Global Justice Debate Research Articles

US Military and Covert Action and Global Justice

US military intervention and covert action is a significant con- tributor to global injustice. Discussion of this contributor to global injustice is relatively common in social justice movements. Yet it has been ignored by the global justice literature in political philosophy. This paper aims to fill this gap by introducing the topic into the global justice debate. While the global justice debate has focused on inter-national and supra-national in- stitutions, I argue that an adequate analysis of US military and covert action must focus on domestic institutions of the US. I describe many such institu- tions including industry lobbying, the ubiquity of US military bases abroad, US programs for training foreign militaries, secrecy of the intelligence and military agencies, pliant news media and government propaganda.

Global Poverty, Human Rights and Correlative Duties

Does the fact that my actions cause someone to lack access to the objects of her human rights make me a human rights violator? Is behaving in such a way that we deprive someone of access to the objects of her human rights even when we could have avoided behaving in such a way, sufficient to maintain that we have violated her human rights? When an affluent country pursues domestic policies that will foreseeably cause massive deprivation abroad in order to improve its already prosperous economy, has this country violated the human rights of the very poor just by doing so? If international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization pursue policies that lead to an increase in the global poverty rate, are such organizations human rights violators? Can an individual undertaking certain actions in the market place that render insecure the access of the worst-off to the objects of their human rights be blamed for violating their rights?In this article I discuss the thesis that claims that whenever we cause, or contribute to the cause of, someone else’s lack of access to the objects of her human rights, we are human rights violators. I contend that this thesis, which seems to underpin the arguments of many cosmopolitan authors taking part of the global justice debate, is mistaken. In order to achieve this end, I analyze several alternative formulations of the causal thesis. My conclusion is that before it can be said that an agent has violated someone else's human rights, it has to be proven that this agent has caused, or contributed to the cause of, a state of affairs where someone lacks access to the object of some of her human rights, by infringing a duty not to do so. Furthermore, I maintain that this must be a perfect, as opposed to an imperfect, duty.

Global Distributive Justice: An Egalitarian Perspective

A good deal of political theory over the last fifteen years or so has been shaped by the realization that one cannot, and ought not, consider the distribution of resources within a country in isolation from the distribution of resources between countries. Thus, thinkers such as Charles Beitz and Thomas Pogge advocate extensive global distributive policies; others, such as Charles Jones and David Miller, explicitly reject the view that egalitarian principles of justice should apply globally and claim that national communities have only duties to help other countries be viable economically and meet the basic needs of their members. In the global justice debate, pretty much all parties acknowledge that we have obligations of distributive justice to for-eigners. The question is how strong those obligations are, and in particular whether national boundaries can make any difference to the distribution of resources between members of different countries.