Global justice
Global justice is an issue in political philosophy arising from the concern about unfairness. It is sometimes understood as a form of internationalism. Global justice and international justice may be distinguished in that the latter is concerned with justice between nations or states whereas the former sees individual human beings as its main concern and seeks "to give an account of what fairness among such agents involves".
History
Norwegian philosopher Henrik Syse claims that global ethics and international justice in the western tradition form part of the tradition of natural law: the topic has been organised and taught within Western culture since Latin times of Middle Stoa and Cicero, and the early Christian philosophers Ambrose and Augustine. Syse statesContext
Per the American political scientist Iris Marion Young "A widely accepted philosophical view continues to hold that the scope of obligations of justice is defined by membership in a common political community. On this account, people have obligations of justice only to other people with whom they live together under a common constitution, or whom they recognize as belonging to the same nation as themselves." English philosopher David Miller agreed, that obligations only apply to people living together or that are part of the same nation.What we owe one another in the global context is one of the questions the global justice concept seeks to answer. There are positive and negative duties which may be in conflict with one's moral rules. Cosmopolitans, reportedly including the ancient Greek Diogenes of Sinope, have described themselves as citizens of the world. William Godwin argued that everyone has an impartial duty to do the most good he or she can, without preference for any one human being over another.
The broader political context of the debate is the longstanding conflict between local institutions: tribes against states, villages against cities, local communities against empires, or nation-states against the UN. The relative strength of the local versus the global has decreased over recorded history. From the early modern period until the twentieth century, the preeminent political institution was the state, which is sovereign, territorial, claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence in its territory, and exists in an international system of other sovereign states. Over the same period political philosophers' interest in justice focused almost exclusively on domestic issues: how should states treat their subjects, and what do fellow-citizens owe one another? Justice in relations between states, and between individuals across state borders was put aside as a secondary issue or left to international relations theorists.
Since the First World War, however, the state system has been transformed by globalization and by the creation of supranational political and economic institutions such as the League of Nations, the United Nations, and the World Bank. Over the same period, and especially since the 1970s, global justice became a more prominent issue in political philosophy. In the contemporary global justice debate, the general issue of impartiality centres on the moral significance of borders and of shared citizenship.
Central questions
Three related questions, concerning the scope of justice, justice in the distribution of wealth and other goods, and the institutions responsible for justice, are central to the problem of global justice. When these questions are addressed in non-ideal circumstances, they are part of the "ethics of process", a branch of political ethics.Scope
Are there, as the moral universalist argues, objective ethical standards that apply to all humans regardless of culture, race, gender, religion, nationality or other distinguishing features? Or do ethical standards only apply within such limited contexts as cultures, nations, communities, or voluntary associations?A Moral Conception of Social Justice is only Universalistic if:
- It subjects all persons to the same system of fundamental moral principles
- These principles assign the same fundamental moral benefits and burdens to all: and
- These fundamental benefits and burdens do not privilege or disadvantage certain groups arbitrarily.
Distributive equality
Institutions
What institutions—states, communes, federal entities, global financial institutions like the World Bank, international NGOs, multinational corporations, international courts, a world state—would best achieve the ideal of global justice? How might they gain our support, and whose responsibility is it to create and sustain such institutions? How free should movement between the jurisdictions of different territorial entities be?Thomas Pogge says that states cannot achieve global justice by themselves: "It has never been plausible that the interests of states — that is, the interests of governments — should furnish the only considerations that are morally relevant in international relations." Organizations like the World Trade Organization have advocated free trade but allow protectionism in affluent developed countries to this point according to Pogge and Moellendorf.
Public polls have shown that there is support for the International Criminal Court. 130 Civil Society groups in Africa have recognized that the ICC operates unevenly but in the interest of reaching global justice remain supportive of it. In Cambodia the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, some observers had said "the court will not truly be effective unless it can properly address the crucial issue of how reparations will be given to victims of the regime" while others supported it, "I think the case is going to be the most important trial in Cambodian history." said Youk Chhang the director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, One worldwide institution, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, responsible for creating agreements on climate change has been criticized for not acting fast enough. Anne Petermann and Orin Langelle of the Global Justice Ecology Project have stated that in 2007 industry insiders were given preferential treatment over "civil society observers and delegates from poorer countries whose visas were delayed."
Minimum criteria
has contended that an "institutional order can not be just if it fails to meet the minimal human rights standard". That standard is based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Mathias Risse has argued that an injustice is not present "While indeed 1.2 billion people in 1998 lived below the poverty line of $1.08 PPP 1993 per day, it is also true that there is now less misery than ever before," Less Misery is his standard for justice. He wrote in 2005, that "progress made over the last 200 years is miraculous".Main positions
Five main positions—realism, particularism, nationalism, the society of states tradition, and cosmopolitanism —have been taken by contributors to the global justice debate.Realism
Realists, such as Charles Yeo, Hashim Tilab argue that there are no global ethical standards, and that to imagine that there are is a dangerous fantasy. States are the main actors in an international anarchy, and they either will or should always attempt to act rationally in their own interests. So, in response to the three central questions above: moral universalism is either false, or merely says that nothing is forbidden to any state in pursuit of its interests. There is no obligation to help the poor, unless doing so helps to further a state's strategic aims. And the state system is taken as the fundamental and unchallengeable global institutional arrangement. The theoretical roots for this realist view are found in the tradition including Machiavelli and extending back to Glaucon's challenge to Socrates. On this approach, relations between states exist in what Charles Beitz describes as a Hobbesian state of nature, and the approach is realist in the sense that it advocates viewing states as they "really are", rather than portraying them in idealistic circumstances or according to their purported ideals.Particularism
Particularists, such as Michael Walzer and James Tully, argue that ethical standards arise out of shared meanings and practices, which are created and sustained by discrete cultures or societies. Moral and social criticism is possible within the boundaries of such groups, but not across them. If a society is egalitarian, for instance, its citizens can be morally wrong, and can meaningfully criticise each other, if they do not live up to their own egalitarian ideals; but they cannot meaningfully criticise another, caste-based society in the name of those ideals. "A given society is just if its substantive life is lived in a certain way—that is, in a way faithful to the shared understandings of members." It is unjust if not. Each society has its own, different standards, and only those inside it are bound by those standards and can properly criticise themselves. So, moral universalism is false, because objective ethical standards vary between cultures or societies. We should not apply the same criteria of distributive justice to strangers as we would to compatriots. Nation-states that express their peoples' shared and distinctive ethical understandings are the proper institutions to enable local and different justices.For Charles Blattberg, however, there exists a particularist approach to global justice, one based upon what he calls a "global patriotism".