Projects and Themes > Cross-Cutting Issues > Governance, rule of law and government > Transnational obligations and economic and social rights
Status: Published
Transnational obligations and economic and social rights (2003)
Introduction
When do wealthier societies have a duty to help much poorer ones? What are the limits of a government’s obligations to people in other countries? To what extent do a government’s duties abroad take priority over responsibilities to its own citizens? Are such obligations merely ethical or do they include a legal dimension?
In considering such questions, this report draws on human rights law to strengthen more familiar appeals to ethics and self-interest, and provides additional tools that citizens and officials alike can use to argue for more dynamic and effective international action to end poverty and injustice.
The publication includes a preface by Mary Robinson.
Research team
Biographical affiliation was accurate when research took place.
Research director
David Petrasek, Research Director, ICHRP, 1998-2002. For more information on this project, please contact Fairouz El Tom, Outreach and Publications Coordinator, ICHRP.
From January 2003 Robert Archer, Executive Director, ICHRP, further revised and edited the report.
Advisors
Michael Freeman, Professor, Department of Government, Essex University; Director, MA in the Theory and Practice of Human Rights.
Dharam Ghai, Advisor, International Institute of Labour Studies, Geneva.
Mia Horn af Rantzien, Secretary, GLOBKOM, a Swedish Parliamentary Committee set up to examine Swedish development aid policy.
Paul Hunt, Member, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; Professor, Department of Law, Essex University.
Arjun Sengupta, Professor, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; Independent Expert on the Right to Development, United Nations Human Rights Commission.
Researchers
Christopher Boyd, Fulbright scholar currently pursuing graduate studies in philosophy at the University of Geneva.
Martin Brookes, Economist, Economic Relations Adviser, Amnesty International.
Sigrun Skogly, Law Lecturer, University of Lancaster.
Anne-Marie Smith, consultant.
Zaki Wahhaj, graduate in economics, Yale University; Doctorate Candidate in development economics, MIT.
Documents
Report
Working papers
Extra-national Obligations towards Economic and Social Rights
•
en
Extra-national Obligations: A Survey of Moral Philosophy
•
en
Global Public Goods: Arguments for Collective Action
•
en
Human Rights and Global Social Equitability (Speech)
•
en
Justiciability of Economic Social and Cultural Rights - Relevant Case Law
•
en
Funders
Links
International Development Research Centre (IDRC)
International Labour Organisation (ILO) Special Action Program against Forced Labour (SAP-FL)
Realizing Rights - The Ethical Globalization Initiative
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
United Nations Research Institute for Social Development
Bibliography
Barret, Scott. “Montreal Versus Kyoto: International Cooperation and the Global Environment”. In Global Public Goods: International Cooperation in the 21st Century. Edited by Inge Kaul, Isabelle Grunberg and Marc Stein. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Bauer, Joanne and Bell, Daniel, eds. The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Bell, Daniel. Communitarianism and its Critics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.
“Earth”, The Guardian, August 2002.
Hoffman, Stanley. Duties Beyond Borders. New York: Syracuse University Press, 1981.
Hopkins, Raymond. “Anomie, System Reform and Challenges to the UN System”. In International Organizations and Ethnic Conflict. Edited by Milton Esman, and Shibley Telhami. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995.
Ignatieff, Michael and Gutmann, Amy eds. Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. The Responsibility to Protect. Ottawa, Ontario: International Development Research Centre, 2001.
International Council on Human Rights Policy. Beyond Voluntarism – Human Rights and the Developing International Obligations of Companies. Geneva: ICHRP, 2002.
——— Ends and Means – Human Rights Approaches to Armed Groups. Geneva: ICHRP, 2000.
——— Human Rights Crises – NGO Responses to Military Intervention. Geneva: ICHRP, 2002.
——— Journalism, Media and the Challenge of Human Rights Reporting. Geneva: ICHRP, 2002.
——— Local Perspectives – Foreign Aid to the Justice Sector. Geneva: ICHRP, 2000.
——— Local Rule — Decentralisation and Human Rights. Geneva: ICHRP, 2002.
——— Taking Duties Seriously: Individual Duties inInternational Human Rights Law. Geneva: ICHRP, 1999.
Jones, Charles. Global Justice: Defending Cosmopolitanism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Kanbur, Ravi. A note on Cross-Border Externalities, Internation Public Goods and Their Implications for Aid Agencies, First Draft, March 2001.
Kaul, Inge, Isabelle Grunberg and Marc Stein, eds. Global Public Goods: International Cooperation in the 21st Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Kingsbury, Benedict. “Sovereignty and Inequality”, European Journal of International Law 9, 1998.
Kuper, Andrew. “More Than Charity: Cosmopolitan Alternatives to the ‘Singer Solution,’” Ethics and International Affairs 16,1, 2002.
Lapidoth, Ruth. Autonomy: Flexible Solution to Ethnic Conflicts. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1996.
Nadya Sadat, Leila. The International Criminal Court and the Transformation of International Law: Justice for the New Millennium. Forthcoming.
Phillipp, Bjorn. Poverty — World Bank and UNDP Concepts. Berlin: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit, 1999.
Pogge, Thomas. “Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty”, Ethics 103, October 1992.
——— “Human Rights and Human Responsibilities”. In Transnational Politics and Deliberative Democracy. Edited by Ciaran Cronin and Pablo De Greiff. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002.
Raworth, Kate. “Measuring Human Rights,” Ethics and International Affairs 15, 1, 2001.
Rothchild, Donald. “Responding to Africa’s Post-Cold War Conflicts”. In Africa in the New International Order: Rethinking State Sovereignty and Regional Security. Edited by Edmond Keller, and Donald Rothchild. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996.
Schachter, Oscar. “International Human Rights”, Hague Academy of International Law, Receuils des Cours, 1982.
Sen, Amartya. Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Shaw, Brent D. “Loving the Poor”, The New York Review of Books XLIX, 18, November 21, 2002, pp. 42-45.
Singer, Peter. One World: The Ethics of Globalisation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
——— “Famine, Affluence and Morality” and “The Singer Solution to World Poverty”. Reprinted in Writings on an Ethical Life. New York: Ecco Press, 2000.
Taylor, Charles. “Conditions of an Unforced Consensus on Human Rights,” In The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights. Edited in Joanne Bauer, and Daniel Bell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
UNDP. Human Development Report 2002. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Vincent, R. J. Human Rights and International Relations. Cambridge: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1986.
Walzer, Michael. Spheres of Justice: A Defence of Pluralism and Equality. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983.
World Health Organization, Report of World Health Organization Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, Geneva: World Health Organisation, 2002.