ThePhilosophyofForeignAid:AQuestionoftheRighttoaHuman Minimum

ThePhilosophyofForeignAid:AQuestionoftheRighttoaHumanMinimum

byHenryOderaOruka

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POLITICAL CHRONICLE

THE PHILOSOPHY OF FOREIGN AID: A QUESTION OF THE RIGHT TO A HUMAN MINIMUM

H. Odera Oruka
A few cautionary remarks are necessary if this paper is to limit the severe censure that it is likely to attract. These remarks are particularly aimed at specialists in the field of economics. In modern times it appears that mainstream professional economists treat their subject as a special aspect of positive science. Taken in this sense, economics as a subject becomes what John Keynes described as a a body of systematized knowledge concerning what is i.e. economics becomes one of the pure objective empirical sciences.1 And as pure empirical science economics is seen as a subject which philosophers are too innocent to discuss. But Keynes also recognized what he termed normative or regulative science, i.e. a body of systematized knowledge concerning what ought to be. And there are many scholars including some professional economists who hold the position that economics as a discipline (formerly known as political economy) also falls into the realm of normative sciences even if there is an aspect of it which must remain purely positivistic. At the core of normative science is ethics which is a very important branch of philosophy. In line with the distinction between positive science and normative science there is (or there ought to be) the distinction between positive economics and normative economics. The former is economics as a pure empirical science with its own laws and methods which are best known to the experts and professional economists. The latter presupposes the existence and findings of positive economics but strives to utilize such findings for recommending ethically appropriate actions and the rational reorganization and redistribution of resources. Many have come to refer to this branch of economics as welfare economics. The justification for this paper lies in the fact that although philosophers may be too ignorant or innocent concerning matters of positive economics, they definitely should have something important to say concerning matters of welfare economics. Experts in economics should not close the door to the non-experts, for the subject is too important in the everyday life of everybody to be left simply to the monopoly of the experts. Here one may recall the words of Milton Friedman:
Familiarity with the subject matter of economics breeds contempt for special knowledge about it.2

This is perhaps an exaggeration on the part of Friedman who is himself a renowned economist. But it at least emphasizes the idea that in the field of economics, as in
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many other fields (philosophy included), the experts have much to learn from the non-experts. Now, the issue of foreign aid falls within the field of normative economics. Among the problems of normative economics are ethical questions concerning matters of the legitimate acquisition and transfer of wealth as well as the rectification of past and present moral injustices. Such injustices can be national (that is, restricted to a given nation). But they can also be global i.e. international in their scope. This paper is restricted to a philosophical conjecture on the ethical questions that underly the practice of foreign aid in the world today. Self-Preservation and Two Principles of International Justice It is a well known fact that nation-states, like human beings, claim a right to self-preservation. And this claim often amounts to a claim that they have an absolute right to preserve their given territorial boundaries and the resources therein against any external interference. Such an interference can be a military intervention from outside. But it can also be a humane demand on one state by a people of other nations that they (the people) have a right to expect help from that (foreign) state. I will refer to the first type of interference as a military interference and the second type as economic interference. One significant view is that neither of these kinds of interference can be justified. They cannot be justified because, the argument runs, they interfere with two basic principles of international justice. The two principles are (1) the principle of territorial sovereignty and (2) the principle of national supererogation. The principle of territorial sovereignty gives power and legitimacy to every state to expel, if necessary by force, any external interference with her borders, resources and internal affairs. The same principle, it is expected, imposed an obligation on any people or state to respect the independence of all states. It is expected here that every state, being sovereign, is equal to every other regardless of its size. The principle of national supererogation protects a state from blame if it remains indifferent to the needs of those outside its borders, however needy and starving such people may be. Yet it at the same time inspires a nation to demand showers of praise if it decides to offer foreign aid: Supererogation in this context is the claim that states are not obliged to aid others, but should one state decide to help another, then the donor has absolute right to decide the terms and time of the donation.
