The Obligations Of Affluent Countries Toward Global Poor

The purpose of this thesis is to briefly introduce the thinking of Thomas Pogge. I will concentrate on the explanation of the distinction between negative duties and positive duties. This is one of his important contributions to the debate on global justice and the eradication of world poverty.Citizens of the affluent countries tend to discuss their obligations toward the distant needy in terms of donations and transfers, assistance and redistribution. This way of conceiving the problem by the citizens in affluent countries is a serious moral error and a very costly one for the global poor. It depends on the false belief - widespread in the rich countries - that the causes of the persistence of severe poverty are indigenous to the countries in which it occurs. There are indeed national and local factors that contribute to persistent poverty in developing countries. But global institutional rules also play an important role in its reproduction, in part by sustaining the national and local factors that affluent Westerners most like to blame for the problem.Since these rules are shaped by the governments of affluent countries in the citizens name they bear moral responsibility not merely by assisting the distant poor too little, but also, and more significantly, by harming them too much.