Civilising Globalisation: Human Rights and the Global Economy
Date: 24/02/2010 3:00 pm
Location: Futureye Boardroom, Level 2, 388 Bourke St Melbourne
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Civilising Globalisation: Human Rights and the Global Economy
David Kinley
For many these are uncomfortable truths. Rights advocates that turn their nose up at the economy, do so at their peril. They must come to terms with how the economy works if they are to have any influence over it. Economists, financiers and industrialists, on the other hand, are deluded if they think that they operate in a vacuum. Their every action impacts on human rights; sometimes positively, other times negatively. If a new and fairer world economic order is emerge, then it is essential that such consequences are acknowledged and understood.
The global financial crisis and economic downturn has exposed the naked truth about deregulated, free-market liberalism. It is missing ethical moorings, it lacks social direction, and its boom/bust economics is unsustainable as well as unpalatable. In order to make the economy work for human rights, the question is no longer whether to regulate, but how to do so.
From this fundamental realisation, important duties flow:
· The enormous power wielded by multinational corporations must be matched by their responsibilities to ensure that they do not violate human rights, whether by design or by neglect. Equally, corporations have a duty to ensure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses perpetrated by their business partners, whether they are brutal governments or bad companies.
· Trade organizations like the WTO were established with express intentions to help the poor, assist workers and protect the environment. The rich states that effectively set the rules for international trade have lost sight of these ends as they focus on protecting vested interests.
· Economic development institutions like the World Bank and the IMF, as well as national aid agencies, have to reassess the ways in which they meet their commitment to alleviate poverty. For despite the billions of dollars they have invested in the World’s poor countries over the past 50 years, they struggle to protect even the most basic human rights of more than a billion people.
Much of the responsibility for establishing the regulatory framework within which these duties can be enforced rests on the shoulders of governments, especially governments of the wealthy and powerful nations. Tough political decisions have to made, new economic policies must be formulated and the uncompromising laws have to be put in place to make this happen.
Professor David Kinley holds the Chair in Human Rights Law at the