Abstract
In this paper, I argue that philanthropists should direct their giving toward the realization of human rights. Currently, the right to health and other basic human rights are not being realized. Significant financial support will be needed for the UN Sustainable Development Goals, for example. Supporting this thesis, United Nations documents assert that non-state actors (a category that would include philanthropists) have human rights responsibilities. Documents reviewed in my study include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; General Comment 14 on “The Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health”; and reports by Paul Hunt and John Ruggie, written in their capacity as UN Special Rapporteurs. These “soft law” pronouncements underscore the obligations that philanthropists have to supporting human rights, and thereby imply that human rights should be the primary consideration in determining philanthropists’ sector choice. The use of such a framework could also alleviate some democracy-related concerns regarding philanthropy.
This paper has benefitted enormously from the comments of Valentin Beck and Henning Hahn. Many thanks to the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and my colleagues there for providing a wonderful environment in which to discuss human rights. I also want to thank Thomas Queen and Henry Shull for helpful comments and help with manuscript preparation.
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- 1.
The statistics do not account for donations to organizations in other countries, and they do not clearly distinguish between health charities with a domestic focus and health charities with an international focus (“global health”).
- 2.
The focus of this essay is the responsibilities of philanthropists. This is not to say that other people do not have human rights responsibilities. I consider the broader question in my forthcoming book, Giving for Human Rights (Illingworth 2019).
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Illingworth, P. (2020). Giving Well: Philanthropy for Human Rights. In: Beck, V., Hahn, H., Lepenies, R. (eds) Dimensions of Poverty. Philosophy and Poverty, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31711-9_9
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