International Charity On the basis of the above two principles of international justice, aid from rich states to poor ones is often viewed, as one philosopher puts it, as a form of international charity but not as a fulfillment of global justice. 3 It is therefore important to note that charity is generally treated as one of the basic ethical principles in the practice of foreign aid. The claim that foreign aid is a form of international charity is something which, in modern time, attracts the acceptance of donors rather than that of the recipients. There are, however, some arguments which have been advanced to justify, or at least vindicate, the position of the recipients. I will here sketch out two such arguments.
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International Trade and Historical Rectification The first argument is that the necessity and intricacy of modern international trade does in itself ensure that there will be economic and social-culture exchanges between nations. Rich nations which give aid to the poor ones do so as either a means of securing beneficial trade (or ideological) zones and agreements from the recipients, or aid is a disguised form of price or bribe the donors pay for what they actually thought to gain from the recipients. And that in actual fact the aid donors gain far more than the aid they give: so the truth is that international trade between rich and poor nations is characterized by the reality of Unequal Exchange.4 Hence, the poor countries need to have no illusion that aid from the rich nations is a favour. Packages of aid, the argument goes, are signs or results of unequal exchange and unequal development within the monolithic system of world trade. So those countries which give aid are heavily dependent on the recipients for raw materials, markets and capital investments. The second argument utilizes the concept of rectification: it is the view that the great social and economic gap which divides the rich countries of the North from the underdeveloped countries of the South is due largely to past and present policies of the former. The clearest historical example of the cause of this gap, it is argued, is colonialism. So then it is by way of rectifying historical mistakes and injustices such as those of colonialism that the North aids or should aid the South.5

Global Justice and the Need for the Fourth Principle It appears then that principles which justify aid or loans from rich nations boil down to these three principles: (1) the law of international trade, (2) the principle of historical rectification and (3) the maxim of charity. But not all the three principles need to be presupposed in any one case of one nation aiding another. Here, I wish to search for a fourth principle. And I do so on the ground that none of the three principles or even all of them together is adequate ethical rationale for global justice in our time. I do not pretend to believe that we have anything in the world today that can significantly be treated as global justice. Global justice is still only an ideal as far as nations are concerned. What obtains among nations is international justice rather than global justice. And the difference between the two is well explained in Lars Ericcsons Two Principles of International Justice:
International justice, I take it, is basically a relation that holds between two or more independent nations, states or societies. Global justice, in contrast, is basically a relation that holds between human or sentient beings within something called the global society. To formulate a theory of international justice is to lay down conditions for law of nations. To formulate a theory of global justice is to lay down conditions for a just distribution of the worlds goods and resources among its population.6

What we need then is a principle which would form a base for an ethics that can help ensure the practice of global justice to the inhabitants of the globe regardless of the question of racial or geographical origins and political affiliations. To justify the need for such a principle it is necessary to show how any or all
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of the three principles sketched earlier fail(s) to be an adequate base for global justice. We need a principle which would make it ethically obligatory for affluent nations to aid poor ones as an unqualified moral duty for humanity, and for the latter to receive such aid without feeling a sense of self-pity. Such a principle should also help to invalidate the use of national supererogation in the relations between nations without thereby discrediting the principle of national sovereignty and equality of nations. It should also be a principle from which any nation (however independent) that treats its citizens as subhumans would legitimately call for humane external interference in her internal affairs. Currently nations which give aid to others do so as a matter of supererogatory action i.e. as an altruistic self-sacrifice on their part. Altruistic self-sacrifice exceeding the requirements of duty is the core of supererogation.7 Those nations which receive aid or loans especially the technologically underdeveloped nations often feel (or are made to feel) a sense of self-pity. And none of the three principles so far given as a justification for foreign aid liberates them from this humiliation. The humiliation is psychologically characterized by feelings of the following kind: if aid is a form of international trade, why do poor countries come out on the disadvantaged side of unequal exchange? If on the other hand they are the rectification of historical mistakes done to the recipients in the past, then why were they so weak as to allow such mistakes? If, however, they are a form of international charity, then we are back to the position where donors are protected by the principle of national supererogation. Of the three principles, however, the most attractive is that of rectification. But rectification cannot be a universal policy for all kinds of aid. First, it implies that any affluent nation which can prove to have been no party to the past historical injustices has no obligation to offer aid. In actual fact, there are today many affluent countries that would wish to prove such facts and exonerate themselves from the burden of foreign aid. Secondly, the principle of rectification implies that any country whose current state of poverty is not due to past injustices done to her by any other nation would, by this very fact, fail to have a legitimate claim for receiving aid as rectification of past injustices. For the sake of global justice we therefore need a fourth principle. Such a principle should be one which gives the base for the justification of aid from one state to another as a global ethical obligation to humanity, but not as a mere historical rectification or international charity. Obligation to humanity calls forth the preservation of the existence and rights of human beings and also, it seems, the preservation of the existence and rights of states. So by way of introducing the new principle I will examine the concept of selfpreservation of (1) persons and (2) states.
