Moral universalism and global economic justice Thomas W. Pogge Columbia University, USA abstract Moral universalism centrally involves the idea that the moral assessment of persons and their conduct, of social rules and states of affairs, must be based on fundamental principles that do not, explicitly or covertly, discriminate arbitrarily against particular persons or groups. This general idea is explicated in terms of three conditions. It is then applied to the discrepancy between our criteria of national and global economic justice. Most citizens of developed countries are unwilling to require of the global economic order what they assuredly require of any national economic order, for example, that its rules be under democratic control, that it preclude life-threatening poverty as far as is reasonably possible. Without a plausible justification, such a double standard constitutes covert arbitrary discrimination against the global poor. keywords contextualism, corruption, discrimination, Rawls, resource exports, world poverty Introduction Socio-economic rights, such as the universal entitlement ‘to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of oneself and one’s family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care’, 1 are currently, and by far, the most frequently violated human rights. Their widespread violation also plays a deci- sive role in explaining global deficits in civil and political human rights demand- ing democracy, due process, and the rule of law: extremely poor people (often physically and mentally stunted due to malnutrition in infancy, illiterate due to lack of schooling, and much preoccupied with their family’s survival) can cause little harm or benefit to the politicians and officials who rule them. Such rulers, therefore, have far less incentive to attend to the interests of the poor compared politics, philosophy & economics article Thomas W. Pogge, Department of Philosophy, Columbia University, 1150 Amsterdam Avenue, MC 4971, New York, NY 10027, USA [email: tp6@columbia.edu] 29 © SAGE Publications Ltd London Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi 1470-594X 200202 1(1) 29–58 021076