Global Justice and Poverty in the World as Interpreted by Thomas Pogge

Abstract

Thomas Pogge sees the cause of poverty in the world as to be found primarily in structural relations, in the current global institutional order which has been built up in detail within many of its segments in the last twenty years or so, that is since the end of the Cold War. For a reformation of the existing order to take place, due to which 50,000 people die daily, we need to look a little further into the past to the Westphalian agreement in the seventeenth century, and at the same time to create out of globalization an effective democratic process, which is the task of all of us ordinary citizens. This is the only way in which a new political and economic architecture can be shaped for the welfare of all, not, as it is now, for the increasing advantage of only a small financial and business elite. Unlike John Rawls whose idea of justice is the grounds for the regulation of a modern western liberal state, Pogge places justice in a broader global context. The article also portrays Pogge’s solutions for allaying world poverty such as reforming of the pharmaceutical industry which he has been working on for a number of years with a group of experts from various fields.