The Preservation of Persons Self-preservation is a basic necessity for an individual if he is to enjoy any other right. And self-preservation is actually the object of ones right to life. To have life for the individual entails satisfying needs which sustain existence. The most basic of these needs are physical security, health and subsistence. And rights that aim at ensuring the fulfillment of these needs are rightly treated by certain scholars
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as human, basic or universal rights i.e. rights whose fulfillment cannot justly be dependent upon any qualities on which persons or nations may differ.8 These rights are necessary basic requirements for human survival and development anywhere and for the exercise of the functions of a person. So Henry Shue writes that basic rights, then, are everyones minimum reasonable demands upon the rest of humanity. They are the rational basis for justified demands the denial of which no self-respecting person can reasonably be expected to accept. Shue defines right as the rational basis for a justified demand that the substance of the right in question be socially guaranteed i.e. that some other people make some arrangements so that one will still be able to enjoy the substance of the right even if actually, especially if it is not within ones power to arrange on ones own to enjoy the substance of the right.9 And basic rights are important and basic, he argues, because their protection is essential for the enjoyment of other rights. The three basic rights referred to (the rights of life, health and subsistence) are human rights because they are rights of the individual as a member of the human species but not merely as a citizen of a given state. They are also universal because their preservation is essential for the preservation of the value of humanity in the universe: necessary that is, for ensuring a humanized life on Earth.
Basic Rights as Inherent Rights of Persons Henry Shue introduces the concept of inherent necessity to describe the substance of a basic right such as security or subsistence. Inherent necessity is not just a means to fulfill a right; it is a part of the definition of what is meant by having the right of assembly is that one can assemble in physical security. . . If they do not have guarantees that they can assemble in security, they have not been provided with assembly as a right.10 I wish to refer to the three basic rights (the rights to physical security, health and subsistence) as the inherent rights of persons. They are inherent because for any individual to be able to exercise the function of a person (the function of being a capable moral agent), he needs at least the fulfillment of these rights as a necessary condition. Whatever we may take as the meaning of the term person, there is a general agreement among philosophers that a person must have characteristics which are additional to those qualities which are sufficient for the definition of a human being, i.e. a member of homo sapiens. So by a person I do not just refer to the ususal requirements for performing the function of being a member of homo sapiens.11 For example, an individual who has lost all the standard guarantees for his physical security and been exposed to threats against his life may still be human and alive. But if he is aware of this danger his immediate concern is likely to be with survival at all costs. Like a drowning individual, he is likely to cling to any person or object nearby, however irrational or useless that may be for his survival. In a situation of this sort, we cannot reasonably expect the victims to act as a rational and selfconscious being. Those starving to death or who are molested by painful mortal diseases are also likely to loose their capacity for a rational and self-conscious life. It is important, indeed it is morally necessary, that such people are helped against their misfortune
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if we can. But it would be irrational for us to treat them as moral agents capable of freely negotiating a fair business deal with us. Suppose, for example, a billionaire from some country in Northern Europe or U.S. visits starving villagers in, say, Chad. And imagine that the village has great mineral deposits (known or unknown to the villagers; it does not matter). Suppose the billionaire in question offers to provide all the villagers for several years with plenty of food and water imported from abroad. And in return for this generosity he proposes that they sign a deal with him authorizing him as the sole owner for 99 years of whatever mineral deposit there may be below the land. Given their living conditions, it would not be surprising if the villagers accept the deal, and for us it would be cruel to expect them to do otherwise. The deal, if struck, would be one between a party (the billionaire) with all the means to be rational and self-conscious (although billionaires arent necessarily rational) and the other party (the villagers) which has lost even the very minimum for a rational life. This example is imaginary. But in actual practice there are affluent nations which use their wealth and power to make deals with small starving nations, deals which are grossly unfair to the latter. For all human beings to function with a significant degree of rationality and self-awareness, they need a certain minimum amount of physical security, health care, and subsistence. Let us for simplicity refer to this minimum amount as the human minimum. Below this minimum, one may still be human and alive. But one cannot successfully carry out the functions of a moral agent or engage in creative activity. Access to at least the human minimum is necessary (even if not sufficient) for one to be rational and self-conscious. Without it, man is either a brute or a human vegetable. Man looses the very minimum necessary for a decent definition of human being.
