In global ethics, one important question concerns the responsibilities of different agents. One may ask, for instance, who is responsible for extreme poverty. Some authors argue that the structures of international order are unjust and that they are not produced on purpose. According to those authors, the question about responsible agents is, therefore, misleading. Extreme poverty is comparable to unavoidable natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis. However, if we reject this view and accept that extreme poverty should be distinguished from natural disasters, then the question about responsible agents arises. We should ask which agents have contributed to the extreme poverty or which agents have not contributed to the eradication of extreme poverty even if they could have done so. Many authors have suggested that the responsible agents are multinational corporations and industrial states. This claim, however, has been contested. Some scholars claim that problems of global...
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Räikkä, J., Uusitalo, S. (2011). Agency, Individual. In: Chatterjee, D.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Justice. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9160-5_32
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