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To many human rights activists, ethical globalization is an oxymoron — doublespeak used by private companies to justify their abuse of workers’ rights and the environment in foreign countries.
To many globalization advocates, ethical globalization is a redundant phrase — globalization is inherently ethical because a move toward a free market in oppressed societies is the first step toward other freedoms.
For Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and former United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, ethical globalization is now her life’s work. She spoke April 18 at Xavier University to an audience of more than 100.
Robinson, who founded the Ethical Globalization Initiative after leaving the United Nations in 2002, says the international move toward globalization in the 1990s did some good, but not enough.
“We feel it’s important to bring a human rights lens to globalization,” she said.
Since 1990, 54 counties have become poorer, 21 counties have more people going hungry and the number of people living in chronic poverty worldwide has not changed, she said.
“How do we come to terms with the fact that one-fifth of the world’s population — about 1.2 billion people — experience severe poverty because they live on less than one U.S. dollar a day?” she asked. “We have a world that’s more connected than ever before, but also a world that’s perhaps more divided than ever before.”
Robinson also said globalization lacks a human face.
“You have free movement of goods, free movement of capital and free movement of services, but you don’t have movement of people,” she said. “Because of the harsh realities of that, many people are very vulnerable and exploited because of the trends of globalization.”
Robinson related the necessity of global human rights to the need for combating terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
“That has brought home to all of us a sense of more insecurity,” she said. “That’s a factor that has led to an understandable and necessary focus on trying to be more secure. But we also need to think about that world I’ve just been describing in its large numbers, for whom insecurity is a daily problem.”
Robinson held up a battered, pocket-sized copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights drafted by an international commission led by Eleanor Roosevelt after World War II.
“She understood profoundly that it wasn’t sufficient to look to the important civil and political rights,” said Robinson. “It was also necessary to look at what President Roosevelt had called ‘freedom from want,’ not just freedom from fear.”
That declaration, along with four international conventions on the topics of torture, racial discrimination, gender discrimination and the rights of a child, provide a strong start for adopting an internationally shared value system, according to Robinson.
Several years ago the United Nations adopted the Millennium Development Plan, aimed at tackling a number of human rights issues by 2015.
But since Sept. 11, human rights progress has taken a back seat to the war on terror Robinson said.
“How could we have started this century with such a commitment to bridge the divide, then somehow we lost momentum?” she asked. “The focus shifted understandably — acts of terrorism are absolutely contrary to human rights. But as I mentioned, there are other kinds of human insecurity and there are different links we need to look at.”
Robinson says Sept. 11 should kick-start human rights instead of sidelining them.
“No one will deny any longer that turmoil in one region can spread rapidly to others, through terrorism, through armed conflict, through environmental degradation and disease,” she said. “While the connections are evident, we seem further apart in finding ways to attack global problems in a coordinated way, where the burdens of responsibility are shared.”
A concerted global human rights effort would not only provide security for those who are now living in poverty or oppression, but also for wealthier nations, she said.
“There is no doubt that the kind of terrorism and fanaticism that manipulates breeds in the swamp of absolute poverty and depravation and despair,” she said. “The manipulations are much easier when you have those kinds of divides.”
The United Nation’s estimated cost for the Millennium Development Plan is $50 billion a year. At first Robinson thought that number extremely large. But since Sept. 11 military spending has proven it manageable, she said.
Robinson’s solution boils down to an old bumper sticker — think globally, act locally. She referred again to Eleanor Roosevelt, quoting a passage from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“Everyone has duties to the community, in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible,” she said. ” We ought to know we have duties in our community here in Cincinnati, here in Ohio, here in the United States, but we also have to look beyond and think of the wider community. Unless you know that and do something about it, you yourself are not a full personality. That’s a very interesting concept, and to me it’s a very energizing one.”
Robinson urged simple but intentional acts, such as writing to a senator or requesting Fair Trade coffee at grocery stores.
“Human rights must matter in small places,” she said. “But it won’t matter unless you have concerted citizen action.” ©
This article appears in Apr 21-27, 2004.