The Right to a Human Minimum Rights are sometimes referred to as absolute or prima facie. They are absolute if they are basic and cannot rationally be compromised for the sake of any other right. In other words, rights are absolute if they cannot legitimately be violated. Rights are prima facie if, however important they may be, they can justifiably be overridden by other rights or by something of a greater moral significance. Rights, whether absolute or prima facie, can still be legal or moral. Rights are legal if they are rights to be enforced by a given legal system, by the sanctions of law. But rights are moral if they ought to be enforced by an ethos arising from the prevailing moral system. Moral rights are universal if the obligation to blame their violation or to ensure their fulfillment is a duty of every person, no matter his race, country or beliefs. Thus, universal moral rights are in rem rights, not in personam rights.12 The former oblige everyone who is in a position to abide by them. The latter oblige some particular nameable person(s). Universal moral rights oblige every person, every moral agent, to abide by them. The most prominent of these rights are the rights to life, health and subsistence.
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These, as we have explained previously, are inherent rights of persons. To deny them is to deny one the very minimum for the function of being a person it is to deny one the right to self-preservation. The inherent rights of persons ought to be safeguarded by the law of any state worth its name. Why ought? Because the minimum purpose of law is to ensure order. And there can be no order for those lacking the mean or right to self-preservation. We had earlier used the phrase the right to a human minimum to stand for the expression the inherent rights of persons. This right is a universal moral right. It thus imposes an obligation on every person regardless of his race or state. This obligation requires that every moral agent has it as a duty to ensure the enforcement of the right to human minimum. Right here is taken as a reverse of duty. If I have a right to something, it means somebody must have the duty to observe that right. The right to a human minimum is an absolute right: there is morally no other right of persons which can justifiably compromise its enforcement. Its fulfillment is the basic starting point for the exercise (as Henry Shue observes) of any other right. Thus, the right to human minimum is the basis for a justified demand by anybody that the world (not just his society) has the duty to ensure that he is not denied a chance to live a basically healthy life. And should he find himself in a situation denying him this right, he will be tempted to disown himself as a moral agent. And if he does this, the world will have no adequate moral ground for expecting such a person to abide by anybody elses right to anything, including even those rights that are protected by the principle of territorial sovereignty and national supererogation. Aid from affluent nations to those countries suffering object poverty should be given on the understanding that people from the affluent nations are fulfilling the global ethical obligation of enforcing the latters right to a human minimum. National Sovereignty, Territorial Sovereignty and the Right to a Human Minimum We have claimed that the right to a human minimum is absolute. It is absolute from the standpoint that to deny it is to deny one the status of personhood since, as we have tried to argue, this right is a composite of the three basic inherent rights of persons. And a right is inherent if its denial or non-fulfillment eradicates the essential function or creative power of its claimant. Hence, to deny someone the right to a human minimum is to deny him necessary conditions for a decent definition of a person. All the arguments about the human minimum were centered around the individual. But now a relevant and a further question would be about the inherent rights of states. Are there any rights of a state which are such that their denial would amount to the denial of the sovereignty of the state in question? If there is such a right it appears that all states would wish to claim it as an absolute right a right that cannot legitimately be violated and one that any state has no duty to compromise for any pressure, including even the pressure for global or international justice. It is generally assumed that the principle of sovereign equality between states implies that every state has a right to its own national sovereignty and that this right is an absolute right. What, however, is perplexing is that the right to national
