Humanitarian nations

ABSTRACT

Philosophical notions of humanitarianism – duties based in beneficence that apply to humanity generally – are largely focused on personal duty as opposed to official development assistance, or foreign aid, between nations. To rectify this gap in the literature, I argue that, from the point of view of donor nations, their humanitarian obligations are met when they have given enough of their fair share of resources, and from the point of view of recipient nations, they have received enough when they have reached a threshold of capabilities. I conclude that a future theory of humanitarian obligations ought to take into account the disparate, and often conflicting, interests of nations as benefactors or as recipients of aid.

KEYWORDS:

• Foreign aid
• humanitarian aid
• resources
• capabilities
• fair share

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Jonathan Dixon and George Sher as well as three anonymous reviewers from Journal of Global Ethics for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Thanks also to the attendees at the 2019 North Carolina Philosophical Society Conference and the Furman University philosophy faculty for inviting me to talk on the subject of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See Singer (1972, 2015, 2016) and Ashford (2011). For objections to the pond as a metaphor for poverty see Wenar (2011).

2 This is, of course, a general statement, and there are notable exceptions. For example, Beitz (1999), Sen (1995), and Nussbaum (2001) tend to focus on global national assistance instead of personal aid, but their accounts are also more aligned to discussions of justice not humanitarianism as I have described it. Singer (2016) also gives official development assistance its due, but his central concern remains humanitarian duties of individuals.

3 See Hupfer (2019, 201–202); Freeman (2006, 247); Beitz (1999, 155). The UN is given as an example here, but the same concerns apply to other supranational institutions such as the World Bank.

4 For distributive justice and harm see Pogge (2008); for reciprocity see Sangiovanni (2007).

5 The definition of ODA goes on to say that the aid ‘is concessional in character and conveys a grant element of at least 25 per cent.’ But I will not be concerned with that aspect of the definition here. In addition, development assistance is only official development assistance (ODA) if given by OECD recognized donor and recipient nations (OECD Website 2019a).

6 ‘Foreign aid’ is a surprisingly nebulous term including military aid, development aid, and emergency aid. I will not be discussing military aid in detail – i.e. aiding foreign militaries to defend or control their own territories – since I will be analyzing aid as it relates to global poverty. So ‘foreign aid’ terminology from this point forward only refers to development or emergency aid.

7 Development ethics is the multidimensional study of ethical issues in development aid including normative questions such as how to define well-being and what types of social and political structures ought to exist for people to live good lives as well as empirical questions of the costs and benefits of certain development projects. For a helpful summary of development ethics see Crocker (2008) and Dower (2008). I am discussing foreign aid generally (including emergency aid) and not development per se, but many of the issues I present in this paper can also be applied to discussions of development ethics.

8 Additionally, I will not distinguish between ‘nations,’ ‘countries,’ ‘states,’ or ‘peoples’ to avoid any inadvertent connection to an existing philosophical theory of humanitarianism. Such terminology may differ from the development theory literature.

9 For criticisms of foreign aid along with possible responses see Moyo (2009) and Wenar (2006, 2009).

10 OECD Website (2018).

11 My contribution principle mirrors three of David Miller’s principles of remedial responsibility – namely, what he calls moral responsibility, outcome responsibility, and causal responsibility. Miller argues that his principles of responsibility may apply to either collective groups, like states, or individuals (2007, 100–105). Though I am using terminology similar to Miller’s, my account and Miller’s diverge in important ways. Namely, I am focusing on humanitarianism specifically, and drawing the line between humanitarianism and justice differently; I do not endorse his conclusions about the responsibilities poor nations have to themselves; and I do not separate obligations to the world’s poor between outcome responsibility and remedial responsibility in the way that Miller does.

12 For accounts of how globalization harms impoverished countries see Richard Miller (2010) and Beitz (1999).

13 For more information on the sufficiency view see Benbaji (2005), Fourie (2017), and Huseby (2010). It is, of course, not a requirement that we think of foreign aid in terms of sufficiency, but for the reasons given in this section I think that the theory provides a helpful framework for constructing a theory of humanitarianism.

14 As explained by Casal (2007, 297–300).

15 Fair share is certainly not the only concern of donor nations, but I do think that it is an integral concern; thus, I will use the fair share debate to highlight the kinds of arguments made by donor nations.

16 OECD Website (2019b).

17 OECD Website (2018).

18 Murphy agrees that his theory seems to give the wrong response in this case. He states that perhaps his theory does not apply to special obligations to rescue, such as in the pond cases, but only to ‘more distant demands’ like poverty alleviation (1993, 291–292).

19 For the view of why demandingness is required see (for instance) Singer (1972) and Goodin (2009). For the view of demandingness as an objection see (for instance) Lichtenberg (2010).

20 For a justification for ‘agent-oriented development’ see Maffettone and Muldoon (2017).

21 The Human Development Index is a form of poverty measurement used by the United Nations and created with the help of Sen. See United Nations Development Website (2019).

22 Such as Nussbaum’s list of central capabilities (2001, 78–80).

23 See Singer (2015) and MacAskill (2015).

24 There are many ways in which foreign aid can be more or less effective. For instance, aid may be more effective in helping more people, in significantly reducing poverty, in reducing poverty in a sustainable way, in using more cents on the dollar, and so on. For my purposes here I will mainly focus on helping more people with less deprivation versus helping less people with more deprivation, but my argument will apply to various ways of parsing out ‘effective.’

25 GiveWell Website accessed December 2020 https://www.givewell.org/.

26 Hupfer, Elizabeth. Forthcoming. “Inefficient Charity.” Social Theory and Practice.

27 For a more detailed exposition of my inefficiency principle, see my article "Inefficient Charity" forthcoming in Social Theory and Practice.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elizabeth C. Hupfer

Elizabeth C. Hupfer is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at High Point University in High Point, North Carolina. Her research interests are in ethics (normative and applied) and social and political philosophy with an empasis on distributive justice and humanitarianism.