Social Responsibility and Human Rights

Transcription

1 Social Responsibility and Human Rights During the latter half of the twentieth century, international human rights became the dominant form of moral and legal discourse. However, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, there is increasing emphasis on the notion that individuals and organizations also have certain social responsibilities with respect to human rights for which they may be held accountable. Governments have traditionally been viewed as the primary bearers of the moral and legal responsibilities entailed by human rights, and continue to be so regarded. However, the new discourse of social responsibility for human rights modifies the state-centric approach by proposing that many kinds of private non-state actors, such as multinational corporations, intergovernmental institutions, and even individuals and civil society organizations, also have responsibilities for observing, promoting and fulfilling human rights. The concept of social responsibility should be understood as encompassing more than just duties related to human rights, and is often invoked as a way of describing duties to protect environment quality, prevent unnecessary harm to animals, and to promote other important social goods. However, the present discussion will be restricted to those kinds of social responsibilities that are derived from or are related to human rights, an important subclass of the wider concept. The question of the relationship between rights and duties has a long history in moral and legal philosophy. Most people believe that human moral agents have certain responsibilities to society, at least some of which flow from other people's rights. Rights and responsibilities are 1

2 often seen as correlative, so that, if someone is a right-holder who has a right to something, then someone else must be a duty-bearer who has a responsibility to observe, protect, and fulfill that right. If we are talking about human rights, which belong to all human persons despite differences in race, gender, nationality, religion, property and other characteristics, and are held to be universal, indivisible, and inherent, then it is plausible to suppose that the duties and responsibilities that derive from human rights must also be universal, indivisible, and inherent. However, this is not entirely accurate: with respect to the "duty-side" of human rights there is a division of moral labor in which different individuals and different organs of society have different kinds of duties regarding human rights. The social responsibilities associated with human rights, while common, are also differentiated, particularly with respect to positive duties; they can be ascribed both to human persons and to certain kinds of organizations; they are ascribed separately to particular moral agents but are also shared; the right-holders who are the objects of these responsibilities include both fellow citizens and noncitizens; and the scope of these responsibilities potentially encompasses the full range of human rights recognized under contemporary international human rights law. While many of the duties and responsibilities that are correlated with human rights are prima facie, in that there may be valid ethical considerations that excuse or justifiably limit some actors' responsibilities with respect to human rights, fulfilling these responsibilities is not optional, and duty-bearers may be held accountable to society for their enactment of them. The goal of this chapter will be first, to indicate more precisely the ways in which social responsibilities are linked to human rights. Secondly, to explain the concept of corporate social 2

3 responsibility and describe how it is being used in moral and political discourse. Thirdly, the essay will conclude with a brief discussion of the relationship between the acceptance and enactment of social responsibilities and the development of the human moral personality. Duties to the Community The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), which is the template for the entire canon of Post-World War II human rights declarations, treaties, covenants, and conventions, has often been criticized for failing to prominently mention the notions of duties and responsibilities. The only place in the UDHR where duties to the community are explicitly mentioned comes towards the end of the document in the first clause of Article 29 where it says, Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible. This statement is elliptical and rather mysterious. What are these duties? How does one define community? What do these duties have to do with the development of human personality? And why does it say "alone"? The drafting history of the UDHR provides important insights into the meaning of this text. According to Johannes Morsink, earlier drafts of the UDHR placed the concept of duties prominently at the beginning of the document, but through a series of decisions and compromises it was whittled down and finally moved to the end (Morsink 1999, ). The first article of John Humphrey's draft stated: "Every one owes a duty to his State and to the (international society) United Nations. He must accept his just share of responsibility for the performance of such social duties and his share of such common sacrifices as may contribute to 3