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sovereignty is often confused with the right to territorial sovereignty. And this confusion amounts to the wrongful assertion of national supererogation as an overriding principle of international relations. Here we wish to show that national sovereignty is a different principle from the principle of territorial sovereignty. And while the former may confer an inherent or absolute right, the latter does not. But if the principle of territorial sovereignty does not confer an absolute right to any state, then the concept of national supererogation fails to be an overriding principle in the requirement of global justice and thus ought to be so even in the practice of international justice. Once the separation of nationality (cultural identity) and territory (geographical identity) is made, it becomes important to reassess the significance of the right to a human minimum in connection with the concept of sovereignty. I wish first to restate the essential components of the principle of national sovereignty. In doing this I will be unconventional. So I will appear to some people to have ignored some of the factors they customarily treat as necessary in the definition of national sovereignty. However, such factors are most likely to be mere signs or claims of national sovereignty rather than sufficient or even necessary requirements for the definition of national sovereignty. Take, for example, the practice of hosting a national flag, claiming a territory or forming a government in exile. It is not possible to establish that a national sovereignty exists or does not exist simply by the appeal to such events. National sovereignty can be framed as follows:
A people self-determined to be a nation-state governed by one of their number as sovereign (no matter of what kind) oblige themselves and everybody else to recognize that self-determination and treat its subjects in the community of nations as being morally and politically equal to any other people governed by a sovereign of whatever longevity and power.

Self-determination gives people self-identity. And the two together with a sovereign as the symbol of this selfhood constitute the substance of the right to national sovereignty. Territorial sovereignty is the claim that a people organized into a nation-state has a right to the territory and resources that it controls, assuming that such have been legitimately acquired.13 One could very well conceive of a people with the legitimate right of statehood but without any control of a territory or resources. There are many sovereign governments in the world today which for economic, military or cultural reasons have no control of the use of the resources within their own territories. Yet, it would be absurd to infer that the people living under such governments have lost their national sovereignty. They still have national sovereignty, but they have lost their territorial sovereignty. A people may also have a territorial sovereignty without a national sovereignty: Until 1949 the Supreme Court of Canada had the Privy Council of United Kingdom as the Ultimate Court of Appeal. Thus, in our definition, the Canadians had, by this practice, territorial sovereignty but they had no national sovereignty. The principle of territorial sovereignty is a principle about regional (geographical) possession. The right which flows from it is a right to possession, a right to property. The principle of national sovereignty is a principle of the self-determination of a
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people to be a cultural-cum-political body, a body whose formal status is that it is ultimately answerable to itself and to no other body. Its actual status may be a different matter altogether. Thus, one can question a peoples territorial sovereignty without questioning its national sovereignty. A people whose occupation of a region is illegitimate may still rightly be entitled to exist as a nation-state. This position, for example, lends support to those who recognize Israels right to exist but refuse to grant that Israel has a right to occupy the land currently known as Israel. Thus, to deny or limit a peoples right to territorial sovereignty is not to deny or limit its right to national sovereignty. Now, while the right to national sovereignty may be claimed as absolute, the right to territorial sovereignty, being a property right, cannot be an absolute right. All rights to property basically arise from the principle of first occupation. But this principle should rationally always be subjected to the common sense Proviso that possession, even if legitimate, must not be inviolable if it worsens the life of others. If my possession, for example, sinks others below the human minimum or denies them a basically healthy life, then this would rationally be a good justification against that possession. National supererogation is a corollary of territorial sovereignty: the people having a territorial sovereignty has the right to do whatever it wishes with possessions. And it is claimed that such a right is absolute. Our response, however, is that since this right arises from a right to property (and as possession cannot confer absolute right), national supererogation