states. This would require some states, the enduringlystable democracies, to contribute to a fund from which they will hardlyever profit directly. Their financial contribution would, however, be small,because my proposal would render the overthrow of democratic regimesmuch less frequent, and it would also be well justified in view of the gainfor democratization, which would bring with it gains for the fulfillment ofhuman rights and the avoidance of wars and civil wars.25

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

25 An existing alternative proposal would allow each country to authorize militaryinterventions against itself for the event that a future government significantly violatesdemocratic principles (Farer) or human rights (Hoffmann) [see Tom J. Farer, “The UnitedStates as Guarantor of Democracy in the Caribbean Basin: Is There a Legal Way?,”HumanRights Quarterly10 (1988), pp. 157–176; “A Paradigm of Legitimate Intervention” in LoriFisler 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 Books39 (1992), pp. 37–43].Proposals of this kind have two drawbacks: Military interventions will, sometimes atleast, be bloody, and decisions about intervention will generally be co-determined byextraneous (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 allsignificant objections against it) that our current world order could, with some good will onthe part of the rich countries, be modified so that it would exert a significant force towarddemocratization.


My other example concerns severe and widespread poverty in thecontext of extreme socioeconomic inequality. In the existing global order,which allocates property rights in natural resources territorially to thevarious states or their governments, hundreds of millions suffer severepoverty and malnutrition26 and all the associated, easily and cheaplycurable but still often deadly diseases.27 I have argued elsewhere that thissuffering could be abolished rather quickly through the introduction of aGlobal Resources Dividend (GRD).28 This proposal is modest in that itaccepts the existing state system and, in particular, leaves each nationalgovernment in control of the natural resources in its territory. Governmentsare required, however, to pay a proportional dividend on any resourcesthey decide to use or sell. The word “dividend” indicates that the proposalregards all human beings, including those whose access to resources is nowseverely restricted, as owning an inalienable stake in all limited naturalresources. As with preferred stock, this stake confers no control overwhether or how natural resources are to be used, but merely a claim toshare in their economic benefits. The GRD could cover all mineral wealthas well as the use of soil (in agriculture) and of air and water (e.g., fordischarging pollutants).

26 1.3 billion persons, that is 22 percent of the world’s population, live below theinter-national poverty line, which means that their daily income has less purchasing power thanone 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, onebillion (17 percent) are without adequate shelter, 1.3 billion (22 percent) are without accessto safe drinking water, two billion (33 percent) are without electricity and 2.6 billion (43percent) are without access to sanitation [UNDP:Human Development Report 1998(NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 49]. As a further consequence of such severepoverty, a quarter of all children between 5 and 14, 250 million in all, are compelled towork, often under cruel conditions in mines, quarries and factories as well as in agriculture,construction, prostitution, textile and carpet production: “At least 120 million childrenbetween the ages of 5 and 14 work full time. The number is 250 million, or more thantwice as many, if we include those for whom work is a secondary activity” (InternationalLabor Organization: http://www.ilo.org/public/english/270asie/feature/ch ild.htm).

27 About one third of all deaths, some 50,000 daily, are due to poverty-related causessuch as measles, pneumonia and diarrhea, which could easily be prevented throughadequate nutrition and safe drinking water or be cured through cheap rehydration packsand 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 TobyLinden (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.

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Proceeds from the GRD are to be used toward the emancipation of thepresent and future global poor so that finally all human beings will be ableto meet their basic needs with dignity. The point is then not merely toimprove the nutrition, medical care and sanitary conditions of the globalpoor, but also to ensure that they themselves can take care of their basicinterests and defend these effectively against the ambitions of politicallyand economically more powerful persons and groups. To achieve this, theymust be free from relations of personal dependence and be literate, theymust 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 inthe 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 poorestcitizens from taxes and debts, to improve their education, medical care andinfrastructure, and to offer them, or their organizations, land, capital, orlow-interest loans. So long as governments are prone to corruption, it willoften be more efficient to use other channels for the same purpose: inter-national organizations such as UNICEF, UNDP, WHO, or Oxfam, whichwould 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 needfor these organizations to be oriented exclusively toward poverty eradica-tion and hence to be insulated, as far as possible, from the strategic andeconomic 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 goelsewhere, where they will make a difference in reducing poverty anddisadvantage. The point of the GRD is, after all, to secure for the poorestpersons(not states) their fair share of the benefits from natural resources.

