Habermas on the human right to subsistence

Every year 18 million of the earth’s six billion inhabitants die from lacking means of subsistence. We who live in  developed nations typically blame this catastrophe on drought, overpopulation, resource mismanagement, corrupt  government, and other local factors, thereby relieving ourselves of any responsibility for this crime. At the same  time, we do not hesitate to invoke the language of human rights in condemning this state of affairs. Either we do so  in the name of moral progress – as when we say, following the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human  Rights, that the world has fallen short of achieving an aspiration essential to civilized humanity; or we do so in the  name of moral offense, as when we condemn selected government officials for having committed acts of genocide,  ethnic cleansing, and the like. One might ponder whether either of these two senses of human rights – as aspirations for measuring moral progress or as claims against government officials for failing to discharge their  duties to their citizens – generates a moral discourse sufficient for coming to terms with globalization. In particular,  one wonders whether they adequately respond to the fact that we are dealing with the imposition of impersonal  social structures and institutions that prevent the poor from freely accessing their means of subsistence. 

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