Is There Really a Global Human Rights Deficit? Consequentialist Liability and Cosmopolitan Alternatives

“Minimal cosmopolitanism” holds that citizens of affluent states share responsibility for global poverty not as a matter of social distributive justice, but because they are complicit in human rights violations. Their complicity is secured simply by virtue of their participation in a global economic order that has negative effects in the form of poverty. That we have some causal relationship to a system of causes that, as a system, has foreseeable and avoidable harmful effects is taken to be sufficient for sharing moral responsibility for harms. However, complicity with a violation implies complicity with an action that wrongs a person. Mere causal connection to a system with foreseeable and (theoretically) avoidable harmful outcomes is not sufficient for wronging others or for complicity. Minimal cosmopolitans need to show that there is personal complicity in harming the global poor – intentional acting together to do wrong. Yet complicity requires more conditions than the minimal cosmopolitan can show are fulfilled when citizens of affluent states participate in the economic system. It is argued that complicit actions, in the sense that satisfies the relevant conditions, are not behind global poverty and the “the global order” is not an agent. There are, however, better ways to morally critique global poverty than through alleging personal complicity in collective violations