Abstract

MONTERO, Julio. ¿Es la pobreza global un problema de derechos humanos? Lo que el argumento cosmopolita no puede probar. Rev. latinoam. filos. [online]. 2007, vol.33, n.2, pp.223-246. ISSN 1852-7353.

In this article I tackle Thomas Pogge's thesis that global poverty constitutes a human rights problem. According to him, global poverty is due to the human rights violations that the affluent countries commit when they support the current global institutional order. I start by showing that a human rights violation takes place only if a duty correlative to a human right is infringed. Then I consider what duty towards the global poor may the affluent countries be violating. For this I analyze the obligations steaming from the Art. 28 of the UDHR. Concretely, I will claim that even if the affluent countries honored these obligations, global poverty would subsist. The reason for this is that, whilst reducing global poverty would require a constant background adjustment for justice, no existent international agent has the capacity to perform such a task. Therefore, the problem of global poverty consists in the absence of an overarching agent of global justice and cannot be accurately addressed as a human rights problem. It is, instead, a problem of global political reform.

Keywords : Background adjustment for justice; Human rights; Poverty.

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