Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-xfwgj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-19T01:56:40.787Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

9 - Human rights as foreign policy imperatives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Erin Kelly
Affiliation:
Tufts University
Deen K. Chatterjee
Affiliation:
University of Utah
Get access

Summary

INTERNATIONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

In this chapter I will argue for a broad conception of moral responsibility with respect to human rights. This conception concerns requirements of justice that extend across borders. I will defend a principle of International Responsibility for Human Rights, according to which widespread human rights abuses require an international response.

Under this principle, the particular obligations that individual states incur will vary as follows: all states are morally prohibited from profiting in their dealings with regimes that violate human rights. Further, a state that is directly implicated causally in human rights violations in another state has a special obligation to support international efforts to halt those violations and to make reparations. This may include shouldering the costs of intervention across borders. And finally, as benefiting members of an international community, wealthier states are obligated to offer aid to poor states, when doing so will further the cause of human rights. I will not explore in any detail strategies states ought to take in order to satisfy the positive obligations the principle imposes. I focus instead on arguments that aim to show that societies in crisis must be brought up to a decent minimum. A reasonable consensus on human rights defines that minimum.

The argument I develop thus addresses the content of human rights as well as their function within international relations.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Ethics of Assistance
Morality and the Distant Needy
, pp. 177 - 192
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×