GRD payments will, indeed, not merely improve the conditions of theirintended beneficiaries, but indirectly also those of their governments andcompatriots. The rules of the GRD scheme should take advantage of thisfact. The more effectively a government reduces poverty in its country, themore of this country’s theoretical GRD share should be allocated to thiscountry and the more of this allocated share should be paid out directlyto its government. In this way the governments and economic elites of the

29 There are various studies showing how development aid often benefits those capableof 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 firmsof the donor country can profitably participate. For more on this theme and for relevantreferences, see the cover story “Why Aid is an Empty Promise,”The Economist, May 7,1994, pp. 13–14 and 21–24.


poor countries have a clear incentive to contribute to the success of theGRD regime. This incentive may not always be effective, because at leastsome of those in power will also have an interest in keeping the domesticpoor ignorant, impotent, dependent and exploitable. The incentive wouldnonetheless shift the political balance of forces in the right direction:With the GRD regime, reforms would be pursued more vigorously andin more countries, and would also succeed faster and more often, becausethis regime would stimulate a peaceful competition in effective povertyeradication among governments and international organizations.

IV

These brief remarks on two examples illustrate the following importantpoints. (1) The fulfillment of human rights in most countries is stronglyaffected not merely by national factors (culture, power structures, naturalenvironment, level of technical and economic development), but also byglobal ones. (2) Explanations in terms of national and global factors donot simply compete with each other. Only their synthesis:oneexplanationthat integrates factors of both kinds, can be a true explanation. This isso, because the effects of national factors are often strongly affected byglobal factors (andvice versa) and because global factors strongly shapethose national factors themselves (though the inverse influence is gener-ally slight). (3) The influences emanating from our global order are notnecessarily the way they are, but are co-determined by relatively minorand humanly controllable institutional features (such as the presence orabsence 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 withinnational societies (such as recently in Eastern Europe), change in ourglobal order has been glacial. In contrast to the colorful variety of nationalinstitutional schemes, our global order also has no simultaneous alterna-tives with which it might be compared. These circumstances explain thetendency to perceive this order as natural and inert. Great internationalvariations in the fulfillment of human rights tend furthermore to drawour attention to factors with regard to which countries differ. Through anexhaustive analysis of these factors, it seems, all phenomena relevant tothe 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 thisdiscrepancy. But an explanation that merely points to this difference leavesmany questions open. One question concerns the broader context which

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determines that national factors have these effects rather than others. It isquite possible that in the context of another global order the same nationalfactors, or the same international differences, would have quite anotherimpact on the fulfillment of human rights.30 Another question concernsthe explanation of the national factors themselves. It is quite possible that,within a different global order, national factors that tend to undermine thefulfillment of human rights would occur much less often or not at all.31

These considerations show that the global level of human rights fulfillmentcannot be explained in terms of national factors alone.

Our two examples thus illustrate the empirical background againstwhich 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 geneticvis-a-visenvironmental factors: Factors that are quite unimportant for explaining the observedvariation of a trait (e.g., height, IQ, cancer) in some population may be very importantfor explaining this trait’soverall level(frequency) in the same population. Suppose that,in some province, the observed variation in female adult height (54–60 inches) is almostentirely due to hereditary factors. It is still quite possible that the height differentials amongthese woman are minor compared to how much taller they all would be (67–74 inches) ifit had not been the case that, when they were growing up, food was scarce and boys werepreferred over girls in its distribution. Or suppose that we can predict quite accurately, onthe basis of genetic information, who will get cancer and who will not. It is still quitepossible that, in a healthy environment, cancer would hardly occur at all.