4 the common good (241). After several delegates objected to the emphasis on duties to the State, as opposed to society or the community, particularly because it could be interpreted as endorsing a duty of loyalty to unjust or undemocratic states, Humphrey's text was rejected in favor of an alternate draft prepared by the French delegate, René Cassin, which had as Article 2: "The object of society is to afford each of its members equal opportunity for the full development of his spirit, mind and body;" and as Article 3: "Man is essentially social and has fundamental duties to his fellow-men. The rights of each are therefore limited by the rights of others" (243). Cassin's text was then condensed to read, "Everyone has duties to the community which enables him freely to develop his personality," and once this was done, it was recommended by the Chinese delegate P.C. Chang, that the statement be moved to the end for stylistic reasons, so as not to discuss limitations of human rights before announcing those same rights. The Australian delegate, Alan Watt, then proposed inserting the word "alone" into the statement in order to emphasize that there was "an organic connection between the individual and the community" which made it impossible for individuals to develop their humanity apart from the societies to which they belong (246). As Morsink notes, "This word 'alone' may well be the most important single word in the entire document, for it helps us answer the charge that the rights set forth in the Declaration create egoistic individuals who are not closely tied to their respective communities," thereby recognizing the "communitarian dimension" of human rights (248). But the interdependence of rights and responsibilities has been largely overlooked in the subsequent development of the human rights canon where the dominant focus is on the rights of individual persons and on the legal obligations of governments towards them, rather than social 4

5 responsibilities of private individuals and non-state actors with respect to human rights. The idea of the individual s duties to the community is explicitly mentioned in the African Charter on Human and People s Rights (1981), where there is a brief list of eight specific enumerated duties including: to one s family, to society, to work and pay taxes, not to compromise the security of the State, and to preserve and strengthen African cultural values. But some commentators object to this kind of enumeration of duties; another commentary on UDHR Article 29 notes that, while there are now many authoritative enumerations of human rights, there is no authorized international catalogue of the individual s duties to his/her community, and argue that this is because there is no such thing as fundamental or human duties in the same sense as there are rights. Any catalogue of duties to the community as one finds in some constitutions would therefore be to some extent arbitrary or a matter for domestic law and politics (Opsahl and Dimitrijevic 1999, 634). They also note that many legal scholars of human rights hold that Duties to the community belong wholly to the moral and political sphere and can hardly be translated into law (641). The view that the "duties to the community" referred to in Article 29 belong wholly to the ethical or moral sphere is also consonant with a statement in the Preamble of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man (1948), which says, Duties of a juridical nature presuppose others of a moral nature which support them in principle and constitute their basis. This statement provides an important clue to the nature of the duties to the community being invoked by UDHR Article 29; they are to be understood primarily, but not exclusively, as moral duties or ethical responsibilities one owes to other members of society. 5

6 Moral duties and ethical responsibilities differ from legal obligations in that they are not issued by a sovereign law-making authority, are not codified in black letter law, are not enforced by the police powers of states, and they not normally justiciable in the way in which legal obligations to conform to statutes, contractual obligations, and case law are enforceable by courts. Moral duties are informal and are commonly enforced only by social sanctions such as moral disapprobation. Ethical responsibilities are also notoriously difficult to define and are subject to variable interpretations depending on one s background philosophical and religious beliefs, one s culture, and the particular social expectations that are associated with particular roles and stations in society. But it does not follow from this that such ethical responsibilities do not exist, or that they are unimportant. As the statement from the American Declaration recognizes, legal obligations must be based upon moral duties, for to answer the question, "Why ought one obey the law?" by saying that it one's legal obligation to do so, begs the question. So then, it seems clear that the phrase duties to the community in Article 29 must mainly refer to moral duties and responsibilities which individuals, and some kinds of non-state actors, have toward society or their communities, not primarily to legal duties they have towards the state, nor to legally enforceable obligations they might have towards other non-state actors. This is the sense of "social responsibility" that is most frequently used nowadays. However, it is important to recognize that individuals and corporate non-state actors also have certain strict legal obligations that derive from human rights. Governments are the primary addressees of human rights claims, and under international human rights law, they have the obligations to observe human rights, protect their own citizens against violations of human rights, and provide 6

