In 1997, the InterAction Council (IAC) drafted a Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities. The IAC, a body composed of many former political leaders, envisioned the Declaration as a complement to the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted fifty years prior. The overall aim of the human responsibilities agenda was to outline the responsibility between people and between societies that has arisen as a result of globalisation. Put simply, the IAC was drawing up a set of ethical standards to reconcile people’s role in a rapidly globalising world.
However, for reasons that are unclear, the concept of human responsibilities has not exactly taken off in mainstream political discourse, or even academia. Nonetheless, I present its case and its salience in 2023.
I shall begin my argument by stating that I believe that all people have an innate connection with one another, irrespective of cultural, religious, or any other differences. At the end of the day: we are all human beings inhabiting the same planet. Many of our divisions are ultimately constructed.
What, when you think about it, is the difference between someone living in El Paso, Texas and someone living in Ciudad Juarez in Mexico. The two settlements are connected to one another. Many people have relatives on either side of the border. If not for the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, the bit of land that we today call El Paso—a city of well over half-a-million Americans—could easily have been in Mexico. Thus, all that really separates the people of El Paso and the people of Ciudad Juarez is a border decided, not by nature, but through a mid-19th Century negotiation.
Enough about the US-Mexico border. What I have been trying to say is that many of the differences between human beings are the result of some sort of construction. However, what is common between all persons is our humanity. The concept of human responsibilities seeks to remind us of that. All humans have a responsibility to each other; a basic ethical responsibility to respect and protect other people. The objective of the Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities is to foster good relations amongst people in order to prevent conflicts over difference. By accepting a basic ethical responsibility to one another, the IAC believed that global society would be a better place.
The argument that I have just put forth may read as a piece of lofty globalism. Equally, one may question how, or why, they should have responsibilities that extend to people they do not know and will likely never meet. Yet, my argument is grounded in a social reality: globalisation. I will neither make a defence nor a critique of globalisation; many others have done so far more eloquently than I could ever hope to. What I will claim, though, is that globalisation and our involvement in it has globalised our responsibilities.
The electronic device you are reading this on is the product of globalisation. The Spain-grown grapes I bought in a German-owned supermarket in Birmingham, or the Indian-made, US-branded t-shirt I am wearing as I write are where they are because of globalisation. For better or for worse, globalisation is a process that has happened and it shapes our daily choices, from food to fashion. It is a social fact of the 21st Century.
My perspective is to look at globalisation as a means of deepening human connection. By eating grapes from Spain I have become interconnected in the global economy with little conscious effort. And, I certainly would not be eating grapes during an English October without it. As a result, my choice to purchase Spanish grapes has meant that I—as I am sure you, too at one point or another—have profited from globalisation.
I cannot, and you cannot, profit from the global economy and claim to have no responsibilities as a result. As remarked upon by Onora O’Neill in her famous article Lifeboat Earth, “the economic and technological interdependence of today alters this [ethical] situation.” The point being made here is that human responsibility is extended by globalisation; we are now connected to more people, and, as such, we all have responsibilities towards more people.
Where one would have previously been tied to the local community, globalisation has meant that humans around the world form an interconnected, interdependent community. Hence, in a world where almost anywhere is a few hours on a plane, or where foods from thousands of miles away are in my fridge in Birmingham, the dynamics of our ethics towards the people in these places has to change. They are no longer the abstract stranger; they are our neighbours, our partners in a global economy none of us necessarily signed-up for. Now, the world is like a village.
The point of this article has not been to tell you about the history of El Paso, nor the contents of my fridge. My point has been to make the case that globalisation has made human beings, at least from an ethical standpoint, closer. Thus, it makes sense that with material of globalisation that we have—your US-designed, Chinese-built smartphone you are (probably) reading on right now—means that you ought to accept the responsibility that comes alongside being a global citizen.
We all have the responsibility to ensure others’ dignity, to act peacefully, to protect other people and the planet, and to act in service of economic justice and of the social order. None of these are necessarily ground-breaking ideas, and yet, they will go a long way in making the world a better place.
