by Lawrence Wittner | Mar 13, 2026 | Global Justice
The U.S. military attack upon Iran is but the latest indication that the system of international law―which provides guidelines for the behavior of nations in world affairs―is crumbling.
In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, after thousands of years of violent international conflict, efforts to establish global norms for nations in connection with war, diplomacy, economic relations, and human rights accelerated. These efforts resulted in the founding of the United Nations (which develops, codifies, and enforces international law), the International Court of Justice (which settles legal disputes among nations and provides advisory opinions on legal questions), and the International Criminal Court (which investigates and tries individuals charged with the gravest crimes of concern to the international community).
Of course, the current U.S. military attack on Iran flies in the face of the UN Charter, which, in Article 2, states that “all Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means” and that they “shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” Furthermore, contemptuous of the United Nations, Trump has withdrawn the U.S. government from dozens of UN agencies and blocked the U.S. government’s payment of billions of dollars in mandatory dues to the world organization.
Other nations are also clearly out of line with international law. The Russian government’s over four years of war and occupation of Ukrainian territory are flagrant violations of the UN Charter, as attested to by a ruling of the International Court of Justice and numerous overwhelming condemnations by the UN General Assembly. The Israeli government is also a prominent transgressor, having joined the U.S. military assault on Iran and conducted an illegal occupation of conquered Palestinian territory for decades while violating international humanitarian law in its treatment of the civilian population.
Disgusted by the ability of these and other nations to act with impunity, Majed al-Ansari, Qatar’s foreign policy advisor, remarked bitterly in 2025: “We are moving into a system where anybody can do whatever they like. . . . As long as you have the ability to wreak havoc, you can do it because no one will hold you accountable.”
This lack of accountability is striking. Within nations, there is usually effective enforcement of law. But, on the global level, law enforcement is weak, indeed. When the International Criminal Court announced warrants for the arrests of Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes, a former Russian president threatened the judges with a hypersonic missile attack and the U.S. government imposed heavy sanctions on the judges. Meanwhile, Putin and Netanyahu remain at large.
Scornful of international law, some national officials openly champion a return to the traditional might-makes-right conduct of international affairs. “You can talk all you want about international niceties,” said Stephen Miller, Trump’s influential White House aide, “but we live in . . . the real world . . . that is governed by strength, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”
Naturally, officials of nations that are militarily powerful find a power politics approach appealing, as do people with militarist and nationalist views. Trump recently announced: “I don’t need international law.”
Conversely, officials of less powerful nations are dismayed by the resurrection of a might-makes-right standard, as are people with peace-oriented and internationalist views. They argue that what the world needs is not the abandonment of international law, but its more effective enforcement. Furthermore, they contend that a return to great power imperialism in a world bristling with modern weapons, including nuclear weapons, is a recipe for catastrophe.
But if effective enforcement of international law is preferable to a power politics approach to world affairs, can that effective enforcement be attained?
There are certainly feasible, small-scale actions along these lines that could be taken. One is to increase the number of nations that accept compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. Currently, only 75 nations of the 193 UN member states do so. Another is to increase the number of nations that are parties to the statute of the International Criminal Court. The current number is 125, and does not include the United States, Russia, China, and Israel.
Even the use of the veto in the UN Security Council―employed most frequently by the U.S. and Russian governments―could be limited to some degree. One way is to simply enforce Article 27 in the UN Charter providing that a party to a dispute shall abstain from voting on that dispute. Another―championed by France and Mexico―is to exclude the veto in situations of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
Also, of course, deadbeat nations could be pressured into paying their UN dues―for example, by denying them their vote in the UN General Assembly.
More thoroughgoing action would be difficult to secure, but not impossible. Perhaps the leading obstacle to a substantial strengthening of the United Nations and the international law it seeks to develop and enforce is the provision in the UN Charter that all five permanent members of the Security Council (the United States, Russia, China, Britain, and France) must agree to any change in the Charter. Nevertheless, the Charter also provides that a two-thirds vote by the General Assembly and by any nine members of the Security Council can produce a Charter review conference. Consequently, there is now a significant campaign underway to call for one. And, if such a meeting is held, perhaps after the current crop of aging, reactionary officials has passed from the scene, who really knows what will occur?