31 This point is frequently overlooked – by John Rawls, for example, when he attributesthe 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 andphilosophical 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 Lawof Peoples” in Stephen Shute/Susan Hurley (eds.),On Human Rights(New York: BasicBooks, 1993), p. 77]. This superficial explanation is not so much false as incomplete. Assoon as one asks (as Rawls does not),whyso many developing countries (“LDC’s”) haveoppressive 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 andcorrupt, because, with foreign loans and military aid, they can stay in power even withoutpopular support. And they are so often oppressive and corrupt, because it is, in light ofthe prevailing extreme international inequalities, far more lucrative for them to cater to theinterests 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/orstay in power only thanks to foreign support. And there are plenty of LDC politicians andbureaucrats who, induced or even bribed by foreigners, work against the interests of theirpeople:for the development of a tourist-friendly sex industry (whose forced exploitationof 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 hazardousproducts, wastes, or productive facilities,againstlaws protecting employees or the environ-ment, etc. It is perfectly unrealistic to believe that the corruption and oppression in theLDC’s, which Rawls rightly deplores, can be abolished without a significant reduction ininternational inequality.


rights, and of official declarations thereof, to ensure that all human beingshave secure access to certain vital goods. Many persons currently lacksuch security.32 We can assign responsibility for such insecurity to thegovernments and citizens of the countries in which it occurs; and doingso makes good sense. But leaving it at this does not make good sense. Forthe hope that these countries will, from the inside, democratize themselvesand abolish the worst poverty and oppression is entirely naïve so long asthe institutional context of these countries continues to favor so stronglythe emergence and endurance of brutal and corrupt elites. And the primaryresponsibility for this institutional context, for the prevailing world order,lies of course with the governments and citizens of the wealthy countries,because we maintain this order, with at least latent coercion, and becausewe, 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 repudiationof the common and ever so convenient conviction that human rights do notreach beyond national borders, that the human rights of foreigners (livingabroad) 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 andpeoples of the wealthy West tend to look down upon the sorry state ofhuman rights in many of the so-called less developed countries: Thisdisaster is the responsibility not only of their governments and populations,but also ours, in that we continuously impose upon them an unjust globalorder instead of working toward a reformed one in which the human rightsof all could be fully realized.34

32 This is so no matter which of the available substantive accounts of human rights onemight 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 ofPhilosophy89 (1992), pp. 79–98.

34 Participants in an institutional order will be differentially responsible for its moralquality: Influential and privileged participants should be willing to contribute more to themaintenance of a just, or the reform of an unjust social order. Moreover, we must heredistinguish responsibility from guilt and blame. That we share a negative responsibilityfor an injustice means that we contribute to it causally and that we can and should actdifferently. It does not follow from this that we are also guilty or blameworthy on accountof our conduct. For there might be applicable excuses such as, for instance, factual or moralerror or ignorance.

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V

Having shown that the global moral thesis embedded in the institutionalunderstanding of human rights makes sense, let me now say a little moreabout the advantages of this understanding. Some important advantagesemerge from the discussion ofU1–U3: The institutional understandingis more suitable for singling out the truly essential elements in humanquality of life and, in particular, avoids any conceptual connection withlegal rights. Even those who are hostile to a legal-rights culture can sharethe goal of establishing for all human beings secure access to certain vitalgoods (the objects of our human rights). In this section and the next, I willtry to lay out two further important advantages of the institutional under-standing through which it can facilitate agreement on the specification ofthat 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 andpolitical 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 politicalrights require only restraint, while social, economic and cultural rightsdemand positive efforts and costs. Rather, the division of negative andpositive duties now cuts across the various categories of rights: Everyperson has anegativeduty not to collaborate in the avoidable impositionupon others of an institutional order in which they lack secure access to theobjects of their human rights.35 Moreover, when our duty is to fulfill humanrights in my sense, then there is no straightforward correlation of meansand ends. In fact, there is no way of telling in advance what the fulfillmentof any given human right will require. In order to fulfill the classical civilright to freedom from inhuman and degrading treatment, for instance, thepolitical and economic elite of India may have to do much more than createand enforce appropriate criminal statutes. They may also need to establishadequate social and economic safeguards, ensuring perhaps that domesticservants are literate, know about their rights and options, and have someeconomic security in case of job loss. Conversely, in order to fulfill ahuman right to adequate nutrition, perhaps all that is needed is an effectivecriminal statute against hoarding of, and speculation in, foodstuffs.

