Originally published on the CGS blog on April 15, 2014.
In recent years, we’ve come to recognize that the world is interconnected, perhaps in ways and on a scale that it never has been before. We live together and affect each other on the same small planet and we are all fundamentally equal regardless of where we are born. Global justice is about deciding how the institutions those interactions create, formal and informal, social, political, and economic, should be managed in a just, equitable way, where everyone is treated fairly and no one is abused.
New international institutions were born in the last century to cope with the consequences of depression and devastating wars in a globalizing world. The United Nations was designed to pursue diplomacy on a variety of issues, and its Security Council in particular was designed to prevent great power war. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were designed to rebuild the global economy and keep it stable, so that every state can participate and so that no single state could make a mistake with its economy so terrible that it dooms us all. Institutions keep being birthed, too: a World Trade Organization has formed to help states better manage the flow of goods and services, an International Criminal Court started work just a decade ago to hold violators of human rights to account for their crimes, and more institutions have been created, including regional courts, issue-focused IGOs, and others.
These international institutions do much good, bringing food and shelter to refugees, helping us understand human rights violations, and helping keep the world stable in ways it may not be otherwise.
But if global justice is an institutional concern, then our hopes were for better institutions than these. From the standpoint of justice, institutions that favor certain classes, become corrupt, or fail to treat people fairly must be reformed. Global problems require global solutions, and while these institutions are nearly global in their scope, they are not global in their constituencies: they are international. States have different interests than people do and, in particular, the most powerful states have much of the influence over these institutions. Because Russia has a veto over the UN Security Council’s decisions, Syria remains in flames; because the U.S. refuses to hold a ratification vote, the IMF has its funds restricted and cannot have its vote structure reformed; North Korea is allowed to continue committing atrocities against its citizens because China is an ally. The list goes on. And issues like the 2008 financial crisis, where billions were affected by policies in just a few countries, are not managed in a way that is meaningfully accountable on a global scale.
And yet all the people affected by these issues, whose rights may be deprived by power politics or the simple failure of institutions, have little opportunity to demand reform. The great powers designed the institutions and get to decide when and if they reform; they often decide what actions they take and when they take them. We must reform these institutions in the name of justice.
International institutions changed the world in the 20th century. From setting up the international human rights regime to providing relief supplies and peacekeepers in crises to funding governments and their citizens when in desperate need, these institutions have become a necessary part of daily life. But international institutions are severely flawed: they are not truly global and fail to meet their missions because they are too deeply entrenched in the politics of states. We need a 21st century solution to global problems; let’s reform international institutions to make them more fundamentally global.