Admittedly, the prospects aren’t good for halting the return of nations to their traditional practices of war and imperialism.
Even so, if people can create the scientific and technological marvels of the modern world, they might also be capable of developing ways to stop killing one another.
by Lawrence Wittner | Jan 25, 2026 | Global Justice, Peace
There is a widening gap today between global possibilities and global realities.
The global realities are quite grim.
Despite some advances in countering worldwide poverty, it remains at a startlingly high level. According to the World Bank, half of humanity lives on less than $6.85 per day per person, with over 700 million people living on less than $2.15 per day.
Moreover, economic inequality is vast and increasing. A recently-released World Inequality Report, produced in conjunction with the United Nations, found that, in almost every region of the world, the richest 1 percent is wealthier than the bottom 90 percent combined. Indeed, the richest 0.001 percent of the world’s population controls three times the wealth of the poorest half, and its wealth is growing at a faster rate.
As the charitable organization Oxfam has observed, there is no morally defensible justification for this state of affairs. “Extreme wealth is not accumulated simply as a reward for extreme talent,” it has noted. “The majority of billionaire wealth . . . is unearned, derived from inheritance, crony connections, and monopolistic power.” Moreover, billionaires and giant corporations are fostering greater economic inequality and misery by opposing labor laws and policies that benefit workers, undermining progressive taxation, employing modern colonial systems of wealth extraction in the Global South, and using monopoly power to control markets and set the rules and terms of exchange.
Furthermore, when it comes to respecting international law, the rulers of some powerful nations are behaving increasingly like gangsters.
Donald Trump is particularly flagrant in this regard. During his second term as President of the United States, he has already bombed seven nations (Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen), threatened to invade or seize five others (Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Greenland, and Mexico ), blown up 33 foreign boats and their sailors, kidnapped the president of a sovereign nation (Venezuela), and announced plans to “run” Venezuela and take control of its vast oil resources. “I don’t need international law,” he explained.
Trump’s “America First” policy―redolent of traditional great power imperialism―is complemented by other measures showing contempt for key international institutions. Trump quickly withdrew the U.S. government from leading UN agencies like the World Health Organization and the UN Human Rights Council, refused to participate in the UN Relief and Works Agency, and announced plans to withdraw from UNESCO. On January 7, 2026, the White House followed up by announcing U.S. withdrawal from 66 international and UN entities. It has also withheld at least two years of mandated dues to the UN’s regular budget and has placed sanctions on the judges and chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
Clearly, Trump has other priorities. He dramatically increased U.S. military spending soon after he returned to power and, in January 2026, proposed raising military spending by another $600 billion to a record $1.5 trillion, thereby creating his “Dream Military.” Apparently, this dream does not include ending the menace of nuclear annihilation, for―asked about renewing the last nuclear arms control agreement remaining with Russia, scheduled to expire next month―Trump responded: “If it expires, it expires.”
Unfortunately, leaders of other nations are also working full-time to destroy what remains of international law and humanity’s hopes for the future.
Vladimir Putin has stopped at nothing to revive what he considers Russia’s imperial glory by waging nearly four years of war to conquer and annex his far smaller, weaker neighbor, Ukraine. Ignoring strong condemnations by the UN General Assembly, the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court, Putin has pressed on with an imperialist war that has reduced cities to rubble, damaged or destroyed thousands of schools and health care facilities, and sent 6 million Ukrainians fleeing abroad. The wounded or dead number hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and as many as 1.2 million Russian soldiers.
Nor is this the extent of Putin’s military interventionism. Until quite recently, he conducted a brutal bombing campaign for nearly a decade in Syria to prop up the Assad dictatorship against its domestic foes. He also employed the Wagner Group, a shadowy private mercenary army headquartered in Russia, to conduct military operations elsewhere in the Middle East and in numerous African nations.
Like Trump, Putin has scrapped nuclear arms control agreements and occasionally threatened nuclear war.
Other national rulers, enamored with military power and widening their realms, have also turned their countries into rogue nations. Kim Jong Un, despite offers from the South Korean and U.S. governments to improve diplomatic relations, has chosen instead to dramatically expand North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, threaten nuclear war, and dispatch more than 14,000 combat troops to help Russia subdue Ukraine. Benjamin Netanyahu, while constantly claiming Israel’s victimization, has in fact superintended a genocidal slaughter of Palestinian civilians, staged military attacks on numerous nations, and―in defiance of a ruling by the International Court of Justice―refused to end Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian territory.