These considerations greatly narrow the philosophical gap betweenthose who, like many Western governments, want to highlight civil

35 Being negative, this duty is of considerably greater weight than any positive duty wemay have to seek to improve the conditions of those upon whom such an order is imposedby others without our collaboration.


and political rights and those who, like most socialist and developingstates, want to single out social, economic and cultural rights for specialemphasis. Let me now show how the institutional understanding ofhuman rights would also greatly reduce the practical significance of suchcontroversies.

Suppose that only civil and political human rights are worthy ofthe name, that the social, economic and cultural rights set forth in theUniversal Declaration(foremost, of course, the much ridiculed rightto “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 fullyrealized. Our global order falls far short in this respect, and does so largelyon account of the extreme poverty and inequality it reproduces: In mostdeveloping countries, the legal rights of ordinary citizens cannot be effec-tively enforced. For many of these countries are so poor that they cannotafford properly trained judges and police forces in sufficient numbers; andin many of them social institutions as well as politicians, officials andgovernment agencies are in any case (partly through foreign influences) sothoroughly corrupted that the fulfillment of civil and political human rightsis not even seriously attempted. In those few developing countries wherethe legal rights of ordinary citizens can be effectively enforced, too manycitizens are under too much economic pressure, too dependent on others,or too uneducated to work on the enforcement of their rights. Thus, eventhe goal of fulfilling only the recognized civil and political human rights– if only they were interpreted in the light of §28 – suffices to support thedemand for global institutional reforms that would reduce global povertyand inequality.

Or suppose that only social, economic and cultural human rights areworthy of the name. Conjoining this view with my reading of §28, weget the moral assertion that every human being is entitled to an inter-national order in which his or her social, economic and cultural humanrights can be fully realized. Our global order falls far short in this respect:More than one billion persons today live in abject poverty, without themost elementary education and health care, and without reserves for evena minor emergency. Several ten thousand of them, mainly children andwomen, die every day from malnutrition and easily curable diseases. Thissuffering is in large part due to the fact that the global poor live undergovernments that mostly do very little to alleviate their deprivations andoften even contribute to them. The global poor are dispersed over some150 states, which are ruled, mostly, not by general and public laws, but

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by powerful persons and groups (dictators, party bosses, military officers,landlords), often sponsored or supported from abroad. In such states, theyare unable to organize themselves freely, to publicize their plight, or towork for reform through the political or legal system. Thus, even the goalof fulfilling only the usual social and economic human rights – if onlythey were interpreted in the light of §28 – suffices to support the call for aglobal order that would strongly encourage the incorporation of effectivecivil and political rights into national constitutions.36

I certainly did not mean to contend, in this section, that it makes nodifference which rights we single out as human rights. I merely wanted toshow that both the philosophical and practical-political importance of theactual controversies about this question would diminish, if human rightswere understood not in the conventional sense, but in mine: as moralclaims on social institutions. Even if we have rather diverse views aboutwhich goods should be placed under the protection of a conception ofhuman rights, we will then – provided we really care about the fulfillment

36 A global order could give such encouragement through centrally determinedeconomic (trade, loans, GRD payments) and diplomatic privileges and penalties. Strongersanctions, like embargoes and military interventions, should probably be triggered only incases of extreme oppression.

Some of the governments that profess allegiance solely to social, economic and culturalhuman rights maintain that (legal) civil and political rights are currently unnecessary intheir country: unhelpful, or even counterproductive (distracting and expensive). But mostof these governments would, I believe, concede that more extensive civil and political rightswould 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 Chinatoday would not work to the benefit of the Chinese poor, for whom the Party and thegovernment 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 andpolitical rights would help the poor and ethnic minorities to fend for themselves. Even moreprivately, 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 competitivepolitical system. Compare an analogous domestic case. A decent police officer, who caresdeeply about the suffering caused by crime, may see no good reason why she and her fellowofficers at her station should not just do everything they can to nail a suspect they know tobe guilty, without regard to procedural niceties. But would she also advocate a civil orderin which the police in general can operate without procedural encumbrances? She mustsurely 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 thenhave much greater incentives to try to join the police force. This example shows that onemay consistently believe of certain safeguards that their observance should be stronglyencouraged by social institutions and that they are unnecessary or even counterproductivein this or that particular case.


of human rights, and not about ideological propaganda victories – worktogether on the same institutional reforms rather than argue over how muchpraise or blame is deserved by this state or that.

