The Ethics of Solidarity and Human Rights: Insights from the World Council of Churches on United Nations Reform

Abstract

AbstractIn 2006, the World Council of Churches (WCC), at its 9th Assembly in Porto Alegre, Brazil, produced a “Statement on UN Reform” focusing on the need to prolong the quality of the United Nations’ work to fight for human rights, justice, and peace. This article attempts to show that this statement provides essential learning points on the ethics of solidarity through the relationship between the WCC and the UN. In its discussion of solidarity, the article builds on the work of Richard Rorty and Anselm K. Min. With reference to Rorty, the author discusses the notion of solidarity as the ability to expand the concept of “us” and the importance of reason in creating solidarity as a moral obligation; and Min’s work grounds the article’s discussion of the concept of twofold dialectic solidarity and “global solidarity of the different.” This article concludes that enlarging the circle of “us” as promoted by Rorty is possible when one acknowledges the reality of the twofold dialectic as presented by Min – that is, the dialectic of differentiation and the dialectic of interdependence. Both of these characteristics can be found in the WCC’s 2009 “Statement on UN Reform.”