Ethics, Human Rights and Globalization

                   If you want to know if  persons are ethical persons, you should ask them if they defend the human rights, because there is nothing more ethical than human rights. The principles of law and justice are based on human rights.  This post is a summary of four articles. The first article with the title above was published at   https://www.weltethos.org/1-pdf/20-aktivitaeten/eng/we-reden-eng/speech_Robinson_eng.pdf. The second was published at http://nuffieldbioethics.org/wp-content/uploads/Bioinformation-Chapter-3-Ethical-values-and-human-rights.pdf. The third was published at  https://www.ethicalrights.com/faqs/80-about-ethics.html. The fourth was published at  http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/titles/format/9781557534804

           Linking human rights with ethics and globalization represents a connection whose time has come. And yet, the task is daunting. Every day brings further evidence of the unacceptable divide in our world. We are at the edge of a big idea, the shaping of ethical globalization. But how? What are the components, the linkages, and the energies that need to be harnessed? In preparing for this writing, I was reflecting on the fact that nearly ten years have passed since the adoption of two important declarations, one by the world's governments, the other by the world's religious leaders. The two texts are The Declaration and Programme of Action from the World Conference on Human Rights, adopted in Vienna in June 1993, and the Declaration of the Religions for a Global Ethics adopted in Chicago in 2001. What is the relationship between ethics and rights and how do they both link to values, morality and to law? It is not only an interesting intellectual exercise to analyze these concepts, it is directly relevant to the world of action and to policy choices we face as citizens of different countries. Every country has human rights problems and should be open to constructive scrutiny and criticism. We have also clarified the true agenda of human rights, as confirmed at the Vienna Conference. It comprises the equally strong protection of civil and political rights on the one hand and economic, social and cultural on the other, together with a commitment to reach consensus on the right to development. At this most basic level, ethics, human rights and developing global interactions of the whole human race are also interwined. Ethics must be connected to morality. Ethics without morality is empty. At a more abstract level than morality and ethics, we could place values. Values are the building blocks of both morality and of ethics. Thus a achievement of the Millennium Summit of the General Assembly in 2000, was to agree on a number of values essential to international relations in the 21th century. These are: freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for nature and shared responsibility. Moving now to human rights: in our hierarchy, they seem to occupy an intermediate stage between values and moral foundations and the immediate personal decisions, which concern ethics. In this they are akin to law, and yet not to be identified simply with law. Law is an indispensable part of the picture. It is a necessary complement to both morality and ethics. To sum up: we can say that values, morality, ethics, law and human rights are all linked in a complex normative cluster. Building an ethical and sustainable form of globalization is not exclusively a human rights matter, but it must include the recognition of shared responsibility for the universal protection of human rights. Governments should bear in mind their concurrent obligations to promote and protect human rights, mindful of the commitment made in Vienna in 1993, that "human rights are the first responsibility of governments." A key characteristic of economic globalization is that the actors involved are not only states but private power in the form of multinational corporations. Thus a new challenge is to ensure that such actors in the globalized economy are accountable for the impact of their policies on human rights. Rereading the Millennium Declaration, I am struck by the fact that we have no need for new pledges and commitments. They are all there in solemn language. We need something more prosaic: implementation! One of the attributes of the human rights system is that it is refining its capacity to measure progress through monitoring steps taken by states to implement their commitments. Here, too, the rigour of a legal regime can help to underpin the values of ethical globalization. The next phase must be less aspirational, less theoretical and abstract, and more about keeping solemn promises made.

               The protection of the public from criminal activities is a primary obligation of the state. However, this obligation must be exercised with due respect for a number of fundamental ethical values and in the light of modern legislation on human rights. The values with which we are primarily concerned are liberty, autonomy, privacy, informed consent and equality. It is generally recognised that every one of us has a protected zone of privacy into which neither the state nor other persons should intrude without our permission. This can be seen as derived from a more basic right to autonomy, or as a precondition for the exercise of autonomy, or as an independent moral principle. There are ywo conceptions that are useful for our discussion: spatial privacy and informational privacy. Spatial privacy is "a state of non- access to the individual's physical or psychological self". This invaded by the non-consensual taking of biological samples, and by unwanted surveillance of the individual, for example. Informational privacy refers to personal information about an individual that is ordinary "in a state of non-access to others". This encompasses all kinds of information about ourselves that we would regard as intimate, and which we would therefore want to withhold, use and circulation we would wish to control. Another aspect of privacy is anonymity: "the right of the individual to escape from the intense surveillance situations of small comunities". Anonymity gives individuals the opportunity to live down their past and to enter into new relationships. 

                Ethics is a branch of philosophy that is generally a discussion about what one should to do in a particular situation. An important aspect of ethics is that it requires taking the position of an impartial observer. Selfish motives might drive one, what you want done for your own reasons.  Ethics is also about how people should live a good life. An ethical approach might not give 'right' answers, but it does provide some principles and guidelines. There are many rights that humans should enjoy, such as freedom of thought, liberty, as well as freedom of religion, and rights to health care and education. Ethical thinking and human rights, a good recipe for a better world.

               Human Rigths Ethics makes an important contribution to contemporary philosophical and political debates concerning the advancement of global justice and human rights. Butler's book also lays claim to a significant place in both normative ethics and human rights studies in as much as it seeks to vindicate a universalistic, rational approach to human rights ethics. Butler's innovative approach is not based on murky claims to "natural rights" that supposedly hold wherever human beings exist; nor does it succumb to the traditional problems of justification associated with utilitarianism, Kantianism, and other procedural approaches to human rights studies. Instead, Butler proposes "a dialectical justification of human rights by vindicate a totally rational account of human rights," but one that depends concretely and historically on a dialectically constructed "right to freedom of thought in its universal modes."