VI

The other important advantage of the institutional understanding lies in itsprofound implications for the debate about the universal validity of humanrights. One often hears that human rights are the expression of a provin-cial, i.e., European, moral conception whose worldwide imposition wouldmanifest a new form of imperialism: “Do not the Chinese, the Indiansand the Zulus have traditions of their own from which they can constructtheir own moral conception – perhaps wholly without the individualisticconcept of rights? If you Westerners want to make a conception of humanrights the centerpiece of your political philosophy and realize it in yourpolitical institutions, then go ahead, by all means. But do leave others thesame freedom to define their values within the context of their own cultureand national discourse.”

Even if such admonitions are often put forward in bad faith,37 theynevertheless require a reasoned response. Once human rights are viewedas moral claims on global institutions, a novel and much more plausiblesuch response becomes available, as follows: When we think of humanrights as a standard for assessing only national institutions and/or govern-ments, then it makes sense to envision a plurality of standards for statesthat differ in their history, culture, population size and density, naturalenvironment, geopolitical context and stage of development. But when wethink of human rights as a standard for assessingglobal institutions, we canno longer accommodate international diversity in this way. There can be,at any given time, onlyoneglobal institutional order. If it is to be possibleto justify this global order to persons in all parts of the world and alsoto reach agreement on how they should be adjusted and reformed in thelight of new experience or changed circumstances, then we must aspire toa single, universalstandard which all persons and peoples of this worldcan 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’scandidate for Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, that torture is an acceptedpart of Argentinean culture or still are told by other Westerners that child prostitution isessential to the Thai way of life.

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moral issues. It may merely demand that global institutions be so designedthat, as far as possible, everyone has secure access to a few goods thatare 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 theprevalence of other values. Global institutions designed to encourage thefulfillment of human rights may affect the cultural life in various societiesor the popularity of the various religions. But this problem of collateraleffects is simply unavoidable: Any institutional order can be criticized onthe grounds that some values do not optimally thrive in it. Yet, we canmitigate the problem by choosing our moral standard in such a way thatthe institutional order it favors will allow a wide range of values to thrivelocally. The standard of human rights meets this condition, because it canbe 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 moralclaims on global institutions, there simply is no attractive, tolerant andpluralistic alternative to conceiving them as valid universally. While theworld can contain societies that are structured in a variety of ways, someliberal and some not, it cannot itself be structured in a variety of ways. Ifthe Algerians want their society to be organized as a religious state and wewant ours to be a liberal democracy, we can both have our way.38 But if theAlgerians want global institutions to be designed on the basis of the Koranand 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 institutionalorder,oneconception will necessarily prevail – through reason or force.There is no room for accommodation here, and, if we really care abouthuman rights, then we must be willing to support the global order theyfavor, even against those who, perhaps by appeal to other values, supportan alternative world order in which the objects of human rights would beless secure.

We might, of course, understand human rights as a standard forassessing only national (institutions and) governments and then accept thatother states use other such standards. But such “modesty” is pointless.For we cannot behave neutrally with regard to the future development ofthe global institutional order. Our political and economic decisions willcertainly 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 leastpossible. This is not to saythat weought to tolerate the national institutions of other countries no matter how unjustthey may be.


ourselves of any moral basis for the assessment and reform of our globalorder. And the only such basis that could be both plausible and capable ofwide international acceptance today is a conception of human rights.

VII

According to a widely held opinion, the content of international lawis settled by actual government conduct and rhetoric as recorded andinterpreted by the foremost international lawyers. By that criterion, myexplication of §28 and my theses about the concept and reach of humanrights may well be far-fetched. But my ambition here was not to satisfythat criterion – but rather to keep alive,against the living examples ofactual government conduct and rhetoric, an understanding of human rightsas moral claims on global institutions. Though marginalized, this under-standing is no less compelling today than it was fifty years ago. And itdoes not rule out viewing human rightsalso as moral claims on nationalinstitutions and on the conduct of governments and their officials.

Department of PhilosophyColumbia UniversityNew York, NY 10027USA

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