And yet, the possibilities for reversing this sad state of affairs are enormous, for―thanks to a variety of factors, ranging from increases in knowledge to advances in economic productivity―it’s finally feasible for all of humanity to lead decent and fulfilling lives.
No longer is poverty necessary, for the enormous global economy can produce adequate food, goods, and services for all the world’s people.
Human health and longevity can be improved substantially, thanks to breakthroughs in science and medicine.
Education, communications, transportation, and culture have made huge strides toward enriching human existence and could finally be made available to all.
Meanwhile, the rise of the United Nations and of international law holds the promise of moving beyond the violent, bloodstained past and securing peace, human rights, and justice on the international level.
Although it’s tragic that powerful forces seem intent on building an unjust, lawless, and violent planet, let’s not forget that another world remains possible. Indeed, with an organized international effort, it could be a wonderful world.
by Lawrence Wittner | Sep 25, 2025 | Global Justice
On September 13, the British public was startled when more than 110,000 people turned out for a raucous far-right rally in London featuring racist conspiracy theories, anti-Muslim hate speech, and violent assaults upon police. Whipping up the crowd, Tommy Robinson―a popular far-right agitator, march organizer, and five-time convicted criminal―told the assemblage that British government officials believed “that Somalians, Afghans, Pakistanis, all of them, their rights supersede yours, the British public, the people that built this nation.” Signs carried by the demonstrators invoked racist and xenophobic themes, such as: “Why are white people despised when our money pays for everything?”
Well-known speakers from abroad echoed these sentiments. The prominent French far-right politician, Eric Zemmour, warned the angry crowd that they were facing “the great replacement of our European people by peoples coming from the south and of Muslim culture.” Elon Musk, the arrogant U.S. multibillionaire, demanded the dissolution of parliament and new elections. Thanks to the “rapidly increasing erosion of Britain with massive uncontrolled migration,” he said, “violence is coming,” and “you either fight back or you die.”
In recent years, the racially-tinged hatred of immigrants, particularly Muslims, Arabs, Africans, and Latin Americans, has fueled the rise of political parties on the far right. These “populist” parties have made astonishing gains in European nations, and they top the polls today in powerful countries like Britain, Germany, and France. Far-right political parties, drawing upon anti-immigrant rhetoric, have also experienced surges of popularity in Japan, Australia, and the United States.
When nations face sharp xenophobic and racist divisions within, they do have governments that can take action to counter them. Responding to rightwing violence at the London rally, police made dozens of arrests and Prime Minister Keir Starmer publicly proclaimed that Britain would “never surrender” to far-right protesters who used the British flag as a cover for violence and to instill fear. Britain is a “diverse country,” he said, and he would not tolerate people being “intimidated on our streets” because of their background or the color of their skin.
But the situation is quite different in the international arena, which more closely resembles a lawless wilderness in which nations can engage in criminal violence.
In February 2022, the Russian government―flouting the UN Charter and its 1994 treaty commitment rejecting the use of force against Ukraine―launched a full-scale military invasion of that much smaller nation. Seeking to justify the onslaught, Vladimir Putin claimed that Ukraine was “Russian land” and that he had to “denazify” it. On March 2, when the UN General Assembly passed a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion and calling for its withdrawal from Ukraine, 141 nations supported it, 5 nations (including Russia) opposed it, and 35 nations abstained. Two weeks later, the International Court of Justice ruled, by an overwhelming vote, that Russia should “immediately suspend” its military operations in Ukraine.
The Russian government, however, simply continued its military assault upon Ukraine and, over the ensuing years, nearly a million Russian troops and close to 400,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed or wounded. In addition, according to a February 2025 UNICEF report, thanks to the Russian bombardment of Ukraine’s housing, electrical systems, water supplies, and other civilian infrastructure, 3.7 million Ukrainians have been internally displaced, more than 6.8 million have fled abroad, and much of the country lies in ruins. “No place is safe,” it noted. “Overall, some 780 health facilities and more than 1,600 schools have been damaged or destroyed.” This July, the United Nations announced that there had been some 48,000 documented civilian casualties in Ukraine, among them thousands of children.