cannot be an absolute right. If a people have no absolute right to their territory and resources, how can they have an absolute right to utilize them in any manner they wish? Territorial sovereignty and national supererogation do give a nation a prima facie but not an absolute right to her territory and wealth. Being a prima facie right this right can legitimately be overridden by something of a greater moral significance. And in our times, it seems that sending food to starving millions, say, in Ethiopia of Bangladesh is of a greater moral significance than, for example, respecting the right of any OPEC nation to spend her oil wealth as she wishes. Thus, national supererogation cannot rightly be used as freedom from obligation to enforce the right to a human minimum of distant people. Distant people, strangers, foreigners and future generations are or will be in the same moral universe as our own relatives and friends. Unlike legality, morality knows no national or racial boundary. And in summary, there are (immediately) three main reasons for rejecting national supererogation as constituting an absolute right: first, it is based on a property right and there are always many matters of greater moral significance than the right to property. Secondly, given historical experience, no nation can correctly claim one hundred per cent legitimate acquisition of the territory and resources she controls. Thirdly, supererogation makes sense only when dealing with moral agents, that is, prerequisites for observing the rules of moral responsibility. It cannot make sense to beings whose existence is threatened by our reluctance to yield an inch of what we possess.
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From Conjectures to Practice As I said earlier, this is an essay in normative economics, but normative economics is useless unless it presupposes what is possible according to the findings of positive economics. If what ought to be is not what can actually be realized, then those who are practically minded find this fact sufficient for rejecting the former. Thus, one can speak of the impracticable ought and the possible ought. The proposals in this paper, I contend, lie within the realm of the possible ought. And it is now time to turn from conjectures to practice and demonstrate this claim. We have claimed that physical security, health and subsistence are the necessary contents of the right to a human minimum. And by this we mean that the fulfillment of these three kinds of need is necessary for one to function as a person. The question now is, are these needs generally recognized as such by the nations of the world, or are they merely unrealistic postulates on our part? It is a fact that can be demonstrated that most nations of the world recognize these three needs as those which every government must fulfill for her citizens. For example Kenyas Development Plan 1984-88 states that alleviation of poverty and the fulfillment of basic needs have always been a major concern of Kenya development efforts. And the Plan lists the followings as basic needs: Food and Nutrition, Housing, Health, Water and Education. When ultimately analysed these needs boil down to physical security, health and subsistence. The Plan states that about one-third of Kenyas Population is exposed to the risk of deficient nutrition. It can, on the other hand, be established that in some affluent nations about onethird of the population indulge in wasted consumption, i.e. they consume far more than is necessary for their life and health. Why then do we not have global arrangements which would ensure that the wasted consumption in some nations is saved and transferred to alleviate the risk of deficient nutrition in other nations? In his speech to the Economic Association of Kenya on June 20, 1986, the Kenyan Minister for Development Planning, Dr. Robert Ouko, emphasized the importance attached to the need for Kenya to work out plans which would help ensure that the country will still be able to feed her growing population by the year 2000. The implication of the Ministers speech was that unless we have such plans we would risk having the majority of our citizens living below the human minimum by the year 2000. It is therefore encouraging to note that the Minister introduced a blue print for such a plan in the form of Kenyas Economic Management For Renewed Growth (1986). One other important question to be considered is the question as to whether the world as a whole can, given its wealth, economically afford a life above the human minimum for all the human inhabitants of the globe. This is a question which should seek an answer from the experts in positive economics. Nevertheless, a number or works show that if the world can avoid the current arms race, military waste, and wasted domestic consumption, and then turn such savings to rational redistribution among the poverty stricken nations of the world,
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then world hunger would thereby be abolished. But even if, given the findings of positive economics, the world as a whole cannot scientifically afford to raise the welfare of everybody to the level of a human minimum, everybody and every

nation which can afford this minimum for some person is ethically obliged to do so.
