Journal Comment: Are We Violating the Human Rights of the World’s Poor?

Thomas Pogge, Yale University

Answering the title question requires explicating its meaning and then examining the empirical evidence. The first task is begun in this introductory Part I, which gives a rough account of the two groups whose relation is to be queried: the world‘s poor and the ―we‖ addressed in the piece. Part II then proposes a specific understanding of what it means to violate human rights. I will argue that a human rights violation involves non-fulfillment of human rights as well as a specific causal relation of human agents to such non-fulfillment. Importantly, this understanding of a human rights violation includes not only interactional violations (perpetrated directly by human agents) but also institutional violations (caused by human agents through the imposition of institutional arrangements). Based on the explication of the question in Parts I and II, Part III goes on to consider some of the evidence relevant to answering the question. This evidence favors the conclusion that there exists a supranational institutional regime that foreseeably and avoidably produces massive human rights deficits. By collaboratively imposing this institutional scheme, we are indeed violating the human rights of the world‘s poor.