The Israeli government, too, has displayed a shocking disregard for international law and human life. After the Hamas-led terrorist attack upon Israel of October 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched a massive military invasion of the tiny Palestinian enclave of Gaza. The assault, vastly excessive in firepower and bloodshed for the task of defeating Hamas or pacifying Gaza, sent millions of innocent Palestinians desperately fleeing death and destruction as Israel’s military forces obliterated homes, schools, hospitals, journalists, and humanitarian aid workers. According to observers, some 65,000 Palestinians, overwhelmingly civilians, have been killed, famine is rampant, and much of Gaza has been pounded into rubble. A recent report by a UN commission of inquiry that examined the conduct of the invasion and the statements of the Netanyahu administration concluded that the government of Israel was committing the crime of genocide in Gaza.
Furthermore, the Israeli government has ignored international law for decades by refusing to withdraw from the West Bank―Palestinian territory seized by Israeli military forces during the 1967 war―and by bringing in hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers to colonize it. In turn, the settlers, now numbering 700,000, have engaged in widespread violence, recently escalating, against the residents of Palestinian villages in an effort to drive them out and seize their land.
The United Nations, of course, is supposed to maintain international peace and security. Unfortunately, however, it has never been granted the necessary power and resources to handle that job. Furthermore, the UN Security Council is hamstrung by the great power veto. As a result, effective global governance is sadly lacking, and rogue nations remain free to flout international law and the norms of civilization.
In addition to giving a free hand to national criminality, the absence of effective governance on the global level also cripples efforts to tackle other major world problems. After all, how are vital issues like curbing the nuclear arms race, combating climate change, and battling disease pandemics going to be addressed without a global approach and global enforcement?
Consequently, much of the world’s future hinges on empowering international institutions to enforce international law, overcome dangerous social divisions, and help ensure human survival.
by Hannah Fields | Aug 24, 2025 | Global Justice, Human Rights
From online news reports to social media platforms, the rise of authoritarianism and the surge in catastrophic armed conflicts are being broadcast in real time. The world has witnessed numerous atrocity crimes, causing many observers to speak out against the violence, but with no clear end in sight.
Sudan is experiencing one of the worst humanitarian disasters to date, with its two-year civil war resulting in more than 150,000 deaths and displacing at least 12 million people from their homes. In addition, the crisis has led to famine, mass starvation, and war crimes, including ethnic cleansing and sexual violence, all of which have received lukewarm condemnation and international neglect.
Similar circumstances prevail in Gaza as the Israeli government continues its crimes against humanity in the region. According to the Human Rights Watch World Report 2025, Israeli authorities have intentionally deprived Palestinians of access to humanitarian aid, including food and water essential for survival. They have also wounded and killed thousands of civilians, destroyed vital infrastructure such as homes and hospitals, decimated schools and camps housing displaced families, and left few or no safe spaces for those caught in their crosshairs.
More atrocities can be found in Ukraine, Haiti, Afghanistan, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and beyond. These atrocities range from war crimes to gendered violence to civilians suffering under the oppressive hand of authoritarian regimes.
As these violations mount, the international community is being called upon to demonstrate its commitment to democracy, human rights, and humanitarian action. Many nations, however, have failed to rise to the occasion or have sidestepped those commitments completely.
Even in the case of global governance institutions, such as the United Nations Security Council and the International Criminal Court (ICC), formally established to safeguard human rights and prevent atrocity crimes, their effectiveness is often undermined by structural and political limitations.
The Security Council is frequently paralyzed in its efficacy due to the veto power of its five permanent members (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), leading to inaction or slowed response to atrocity crimes. Additionally, the ICC has come under intense scrutiny, with some nations accusing the court of targeting weaker states while powerful actors escape its purview. Other nations have sanctioned the ICC for taking action against the powerful or have refused to comply with its arrest warrants.
With both institutions falling short and coming under the attack of politically motivated aggression from countries like the United States and Russia, some practitioners fear that international law is beginning to erode at its edges. For example, in June 2025, former Pakistani law minister Ahmad Irfan Aslam lamented the diminishing capacity of these institutions to deliver real-world justice, cautioning that “[n]o matter what court you approach, you are not going to get justice,” in part due to politicized state behavior.
