Duties Sans Frontières: Human Rights and Global Social Justice

Abstract

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.

Keywords: transnational obligations, economic and social rights