NOTES

1. John Keynes, The Scope and Method of Political Economy (New York 1891). See also Milton Friedman, The Methodology of Positive Economics in Philosophy & Economic Theory edited by Frank Hahn and Martin Hollis, (Oxford, 1979). 2. Hahn and Hollis, Philosophy and Economic Theory, 33. 3. See Giuliana Pontara, International Charity or Global Justice in Justice, Social or Global ed. Lars Ericcson (Stockholm, 1981). 4. Within Africa, works which currently can be treated as good representatives of this view are works of Samir Amin. Amins Works include Unequal Development (1976), Accumulation on a World Scale (1977) all by Monthly Review Press, New York. Similar to Amins Works is A. Emmanuels Unequal Exchange (1972). 5. In Africa explicit traces of this argument can be found, among others, in Frantz Fanon The Wretched of the Earth (1961), Walter Rhodeny How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972) and in various works of Kwame Nkrumah and political nationalists of Nkrumah type. 6. Lars Ericcson Justice, Social and Global, 20-21. 7. Diana T. Meyers, The Rationale for Inalienable Rights in Moral Systems, Social Theory and Practice, 7, No. 2, 1981. 8. See, for example, Henry Shue, The Universality of Human Rights and Ionna Kucuradi, Philosophy and Human Rights both in Philosophical Foundation of Human Rights edited by lonna Kucuradi (Aukara, 1981); (for Kucuradi see also Philosophy and Human Injustice in Philosophy and Cultures (Nairobi, 1983) edited by H. Odera Oruka and D. A. Masolo; James P. Sterba The Welfare Rights of Distant people and Future Generations: A Moral Side-constraints on Social Policy, in Social Theory and Practice 7, No. 1, Spring 1981, Peter Singer Chapter 8, Rich and Poor in Peter Singer Practical Ethics (Cambridge, 1979) and Mihalo Markovic Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights in Praxis International, 1, No. 4, 1982. Implicit in all these works and others of their kind is the need for a theory of a global justice a theory which would treat all human beings as existing in a universe governed by rational and humanistic ethics for a fair distribution of world resources regardless of national or racial boundaries. 9. In Kucuradi, The Universality of Human Rights, 26, 28. 10. In Kucuradi, The Universality of Human Rights, 34. 11. In his book Practical Ethics, Peter Singer, following others, makes a distinction between sentient beings and sentient beings which are rational and self-conscious. While the second category consists mostly of human beings, he argues that there are some human beings of the first category while some non-human animals can be detected in the second category. He then reserves the name persons only for those beings which are rational and self-conscious and further argues that there is a special value only in the life of the beings of this kind. There is thus no special value in the life of a human being simply because it is a member of the human race i.e. a member of the homo-sapiens. Here I am not myself concerned with persons in general, but only with human persons. I do not however, wish to buy Singers definition of persons. All I am concerned with here is to point out those needs whose fulfillment liberates human beings from the life of sheer existence to that which offers a possibility for creativity. And I am also suggesting that this liberation is a necessary condition for one to function as a person whatever meaning we attach to this concept. 12. I borrow the distinction between an in rem right and in personam right from James P. Sterbas article The Welfare Rights of Distant Peoples and Future Generations: A Moral Side-Constraints on Social Policy. 13. Giuliana Pontara treats this as de jure territorial sovereignty and sees it as giving a supporting ground to national supererogation. And the two together form part of the tenets of the prevalent foreign aid policy according to which no nation, so far has given more than 1 % of her GNP as foreign aid. See Ericcson, Justice, Social or Global.
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