With mounting global human rights violations and a waning faith in established global governance institutions, there remains a universal feeling of “what next?” or “where do we go from here?” Some may see no path forward.
But there is still hope to be found, especially in civil society organizations, which serve as important counterweights to the gridlocked state-driven systems.
Civil society organizations can act quickly where institutions cannot and can serve multiple roles, such as first responders, watchdogs, pressure builders, and innovators, among others. These organizations have been stepping up to fill gaps where formal aid pipelines are broken, most notably in areas such as Gaza and Sudan.
Sudanese civil society organizations, along with everyday citizens, have established Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs) — grassroots networks that provide shelter, food distribution, education, and medical aid. To date, these networks have assisted over 11.5 million people and earned a nomination for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize.
In Gaza, local groups, international NGOs, and independent journalists are collaborating to document abuses, distribute aid when possible (although often with limited success), and mobilize global solidarity. Organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have also closely monitored the situation, publicly documenting statistics and personal testimonies of civilians, thereby raising broader awareness (and have kept that same awareness and documentation for Sudan).
In these situations, we see communities and civil society, not bureaucracies with billion-dollar budgets, fighting to save lives while countering attempts to normalize or erase suffering, whether in courts, newspapers, or public spaces.
However, activity by civil society organizations faces significant obstacles. Shrinking civic space, repressive laws, accusations of bias, and dependency on donor funding can undermine their autonomy and impact. According to the CIVICUS Monitor, 118 countries now restrict freedoms of association, assembly, or expression. In addition, activists are often harassed, jailed, or even killed, as documented in the Front Line Defenders Report 2024/2025.
Even so, civil society stands as a beacon of hope against the dysfunctional nature of institutional systems. Although civil society organizations can’t replace these systems completely, they can act as a beating heart to improve the overall circulation of these systems.
Institutions must be placed in a position where they work alongside, rather than above, civil society actors. Funding structures must shift to empower local organizations directly, reducing the crippling dependency on donor-state priorities. And civil society must have formalized roles in peace processes and accountability mechanisms. In short, it needs to be involved in institutional conversations, not left on the outside.
As human rights violations and atrocity crimes continue to unfold in full public view, the question is not whether civil society can fill the void being left by deficient institutions. The question is whether the global community will acknowledge, support, and integrate civil society actors into a truly multi-layered system of protection.
If institutions cannot act and civil society is stifled, then a future where human rights can take root at a global level is no more than a fleeting notion planted in the sand.
by Lawrence Wittner | Mar 26, 2025 | Global Justice, Peace
Although the nations of the world have pledged to respect a system of international law and global responsibility, the recent behavior of several countries provides a sharp challenge to this arrangement.
For over three years, the Russian government has conducted a brutal military invasion, occupation, and annexation of Ukraine―the largest and most devastating military operation in Europe since World War II. Defying Russia’s international obligations―including a peace treaty it signed with Ukraine, a ruling by the International Court of Justice demanding Russia halt its military operations in Ukraine, the UN Charter, and repeated UN General Assembly condemnations of Russian behavior by an overwhelming majority of the world’s nations―the Putin regime has stubbornly persisted with Russia’s imperialist aggression against its smaller, weaker neighbor.
The consequences have been horrific. Russian and Ukrainian military forces are estimated to have suffered a total of roughly a million deaths or injuries. Moreover, the war has taken a severe toll on Ukraine’s civilian population, with some 42,000 civilians killed or injured and over 10 million more fleeing the country or internally displaced. In July 2024, it was estimated that, thanks to the Russian military’s indiscriminate bombing and shelling of civilian infrastructure, Russia had damaged more than 1,600 Ukrainian medical centers and destroyed over 200 hospitals. In the first year-and-a-half of the war, Human Rights Watch reported, the Russian invasion “devastated schools and kindergartens throughout the country,” with “over 3,790 educational facilities . . . damaged or destroyed.” A more recent study by this leading human rights organization noted that, in areas of Ukraine that Russian forces occupy, they have “committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. These include torture and killings of civilians, sexual violence, enforced disappearances, and forcible transfers and unlawful deportations of Ukrainians” to Russia.