7 remedies, and in some cases reparations, to individuals whose human rights have been violated. However, individuals and corporate non-state actors also have strict legal obligations to respect the human rights of others, both those of their fellow citizens and also those of non-nationals. Human rights have multiple addresses and there is a division of moral labor among these different classes of duty-bearers. For example, everyone has a strict moral and legal obligation not to torture or enslave human beings, to observe these rights, but it is mainly governments that have the responsibility to protect people against violations of these rights. As James Nickel explains it, The right to protection against torture can be universal without all of the corresponding duties being against everyone, or against a single world-wide agency. What is required is that there be for every right-holder at least one agency with duties to protect that person against torture (Nickel 2007, 41). This agency will usually be the government of the country in which the right-holder has citizenship or resides, but in cases in which the state fails to adequately fulfill its responsibilities, the duty to protect individuals against serious forms of human rights abuse may devolve onto others, who can be considered secondary addresses of these rights. The notion of devolution of the responsibility to protect human rights has been particularly prominent in discussions of the responsibility to protect individuals and peoples against genocide and other forms of mass violence and has led to a re-examination of the international norms concerning humanitarian intervention (Evans and Sahnoun 2001). The term responsibility is now often used instead of "duty" to designate the particular kinds of moral obligations that individuals and non-state corporate entities have toward their communities and to society in general. The word responsibility is used in at least two distinct 7

8 senses in moral discourse. One way this term is used is to assign liability, culpability or blame for an actor's past actions. This "backward-looking" sense of "liability responsibility" is not generally what is meant when people speak of the social responsibilities of individuals and corporations. Liability responsibility is backward-looking and aims to assign blame for harm caused by an agent s own actions. Social responsibilities, in the moral sense, are forward-looking and are directed at preventing or correcting large-scale or systematic forms of oppression or injustice or avoiding harms that result from the participation of many moral agents in unjust social and economic institutions. When we speak of a person's duties, we generally mean specific demands for action that are placed upon their wills by others. Duty has come to suggest action in which the agent merely complies or in which he or she acts heteronomously in accordance with the will of another. Social responsibilities, on the other hand, when understood in the moral sense, describe moral obligations which are self-assumed and are often discretionary. The responsible moral agent is someone who "responds" to the existence of injustice or oppression in morally appropriate ways through their own autonomous decisions and actions without any external authority or sanction compelling him or her to do so. Robert Goodin has noted, Responsibilities are to consequentialistic ethics what duties are to deontological ones. Duties dictate actions. Responsibilities dictate results (Goodin 1986, 50). As he explains, Both duties and responsibilities are prescriptions of the general form: A ought to see to it that X, where A is some agent and X some state of affairs. However, in the case of duties, the state of affairs, X, is the result of some action of A s own doing, while in the case of responsibilities the X clause need not refer to specific actions on the part of A because the agent 8

9 can delegate his or her responsibilities to others. For example, a captain of a ship has the responsibility to see to it that the ship does not hit an iceberg (or anything else), that is, to ensure that particular states of affairs are avoided. But he can fulfill his responsibility not to bring about these states of affairs by delegating the actual steering to others. When he does so, the captain retains overall responsibility in that he must see to it that those to whom he delegates his responsibility act in the appropriate ways, and he will be held accountable for mishaps if they occur. But what matters for responsibilities is that a certain outcome or state of affairs be obtained, not who is performing the specific actions needed in order to obtain them. This feature of the concept of responsibility makes it particularly apt for describing the kinds of institutionally mediated social responsibilities that individuals and organizations have with respect to their positive duties to protect and fulfill human rights. Moral philosophers distinguish between negative duties which require that moral agents forgo certain types of actions, or simply refrain from interfering with others, from positive duties which require that one act in certain ways to bring about states of affairs that may involve giving up resources or privileges that one already possesses. The negative duties correlated with human rights, such as the duty not to torture or enslave others, because they involve omissions, are universal and can be ascribed to everyone. However, as Henry Shue has argued, with respect to the positive duties entailed by human rights there is a division of moral labor in which "the positive duties need to be divided up and assigned among bearers in some reasonable way" (Shue, ). The ways in which these positive duties and responsibilities are assigned must, moreover, provide for differing degrees of responsibility deriving from the limitations and capacities of different agents and the 9

