CIAO DATE: 02/05/08
Ethics & International Affairs
Annual Journal of the
Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs
Fall 2007, Vol. 21, No. 3
Essay
The Politics of PEPFAR: The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PDF)
John W. Dietrich
In his January 2003 State of the Union Address, President Bush called for the U.S to commit $15 billion over five years to address the international HIV/AIDS epidemic. For several reasons, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) caught many people by surprise. The surprise quickly was followed by excitement, tempered by skepticism.
Feature and Online Symposium on Ecological Intervention
Ecological Intervention: Prospects and Limits
Robyn Eckersley
This essay seeks to extend the already controversial debate about humanitarian intervention by exploring the morality, legality, and legitimacy of ecological intervention and its corollary, ecological defense. If the legacy of the Holocaust was acceptance of a new category of "crimes against humanity" and an emerging norm of humanitarian intervention, then should the willful or reckless perpetration of mass extinctions and massive ecosystem destruction be regarded as "crimes against nature" or "ecocide" such as to ground a new norm of ecological intervention or ecological defense?
On Not Being Green about Ecological Intervention
Mathew Humphrey
"I am sympathetic to Eckersley's assessment of the importance of these problems, but there are certain implications of her (albeit qualified) endorsement of ecological intervention that are worth exploring."
Ecological Intervention and Anthropocene Ethics
Simon Dalby
Robyn Eckersley's elegant and eloquent argument concerning the limits of "ecological intervention" is constrained by the scope of what is included in her definition of environmental emergency, by what might be in need of protection, and also by what is conventionally understood by notions of intervention related to states and sovereign territory.
Ecological Intervention in Defense of Species
Clare Palmer
Though there is much to engage with throughout the article, I shall only focus on one small part of it: the viability of military or legal intervention, in cases that are tentatively described as "crimes against nature." This is due to the difficulties posed by a non-anthropocentric and non-instrumental approach.
Some Worries about Ecological-Humanitarian Intervention and Ecological Defense
Mark Woods
Eckersley's arguments for pre-emptive ecological-humanitarian intervention and ecological defense are intriguing. However, the delicacy of these scenarios requires careful attention to the feasibility and overall benefits of the usage of military force in the prevention of crimes against nature.
Features
Poverty and Global Justice
Nancy Kokaz
Poverty eradication has been identified as the largest challenge facing international society in its quest for a peaceful, prosperous, and just world. I respond to this challenge by proposing a global poverty eradication principle. Grounded in John Rawls’s account of human rights and assistance for the law of peoples, the global poverty eradication principle applies regardless of causal patterns that may obtain in a given case. The relationship between persons affected by poverty and their governments has implications only for the selection of appropriate means, but never undermines the goal of poverty eradication itself. The duties of human rights and assistance that establish the global poverty eradication principle apply even to societies that may reject them, because they are institutional reaffirmations of the natural duties of persons in the context of international society, without whose affirmation no domestic society can be considered well-ordered.
I conclude by pointing out some of the challenges that are likely to arise in the application of the global poverty eradication principle. While I cannot hope to settle these practical problems philosophically, flagging them helps to clarify the scope of application of the global poverty eradication principle and gives a sense of the concrete targets and measures that could be adopted in working toward its fulfillment in practice, especially for the elimination of certain types of severe deprivation at a minimum.
Trade Rules, Intellectual Property, and the Right to Health
Lisa Forman
In perpetuating and exacerbating restricted access to essential medicines, current trade-related intellectual property rules on medicines may violate core human rights to health and medicines. In this light, there should be serious questions about their necessity, and their justification should be critically assessed from the perspective of human rights standards. These standards require that international trade rules on medicines be justified to the fullest extent possible, and permitted only to the extent to which they can be justified.
In this article I explore the impact of trade rules on medicines access, and the growing force of the human right to health. I argue that the limited justification for strong patents in poor countries suggests the need for significant reform of trade-related intellectual property rights. I argue further that human rights standards may offer both normative and practical tools for achieving this reform and challenging trade rules on medicines at various levels.
Reconstructing Precaution, Deconstructing Misconceptions
Alessandra Arcuri
The precautionary principle, widely endorsed at national and international level, continues to be at the center of a heated debate. Some authors claim that the principle is unscientific; others argue that the principle is paralyzing and gives the decision-maker no direction. Confusion and misconceptions are generated by the multiplicity of definitions and interpretations of the precautionary principle.
This essay contributes to the debate on the precautionary principle in two ways: 1) it clarifies what is entailed by a mild formulation of the principle and 2) it identifies a number of misconceptions underlying some of its main criticisms.
A reasonable understanding of the precautionary principle requires both substantive and procedural elements; the substantive element suggests that, in circumstances where uncertainties and risks of irreversible harms are present, decisions should err on the side of environmental preservation; the procedural element suggests that the principle should favour decision-making processes that are iterative and informative over time and that integrate experts’ assessments of the risks to be governed and people’s preferences and values.
Against this background, six misconceptions underlying the main criticisms of the precautionary principle are identified and deconstructed. The analysis of the misconceptions sheds further light on the fact that following the principle, processes of learning are stimulated and accordingly technology is not halted; to the contrary, the application of the principle leads to better understanding of technological developments and their effects.
Book Reviews
The Parliament of Man (Paul Kennedy); Secretary or General? (Simon Chesterman, editor); The Best Intentions (James Traub)
Barbara Crossette
With a new secretary-general now in charge and the memories of the bitter final years of his predecessor still vivid, a timely procession of books on the UN has been appearing to offer some fresh appraisals and insights into how things got this way and what, if anything, can be done.
Ethics in Action: The Ethical Challenges of International Human Rights Nongovernmental Organizations
Jennifer Rubenstein
Between 2002-2005, the UN University and the City University of Hong Kong organized a series of "dialogues" about the ethical challenges facing international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs). The result is this fascinating and timely volume, which addresses not only human rights narrowly construed, but also humanitarian aid and development.
Economic Justice in an Unfair World: Toward a Level Playing Field
Richard Jolly
"Economic Justice in an Unfair World" is a stimulating, well-researched book combining economic analysis, political philosophy, and contemporary policy, all focused on one key question: What does one mean by economic justice in a world cut through by inequalities of income, bargaining power, and human poverty?
Rationality and the Ideology of Disconnection
David A. Welch
This passionate book is a powerful conceptual, empirical, and normative critique of Rational Choice theory by a former practitioner. Rational Choice, Taylor argues, is more than a simple style of analysis and approach to problem solving: it is a hegemonic orthodoxy that has subverted psyches, societies, and cultures.
Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency
Elbridge Colby
Sadly, discussions of the pricklier issues of law, terrorism, and security rarely follow a cool, pragmatic approach. Richard Posner provides just such a perspective on the relationship of the Constitution to the terrorist threat. Undaunted by controversy, he forthrightly addresses detention, harsh interrogation methods, limits of free speech, ethnic profiling, and the boundaries of privacy rights, among other hot-button topics.