Famine – whose
responsibility?
F
amine provides the clearest and most
compelling illustration of global inequality.
That the wealthy enjoy luxury goods while
others starve to death is, at least for most people,
a demonstration of human immorality. But what
responsibilities do the rich nations (or states)
bear for famine? Garrett Hardin, in outlining his
‘lifeboat ethics’ (see Chapter 16), argues that the
poor in developing countries bear responsibility
for having too many children. Giving aid simply
exacerbates the situation. Others argue that
famine is the consequence of economic forces set
in train by the industrialised, capitalist countries,
such that ‘we’ – the wealthy – have caused
famine and so have a responsibility not simply
to relieve it when it happens, but in fact to ensure
that it never happens.
Understanding the causes of famine is a useful
way into exploring issues of global justice and
we discuss those causes – and the rich countries’
moral responsibilities – in the first section of this
chapter. Before reading that section consider
these questions:
- What is famine?
- What causes famine?
- If famine is not caused by the world economic
system – we are not saying it is not, but simply
posing a hypothetical – then do the rich
countries have any moral obligation to relieve
it?
- Should the relief of famine be the respon-
sibility of individuals (through charity) or the
state (through taxation)?
- How compelling is the claim that giving
money is a waste of time because it will not
go to the needy but be pocketed by corrupt
governments?
The debate over global justice within political
theory is a relatively recent development. It has
been stimulated in large part by arguments over
‘domestic’ justice, which we outlined in Chapter
- Although the global justice debate encom-
passes discussion of human rights and just war
we will be concerned in this chapter with the
question of international wealth distribution.
© Frank Leonhardt/dpa/Corbis