10 positional relationship between the duty-bearers and the right-holders who are the ultimate beneficiaries of their responsibilities. In order to fulfill their positive social responsibilities with respect to human rights, individuals commonly delegate them to mediating institutions. For instance, by paying taxes we support police forces, courts, public schools and other governmental institutions that function as the institutional means by which we discharge our social responsibilities to protect and fulfill our own human rights to security, justice, and education as well as those of our fellow citizens. Thomas Pogge has argued that in discussing the positive duties associated with human rights, we should employ an institutional understanding that recognizes that, By postulating a person P s right to X as a human right we are asserting that P s society ought to be (re)organized in such a way that P has secure access to X and, in particular, so that P is secure against being denied X or deprived of X officially: by the government or its agents or officials. (Pogge 1995, 114). Under the institutional understanding, individuals and corporate non-state actors do not have direct responsibilities for protecting and fulfilling all human rights, rather they have the responsibility to ensure that appropriate mediating institutions fulfill these obligations. In cases where there exist well-functioning public institutions that effectively protect and efficiently fulfill human rights, the individual's positive responsibility to his or her community consists in accepting a fair share of the burdens and costs associated with maintaining them, usually through the payment of taxes. However, it is often the case that important human rights are not adequately protected by existing public institutions, for instance, with respect to social and economic rights, as evidenced by the plight of homeless and hungry people in many 10

11 countries. In such cases, the individual's social responsibilities to his or her community can be discharged by means of donations to voluntary civil society organizations and nongovernmental organizations whose missions are directed to the fulfillment of various human rights. In some cases, individuals may wish to discharge their social responsibilities with respect to human rights by advocating that governments and corporations do more to fulfill their own social responsibilities with respect to neglected and unfulfilled human rights, while in other cases, individuals may become "social entrepreneurs" and create new private institutions that directly address the task of fulfilling human rights and securing their universal effective enjoyment. Social responsibilities for human rights must thus be understood to include some legal obligations, for instance, to respect the rights of others and to pay one's fair share of taxes to support just and effective mediating institutions. But they also call upon individuals and corporate non-state actors, to utilize the powers and capacities at their disposal in a voluntary but conscientious fashion in order to prevent and correct injustices due to inadequate human rights implementation and protection mechanisms. In some cases this may require supporting voluntary organizations dedicated to improving human rights protection and implementation, or creating new institutions that will function to fulfill human rights more effectively. Corporate Social Responsibility Although governments are the primary addressees of human rights claims, and are held to bear legal responsibilities to observe human rights, protect their citizen's enjoyment of human rights from various kinds of threats, and to provide remedies and reparations to those whose 11

12 human rights have been violated, there has been an increasing awareness that many of the threats to human rights come from not from government, but rather from powerful non-state actors (Alston 2005; Clapham 2006). In recent years there has been a growing interest in the topic of the responsibilities of non-state actors, particularly multinational corporations, with respect to human rights, which has been led by a global corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement. The emerging social expectations that corporations should be accountable to society for their social and environmental performance has spurred a variety of initiatives by governments, NGOs and business associations designed to define the specific responsibilities of MNCs with respect to human rights, including, the Sullivan Principles (1977), the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Corporations (1976), the UN Global Compact (2000), and the UN "Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights"(2003). Most recently, the topic has been the subject of series of consultations and reports mandated by the UN Human Rights Council by Professor John Ruggie, who is the Secretary General's Special Representative for Business and Human Rights (Ruggie 2008). The traditional view of the social responsibilities of corporations held by laissez-faire economists, such as Milton Friedman, is that the sole responsibility of business is to generate wealth for its owners (Friedman 1970). While the goal of maximizing shareholder value still describes the primary legal obligation of public corporations, the idea that corporations also have significant social and environmental responsibilities has gained significant traction in recent years. A major theoretical innovation in business theory that helped propel this shift was the development of stakeholder theory (Freeman, 1984). According to this view, corporations have 12

