Human rights as foreign policy imperatives

Abstract

INTERNATIONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR HUMAN RIGHTSIn 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.