Global Institutions and Human Rights

Thomas Pogge has famously argued that the presentarrangement of international institutions that allows for humanrights violations to occur on an ongoing basis is unjust and furtherthat powerful states that create and maintain these institutionsare responsible for the resulting human rights violations. Poggeconcludes that this implication of responsibility creates a moralrequirement for powerful nations to take immediate steps to reformthe global institutional order in such a way as to minimize thenumber of foreseeable human rights violations that occur within it. I believe that Pogge is only partly correct in hisanalysis. In this book I outline my argument that the globalinstitutional order is not unjust as Pogge suggests. However even if themaintenance of these institutions does not constitute an injusticeI conclude that that there remains an important sense in whichpowerful states that support the present arrangement of internationalinstitutions are responsible for ongoing subsistence rightsviolations and thus have a strong moral responsibility to supportinstitutional remedies for systematic human rights violations.