13 social responsibilities to a variety of stakeholders, for instance, to their employees, their customers, their suppliers and business partners, to residents of their host communities, and to society at large, as well as to their owners and investors. While from a legal point of view a corporation may be described as a legal person or a nexus of contracts, from a social point of view, corporations sit at the center of networks of social relations and their activities impact a various groups of stakeholders. John Elkington coined the term triple-bottom line to describe ethical business practices that take social and environmental impacts on all stakeholders into account (Elkington 1998). The elements of the triple bottom line (TBL) are: people or social capital, planet or natural capital, and, of course, financial capital or profit. The main focus of the CSR movement to date has been on the negative externalities of corporate business activity, that is, the costs and harms to society, and to the environment, that do not typically show up in the audited financial reports. These can include, for instance, complicity in human rights abuses committed by governments, use of forced labor and child labor, endangering the health and safety of employees, denying their employees rights of freedom of association and collective bargaining, discrimination, excessive working hours, inadequate compensation, environmental pollution and degradation including carbon emissions, threats to public health, damage to fragile ecosystems, inappropriate waste disposal, bribery and corruption, unfair or fraudulent marketing, inadequate consumer data and privacy protection, and other problems that are directly or indirectly due to business activity. While some of these matters can be tied directly to particular company s practices, in other cases the problems are structural and systematic and are due to the interaction of market forces. 13

14 For example, it is very likely that many of the consumer goods purchased by shoppers in the developed countries can trace their origins to abusive or exploitative factory conditions in the poor countries where these goods are now generally made. Consumers are not responsible for these poor labor conditions in the causal or the liability senses of that term. But consumers do nevertheless have certain ethical duties regarding these systematic economic injustices. The philosopher Iris Marion Young, who calls these kinds of duties political responsibilities, notes that they are often international in scope because, "the social relations that connect us to others are not restricted to nation-state borders (Young 2004, 371). The supply chains that end at the point of purchase in our big-box discount stores typically begin in some factory in China or Bangladesh or another developing country. By purchasing that pair of sneakers made in China, we are interacting with a complex set of economic and political institutions that make it possible for workers halfway around the globe to be producing goods that end up in our stores, and eventually on our feet and in our closets. Our consumer behavior assumes the existence of these transnational market institutions, and so by participating through them in a global system of production, distribution and marketing, our consumer decisions indirectly affect the distant workers who produced these goods. While these extended forms of social relations are mutual the same complex supply chain that connects us with Chinese factory workers connects them with us the character of the relationship between the parties is morally asymmetrical due to factors that Young calls positional power and vulnerability. She argues that, While everyone in the system of structural and institutional relations stands in circumstances of justice that give them obligations with respect to all the others, those 14

15 institutionally and materially situated to be able to do more to affect the conditions of vulnerability have greater obligations (371). This would seem to imply that the retail corporations that source their merchandise from developing countries, and are in part responsible, in the liability sense, for encouraging or exploiting unjust labor conditions, should bear a greater degree of social responsibility for correcting them. She also argues out that since the power relationships that gives rise to this kind of asymmetrical moral responsibility are objective, the assignment of such responsibilities to moral agents does not depend on their recognition or consent. The fact that many other people also participate in the economic relations found within global supply chains does not absolve or diminish any one person s or company s responsibility for protecting vulnerable workers from exploitation and abuse. It is a shared social responsibility borne by all those who participate in the global market economy, but especially those who, because of their greater power or capability, are in a position to ameliorate or prevent injustice from being visited upon the more vulnerable participants in the process of production. But the point of assigning social responsibility to consumers and corporations is not to blame them for participating in economic institutions that produce injustice, but instead to urge them to take responsibility for altering the processes to avoid or reduce injustice (Young, 379). Unlike the negative duties and responsibilities derived from human rights, these positive, forwardlooking social responsibilities allow for considerable discretion on the part of agents as to how their responsibilities are discharged. Social responsibilities are also shared; my having a social responsibility to address a global injustice does not remove or diminish your similar social responsibility to do so. Social responsibilities address morally unacceptable outcomes that are 15

