Does the responsibility of helping the global poor lie with nation states or individual persons?

Abstract

"Does the responsibility of helping the global poor lie with nation states or individual persons? In the following paper I shall argue that nation states are causally connected to the creation and sustenance of global poverty, which makes wealthy nations, and not individual persons, morally obligated to help the global poor. I will start by explaining the nature of the distinction between the role of an individual‘s obligations versus those of a nation in the context of global poverty. I will follow this by drawing a difference between negative and positive duties to argue that the obligation to help the global poor stems from a negative duty rather than a positive one. I will present Pogge‘s argument for a Global Resource Dividend to show why a violation of negative duties by wealthy nations makes global poverty their responsibility. Following this, I will attend to a possible criticism of my position and address the problem of coercion to show why it cannot be held as an argument against my thesis. "