For its part, the Israeli government has long been at odds with the United Nations over Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians and, particularly, its refusal to end its military occupation of the Palestinian territory it conquered during the 1967 Mideast war. Committed to building a Greater Israel, rightwing Israeli government officials have seized Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank and flooded it with about 700,000 heavily-subsidized Israeli settlers. In turn, the UN General Assembly, by an overwhelming vote, has called upon Israel to comply with international law and withdraw its military forces, cease new settlement activity, and evacuate its settlers from the West Bank.
The simmering Israeli-Palestinian conflict erupted once again in October 2023, when, in response to an Hamas terrorist attack, Benyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, launched a full-scale military invasion of Gaza with a colossal humanitarian impact. An estimated 46,788 Palestinians have been killed, most of them civilians, and 110,453 have been injured. According to the United Nations, 1.9 million people (90 percent of the population) have been internally displaced thanks to the Israeli bombing campaign, 69 percent of all structures have been destroyed (including 50 percent of hospitals, with the rest just partially functional), and about 1,060 medical workers have been killed. Thanks to the Israeli government’s blockade of food and water supplies, an estimated 91 percent of the population have faced severe levels of hunger.
Although only recently restored to the White House, Donald Trump has already embarked on an ambitious program of scrapping U.S. international commitments and proceeding, instead, with U.S. empire-building. Ordering U.S. sanctions on the International Criminal Court, as well as a U.S. pullout from two key UN agencies (the World Health Organization and the Human Rights Council), he has also chosen a U.S. ambassador to the UN, Representative Elise Stefanik, who has promised to bring the world organization into line with Trump’s “America First” priorities. Moreover, the American president has abruptly terminated nearly all USAID programs, putting millions of people around the world at risk of starvation, disease, and death. In sharp contrast to the severe cuts in domestic social spending that Trump is implementing, he has called for increased military spending, potentially raising the annual U.S. military expenditure from $842 billion to over $1 trillion. This enhanced military power should prove useful, for since returning to office he has championed seizing the Panama Canal and Greenland, taking over Gaza, and annexing Canada as the 51st American state.
In all three cases, the reckless pursuit of narrowly-defined national interests has taken precedence over the shared interests of the world community.
Nor is this an accident, for Putin, Netanyahu, and Trump are caught up in overheated nationalist dreams quite out of touch with global reality. Today, as human survival is threatened by climate catastrophe, a renewed nuclear arms race, disease pandemics, and widespread poverty―crises that cry out for global solutions―these government officials and their rightwing counterparts in other lands are driven by nationalist fantasies. Putin is enamored with Russian imperial glory, Netanyahu is obsessed with visions of Greater Israel, and Trump is intoxicated with America First. And, in their respective fantasies, each of them takes on heroic stature as the Supreme Leader.
Unfortunately, we have seen this phenomenon, along with its catastrophic consequences, many times before.
Fortunately, however, multitudes of people realize that things need not be this way. Indeed, Putin, Netanyahu, and Trump are out of line with the views of many national leaders and social movements that have recognized, and continue to recognize, that the reckless pursuit of narrow national interests is a recipe for disaster. To avoid this disaster, our far-sighted predecessors created the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and other international institutions. That is also why these institutions must be strengthened, for without the enforcement of world law, national irresponsibility will thrive.
Indeed, if humanity is to survive in coming decades, it is imperative that reckless competition and conflict among nations give way to cooperation and collective action. War must be replaced by peace, privilege by equality, and the rule of force with the force of law.
Above all, no nation can go it alone, for we are all part of one world and must act accordingly.
by Lawrence Wittner | Jan 12, 2025 | Global Justice
In today’s world of widespread poverty and unprecedented wealth, how about raising the wages of the most poorly-paid workers?
This October, the World Bank reported that “8.5 percent of the global population―almost 700 million people―live today on less than $2.15 per day,” while “44 percent of the global population―around 3.5 billion people―live today on less than $6.85 per day.” Meanwhile, “global poverty reduction has slowed to a near standstill.”