16 produced by the interaction of many persons with unjust institutions, where each person is personally responsible for the outcome in a partial way, even though, the specific part that each plays in producing the outcome cannot be isolated and identified (Young, 380). The global CSR movement, then, has been calling upon individuals -- but particularly multinational corporations -- and other powerful non-state actors, such as the World Bank, not only to avoid direct violations of human rights, but also to accept a fair share of the social responsibility for correcting social and economic injustices and preventing future abuses of human rights. While there is no commonly accepted definition of CSR, this term is widely understood, particularly within the business community, to refer only to voluntary moral responsibilities, distinct from any legal obligations that corporations may have. Standard accounts of CSR portray corporate responsibilities as a pyramid. Legal obligations, such as the fiduciary duties of corporate directors and regulatory requirements imposed by either a MNC s home or host country are the base. Social responsibilities for instance, concerning human rights and environmental protection, are the middle. Corporate philanthropy, such as gifts to causes that are unrelated to the core activities of the business enterprise, are at the top, these last being optional, but praiseworthy (Leisinger 2006). Setting the boundary between those corporate responsibilities that should be legal obligations, and those that should remain moral social responsibilities has generated a great deal of controversy. Corporations generally prefer voluntary self-regulation to government imposed legal requirements, while nongovernmental organizations generally prefer the opposite. But, as Jennifer Zerk has argued, the debate as to whether CSR should be voluntary or mandatory is misguided for several reasons (Zerk 2006). In most jurisdictions 16

17 there are legal requirements grounded upon human rights norms, for instance, that prohibit companies from discriminating on the basis of race, sex or religion in the hiring of employees, that protect worker safety in the workplace, or that legally prohibit the use of child labor and forced labor, and other unjust and abusive labor practices. However, in many countries in which MNCs operate, these sorts of requirements are not well-enforced. So, if a particular multinational corporation that operates both in Denmark and Bangladesh adopts a policy prohibiting the use of child labor worldwide, is that policy the result of a legal obligation or a moral responsibility? Obviously, it is both. The boundaries between what is legally required, morally expected, and merely beneficial for companies to do are fluid and subject to political bargaining. But corporations do have legal obligations to observe human rights, as well as certain moral responsibilities to address forms of oppression and injustice produced by inadequate fulfillment or implementation of human rights, just as human moral agents do. In the current global debate, there is a spectrum of opinion as to whether mandatory legal regulation or voluntary self-regulation is the better strategy for advancing the CSR agenda. A broad definition of CSR that includes both legal obligations and moral responsibilities is neutral on this debate by assuming that in the foreseeable future there will be a mixture of normative regimes, including national and international laws, emerging social expectations, soft-law approaches, contractual obligations, as well as voluntary self-regulation through enlightened self interest, which in combination will regulate the ways in which MNCs operate in the global economy of the twenty-first century. This is essentially the view being promoted by the UN s Special Representative for Business and Human Rights who has proposed that States have the 17

18 primary duty to protect persons residing in their territories against human right abuses by nonstate actors, including corporations, while corporations have responsibilities to respect human rights, and to exercise due diligence to ensure that they do not harm human rights. Due diligence is considered to be a process whereby companies not only ensure compliance with national laws but also manage the risk of human rights harm with a view to avoiding it (Ruggie 2008, at 25). The exercise of due diligence requires both negative duties of avoidance and omission, and positive duties of commission which may involve the expenditure of resources to proactively prevent human rights abuses from occurring. A third element of this framework, providing better access to remedies for persons whose human rights have been abused, is proposed as a shared social responsibility of states, business enterprises, and civil society organizations which should cooperate in creating effective judicial and non-judicial grievance mechanisms through which individual claims can be adjudicated and resolved. Social Responsibility as a Virtue Some might object to the concept of social responsibility I have described because they believe that the positive duties involved in human rights fulfillment and enjoyment are imperfect duties of charity, which while praiseworthy, are not required. The term "supererogation" is used by moral philosophers to describe a class of moral actions which are familiar to most people. Etymologically it means "the act of paying out more than is required or demanded." As David Heyd writes, superogatory acts are "optional or non obligatory, that is distinguished from those acts which fall under the heading of duty...they are beyond duty, fulfill more than is 18

