World Poverty and Human Rights

Abstract

Despite a high and growing global average income, billions of human beings are still condemned to life long severe poverty, with all its attendant evils of low life expectancy, social exclusion, ill health, illiteracy, dependency, and effective enslavement. The annual death toll from poverty-related causes is around 18 million, or one-third of all human deaths, which adds up to approximately 270 million deaths since the end of the Cold War.

La limitació de la sobirania permanent sobre els recursos naturals

“…Simultaneously, it offers a response to global justice theorists and cosmopolitans who refuse territorial sovereignty and the institution of territorially demarcated political authority as a means of implementing the conditions of justice (Beitz, 1990;Barry, 1991;Pogge, 2002;Caney, 2005). Critical examination of theories of global justice is beyond the scope of this paper.…”

“…A theory of territorial rights, which includes the account of collective rights of the people over natural resources, is indeed the appropriate conceptual framework for understanding collective sovereign claims over resources. The theory of territorial rights emerged only very recently in response to several pressing issues, such as the need to find a resolution for territorial disputes or to respond to the claims to territory made by indigenous peoples (Ivison, 2002;Hendrix, 2008), and of course to the need to resolve the question of the claims to resources and their redistribution, domestically and globally (Beitz, 1990;Steiner, 1996;Pogge, 2002).…”

Global Taxes and International Taxation: Mirage and Reality

“…Such proposals date back at least to a proposal for a small tax on selected luxury goods such as TVs and dishwashers (UN 1970) and have been the focus of many studies of innovative ways to fund development finance over the years. Politicians and philosophers have put forth a wide variety of other ideas for global taxation, ranging from a 2003 proposal by the then President of Brazil for a tax on arms sales as way of financing a programme to end international hunger (Brzoska 2004) to a more recent proposal by an academic scholar for a global tax on resources (Pogge 2008).…”

“…For example, a Global Resources Dividend (GRD) has been suggested in the form of a tax on the extraction of natural resources, with the revenue being used for poverty relief (Pogge 2008). 62 For the last 50 years or so, special attention has been paid to the exploitation of what is often called the 'global commons', that is, territory not within national boundaries such as Antarctica, outer space, and, most extensively, the oceans.…”

Global governance of labour migration: From ‘management’ of migration to an integrated rights-based approach

“…In the realm of human rights theorising, of which labour and migrant rights are a subgroup, it is the contradictory role of the state-as oppressor or violator of rights, on the one hand, and the primary agent of justice or deliverer of rights, on the other-that constitutes a paradox (Pogge 2001;Kuper 2005b). This is the main reason social movement scholars argue that the state remains the principal target for political action (Grugel 2004;Tarrow 2006).…”