In early 2024, the charity group Oxfam International noted that, since 2020, “148 top corporations made $1.8 trillion in profit, 52 percent up on 3-year average, and dished out huge payouts to rich shareholders.” During this same period, the world’s five wealthiest men “more than doubled their fortunes from $405 billion to $869 billion,” an increase of $14 million per hour. As corporate elites gathered in Davos for a chat about the world economy, ten corporations alone were worth $10.2 trillion, more than the GDPs of all the countries in Africa and Latin America combined.
The world’s vast economic inequality “is no accident,” concluded a top Oxfam official. “The billionaire class is ensuring corporations deliver more wealth to them at the expense of everyone else.”
Although inequalities in income and wealth have existed throughout much of human history, they have been softened somewhat by a variety of factors, including labor unions and―in modern times―minimum wage laws. Designed to provide workers with a basic standard of living, these laws create a floor below which wages are not allowed to sink. In 1894, New Zealand became the first nation to enact a minimum wage law, and―pressured by the labor movement and public opinion―other countries (including the United States in 1938) followed its lead. Today, more than 90 percent of the world’s nations have some kind of minimum wage law in effect.
These minimum wage laws have had very positive effects upon the lives of workers. Most notably, they lifted large numbers of wage earners out of poverty. In addition, they undermined the business practice of slashing wages (and thus reducing production costs) to increase profit margins or to cut prices and grab a larger share of the market.
Even so, the growth of multinational corporations provided businesses with opportunities to slip past these national laws and dramatically reduce their labor costs by moving production of goods and services to low-wage nations. This corporate offshoring of jobs and infrastructure gathered steam in the mid-20th century. Initially, multinational corporations focused on outsourcing low-skilled or unskilled manufacturing jobs, which had a negative impact on employment and wages in advanced industrial nations. In the 21st century, however, the outsourcing of skilled jobs, particularly in financial management and IT operations, rose dramatically. After all, from the standpoint of enhancing corporate profits, it made good sense to replace an American IT worker with an Indian IT worker at 13 percent the cost. The result was an accelerating race to the bottom.
In the United States, this export of formerly good-paying jobs to low-wage, impoverished countries―combined with “free trade” agreements, a corporate and government assault on unions, and conservative obstruction of any raise in the pathetically low federal minimum wage ($7.25 per hour)―produced a disaster. The share of private sector goods-producing jobs at high wages shrank, since the 1960s, from 42 to 17 percent. Increasingly, U.S. jobs were located in the low-paid service sector. Not surprisingly, by 2023 an estimated 43 million Americans lived in poverty, while another 49 million lived just above the official poverty line. Little wonder that, in this nation and many others caught up in corporate globalization, there was an alarming rise of rightwing demagogues playing on economic grievances, popular hatreds, and fears.
If, therefore, wages in underdeveloped nations and in advanced industrial nations are not keeping pace with the vast accumulation of capital by the world’s wealthiest people and their corporations, one way to counter this situation is to move beyond the disintegrating patchwork of wage floor efforts by individual nations and develop a global minimum wage.
Such a wage could take a variety of forms. The most egalitarian involves a minimum wage level that would be the same in all nations. Unfortunately, though, given the vast variation among countries in wealth and current wages, this does not seem practical. In Luxembourg, for example, the average yearly per capita purchasing power is 316 times that of South Sudan. But other options are more viable, including basing the minimum wage on a percentage of the national median wage or on a more complex measurement accounting for the cost of living and national living standards.
Over the past decade and more, prominent economists and other specialists have made the case for a global minimum wage, as have a variety of organizations. For an appropriate entity to establish it, they have usually pointed to the International Labour Organization, a UN agency that has long worked to set international labor standards.
The advantages of a global minimum wage are clear.
It would lift billions of people out of poverty, thus enabling them to lead far better lives.
It would reduce the corporate incentive for offshoring by limiting the ability of multinational corporations to obtain cheap labor abroad.
By keeping jobs in the home country, it would aid unions in wealthy nations to retain their memberships and provide protection against “corporate blackmail”―the management demand that unions either accept contract concessions or get ready for the shift of corporate jobs and production overseas.
By raising wages in impoverished countries, it would reduce the poverty-driven mass migration from these nations and, thereby, deprive rightwing demagogues in wealthier countries of one of their most potent issues.
Of course, higher labor costs at home and abroad would reduce corporate profits and limit the growth of billionaires’ wealth and power. But wouldn’t these also be positive developments?