19 required, over and above what the agent is supposed or expected to do" (Heyd 1982, 1) Acts of supererogation may be defined as follows: An act is supererogatory if and only if: (1) it is neither obligatory nor forbidden, (2) its omission is not wrong, and does not deserve sanction or criticism either formal or informal, (3) it is morally good, both by virtue of its (intended) consequences and by virtue of its intrinsic value (being beyond duty), (4) it is done voluntarily for the sake of someone else's good, and is thus meritorious. (Heyd 115) Examples of supererogation include saintly and heroic acts; acts of charity, generosity and philanthropy; acts of kindness and consideration; acts of mercy and forgiveness; and other voluntary acts which while praiseworthy are not required. Performing such acts is generally considered a mark of moral virtue, but society does not demand that everyone be virtuous. However, the social responsibilities that derive from human rights do not seem to precisely fit this description of supererogatory actions, in that they sometimes involve acts or omissions the commission of which would expose the agent to informal sanctions or moral disapprobation. Social responsibilities for human rights seem to occupy an intermediate position between legal obligations, which are non-optional and peremptory, and acts of supererogation, which are purely voluntary and whose non-performance does not expose the agent to moral criticism or demands for accountability. 19

20 So, for example, it would be a purely supererogatory act to donate money so that a local little league baseball team can buy new uniforms; that is, it would be praiseworthy, but cannot be demanded, and omitting doing so would not subject one to moral blame or criticism. But suppose there is a natural disaster such as a flood or earthquake, or that there is genocide or a campaign of ethnic cleansing, and tens of thousands of people homeless and are in dire need of emergency relief assistance. In this case, the decision to omit donating to a competent humanitarian relief organization, when one is easily capable of doing so, could be regarded as blameworthy, even though one would be within one s rights not to do so. Some people may be excused from fulfilling this social responsibility for various reasons, for instance, because they have other more compelling responsibilities that conflict with their doing anything to aid the victims of the natural disaster, or because the costs and sacrifices they would incur by doing so are too great. But individuals who can do something to help the victims, and have no good excuse for not doing it, but choose not to, are morally blameworthy for they have failed to fulfill one of their social responsibilities. Donating to humanitarian relief efforts, on this view, is a non-optional yet nonperemptory social responsibility. In other words, it is something we can criticize others for not doing so, although we cannot legitimately demand that they do so or punish them for failing to do so. The social responsibilities that derive from humanitarian needs and human rights differ from purely supererogatory acts that merely provide some benefits to the community but which are not required to fulfill anyone s human rights. The distinction between the performance of purely supererogatory acts and the fulfillment of one's social responsibilities with respect to human rights is not always clear in the way in 20

21 which we use these terms in ordinary language, partly because both kinds of actions are highly discretionary. Persons have many options about how they can direct their donations to fulfill their social responsibility to provide humanitarian relief and advance other forms of human rights protection and fulfillment, and it is important to inquire carefully about such matters as cost effectiveness, whether some forms of aid do create a "culture of dependency", or fuel corruption when choosing which agencies to which to give one's support. However, none of these sorts of concerns and issues serve to excuse competent and capable moral agents from donating something to some voluntary mediating institutions or others involved in the fulfillment of inadequately protected or implemented human rights. Doing so is a non-optional moral obligation that can be understood as fulfilling a social responsibility that moral agents have toward other members of the international community with respect to their human rights. Social responsibilities are discretionary and their specific contents, that is, what they require one to do or not do, will vary depending on contextual and situational variables, and well as personal capacities, opportunities, and talents. If one happens to be a wealthy, world famous rock star, like Bono, then maybe a good way to discharge your social responsibilities is to organize a global fund for HIV-AIDS and get a lot of companies to sell *RED* branded merchandise, some profits from which go to provide medical treatment for persons afflicted with this disease. But if you are a third grade teacher in a rural school, this model probably won t work for you. But there are still lots of other things people of ordinary means can do to try to address structural injustice and improve human rights implementation. If you occupy an elected government office, you probably have access to information and powers that would enable you to do more on certain 21

22 issues than other people. If so, then you ought to be doing those things, but it would be absurd to suggest that everyone should do the same things you are doing, because other people do not occupy your office or role. Because social responsibilities are discretionary they require that moral agents make a judgment about what it is they themselves can do with the talents and resources at their disposal, to improve the way society is organized for the protection and enjoyment of human rights. Moreover, the content of one s social responsibilities depends on the current social, economic, and cultural problems that need to be addressed. There is a sense in which social responsibilities are not prescriptive in the same way as ordinary moral norms. By ordinary moral norms I mean things like Do not lie, Do not steal, or Keep your promises and so forth. Ordinary moral norms embody specific rules of conduct that attempt to mark out those actions that are morally permissible from those that are not. Following such normative ethical guidance is rather like using a cookbook; one simply follows the directions. But in thinking about one s social responsibilities, this kind of approach will not do. Instead the moral agent is required to consult his or her conscience, and to survey the particular situational variables together with his or her positional and relational capacities and then creatively figure out what it is they ought to do to discharge their social responsibilities. The process is dynamic and creative, and one in which the moral agent is actively taking responsibility rather than passively accepting duties that are laid upon them by others. The root of the word responsibility is respond -- social responsibilities are those moral responsibilities which prompt us to respond to the big problems 22

23 of the world social injustice, human rights abuse, poverty, disease and within the limits of our own capabilities, to do our part to repair the world. For those who are religiously inclined, this idea of social responsibility can be understood as implying that because humans have free will we are co-creators, along with God, of the moral order, and that by performing our moral duties and freely discharging our social responsibilities we are actively fulfilling God s will. The ability to guide one s own moral behavior and to exercise the particular powers and capabilities at one s disposal in order to contribute to upholding and repairing the moral order is also a way of thinking about what Article 29 means when it speaks of "the free and full development of [the human] personality". To become a fully mature moral agent, one who has reached the highest stage of moral development, it is necessary that one voluntarily accept and effectively discharge one's social responsibilities. The ability to autonomously accept and bear moral responsibilities that benefit others is a uniquely human capacity, and may be the true ground of human dignity. Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher, thought that the supreme purpose of human life, its telos, was something he called eudaimonia. This term is often translated as happiness or sometimes as flourishing, but what Aristotle is really trying to express is the idea that we fulfill ourselves as human beings by acquiring the capacity and the disposition to act in the best way we can, at the things we do best, for the good of others. Only by taking responsibility for helping to repair the large scale problems of society can each of us, through the active engagement of our own creative moral agency with the world, realize the free and full development of the human moral personality. 23

24 Morton Winston September 2009 words =

25 Works Cited ALSTON, P. (Ed.) (2005) Non-State Actors and Human Rights, Oxford, Oxford University Press. CLAPHAM, A. (2006) Human Rights Obligations of Non-State Actors, Oxford, Oxford University Press. ELKINGTON, J. (1998) Cannibals with Forks: The Triple-Bottom Line for 21st Century Business, Gabriola Island BC, New Society Publishers. EVANS., G. & SAHNOUN, M. (2001) The Responsibility to Protect. Ottawa, International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. FREEMAN, R. E. (1984) Strategic Management: A stakeholder approach, Boston, Pitman. FRIEDMAN, M. (1970) The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits. New York Times Magazine. New York. GOODIN, R. E. (1986) Responsibilities. The Philosophical Quarterly, 36, 142, HEYD, D. (1982) Supererogation: Its Status in Ethical Theory, Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press. MORSINK, J. (1999) The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting and Intent, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press. NICKEL, J. W. (2007) Making Sense of Human Rights, Malden, MA, Blackwell Publishing. 25

26 OPSAHL, T. & DIMITRIJEVIC, V. (1999) Articles 29 and 30. IN ALFREDSSON G. & EIDE, A. (Eds.) The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: A Common Standard of Achievement. The Hague, Kluwer Law International, POGGE, T. W. (1995) How Should Human Rights Be Conceived? Jahrebuch fur Recht und Ethik, 3, RUGGIE, J. G. (2008) Protect, Respect and Remedy: a Framework for Business and Human Rights. Geneva, Human Rights Council. SHUE, H. (1988) Mediating Duties. Ethics, 98, 4, YOUNG, I. M. (2004) Responsibility and Global Labor Justice. The Journal of Political Philosophy, 12, 4,