Abstract: Conflicts and poverty are the prominent problems facing mankind in today's world. Peace is the foundation for development while development is fundamental for peace. Without peaceful development, the rights to subsistence and development cannot be realized. To follow the path of peaceful development, one country shall be a responsible country and assume relevant obligations related to peaceful development. A country should assume its obligation to do no harm to the people of other countries in accordance with the principle of doing no harm, undertake its obligation to promote the development for the people in its own country in accordance with the principle of legality, and bear the obligation to help people in poor countries in accordance with the principle of humanity.

 

Keywords: Peaceful Development, Right to Subsistence, Right to Development, International Obligations

 

After entering the 21st century, a variety of global events, whether wars, epidemics, terrorist activities or climate changes, have told people in a shocking way that human society is a community with shared risks. The most visible global justice issues with the largest scale of our time are conflict and poverty.[According to Global Report on Food Crisis released by the United Nations on 3 May 2023, some 258 million people in 58 countries are facing a hunger crisis or even severe situation, and people in 7 countries are facing potential famine. António Guterres said the latest version of the Report is “a damning indictment of failure of human to make progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 2. Sustainable Development Goal 2 is to eliminate hunger, achieve food security and improve nutrition.” More than 40% of the population in crisis or more severe hunger state lives in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, parts of Nigeria and Yemen. Please refer to the New report: About 258 Million People in the World Need Emergency Food Aid published in the website of the United Nations.] Both the clash of civilizations and natural disasters force people to think about the historical responsibility of human beings, i.e., Human is facing unprecedented challenges. What is the future of the world and how to promote the development of the world human rights cause? The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposes Chinese-style modernization and emphasizes the “road of peaceful development”, which not only has the ethical significance of human rights, but also has practical rationality.

 

 

History tells us that evil thrives when human values are lacking; when there is no evil, it is always a time to demonstrate human value. In times of war, people yearn for peace. In poverty, people seek food and clothing.

 

Peace is the bottom line value of mankind. In brief, peace refers to harmony, which is a state where everything is normal, there is no war or hostile violence. As the bottom-line ethics, peace is the common value of all mankind. Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity all regard non-violence as a fundamental morality. Nonviolence can also be found in Islamic traditions and African religious and philosophical traditions. Chinese Confucianism and Taoism advocate peace, oppose the idea of “absence of right principles throughout the country”, and emphasize that “A country should not conquer others by brute force”. The two world wars have taught mankind that war is the greatest evil in the world and peace is the primary value of mankind. Whether big or small, pursuit of peace should become an eternal principle of mankind. Immanuel Kant once predicted that the unconscious acts of war between humans and their terrible consequences would promote human to consciously seek peace; only in a state of peace could rational endowments of human be fully utilized.[Please refer to [German] Immanuel Kant: The Idea of a Universal History from the Perspective of a World Citizen, published in Kants Werke (Volume 8), China Remin University Press, Edition 2010, pp. 31-32.] After World War II, the value of peace was written into the Charter of the United Nations and many other international conventions, principles and declarations.

 

Development is the high-line value of mankind. Promoting development is one of the purposes of the United Nations. Since its inception, the United Nations has focused on global development issues. Between the 1960s and the 1990s, the United Nations formulated four “Development Decades” successively. In 1986, United Nations General Assembly adopted Declaration on the Right to Development, formally affirming the right to development. After entering the 21st century, the United Nations put forward “Millennium Development Goals”, which aimed to substantially eliminate poverty, reduce child mortality and improve women's status in the following 15 years.

 

Peaceful development means the rights to subsistence and development. Since peace means a stable political situation and society, and a state without war, peace is the premise of human development. Peace promotes common development of mankind, a harmonious world and economic development. Thomas Hobbes, an English philosopher, clearly stated in the Leviathan that industrial development couldn't be talked about without peace; without peace, the future couldn't be determined; without peace, human life would suffer from lasting fear, and people would become poor, worthless and unable to survive. Peace is the core need of a country, which means that once peace is under threat, the country cannot continue to develop in all aspects including economy, politics and society. Peace is the main driving force for the development of every country. Without peace, the stability of any country's institutions, education, security, society and even the entire country cannot be guaranteed. Therefore, peaceful development means the rights to subsistence and development. Without peaceful development, the rights to security, subsistence and development cannot be realized. Therefore, the G20 Bali Leaders' Declaration in 2022 recognized that wars “lead to enormous human suffering and exacerbate existing vulnerabilities in the global economy”, and stressed that “peaceful solution of conflicts, efforts to resolve crises, and diplomacy and dialogue are essential”.

 

The rights to subsistence and development are the primary fundamental human rights. At present, there are two ways to demonstrate the priority of the rights to subsistence and development. One is the negative thinking represented by Henry Shue. If the right to personal security is fundamental, so is the right to life. Henry Shue believed that the lack of the right to subsistence made individuals fragile and vulnerable, because without the protection of the right to subsistence, the allocation of various other priorities would be unreliable.[H. Shue, Subsistence, Affluence and U.S. Foreign Policy, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1996, pp. 24-25.] The other is Waldron's positive thinking, i.e., to demonstrate from the positive perspective that rights originate from interests, and the interests that individuals have to meet their survival needs are the most important.[J. Waldron, Liberal Rights, Collected Papers 1981-1991, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1993. p.11.] We believe that the priority of the rights to subsistence and development is because they are qualifications for meeting the basic needs. In other words, the rights to subsistence and development mean the right to basic necessities such as food, housing, clothing, clean water, health care and minimum standards of education. It can be seen that the priority of rights to subsistence and development of individuals is based on the basic needs. No matter which ethnic group, religion or nationality a person belongs to, the basic needs of the person are objective and universal. We can even treat the basic needs as a universal tool or means to realize or seek any purpose. Basic needs, in a sense, are human survival, i.e., the minimum level of existence. Therefore, the rights to survival and development mean the minimum level of human existence. In a community with a shared future for mankind, everyone deserves the minimum living conditions, and freedom from oppression and hunger. The priority of the rights to subsistence and development lies in the fact that they are necessary means for the realization of other rights.

 

 

Based on the rights to survival and development, every member of the international community should follow the path of peaceful development and be a responsible country. The so-called responsible country is a country that has both domestic and international political legitimacy. A responsible country is a country that is sincere, or has consistent internal and external policies. Archibugi put it bluntly: “leaders of the Western world are constantly lecturing other leaders on how to rule the country, and try to persuade other leaders to revise their ways of governing in order to more closely imitate the Western way of governing. But at the same time, leaders of the western world rarely apply these same principles to the governance of global affairs.”[Archibugi, D. The Global Commonwealth of Citizens: Toward Cosmopolitan Democracy, Princeton University Press, 2008, p.xiii.] In fact, some Western democracies use different governance methods for internal and external governance, i.e., they adopt a governance approach internally in a way that respects for human rights and democracy, but adopt a completely opposite governance method externally.[Archibugi, D. The Global Commonwealth of Citizens: Toward Cosmopolitan Democracy, Princeton University Press, 2008, p.6.] Therefore, what Western democracies present to the world is a negative impression, i.e., they adopt a hypocritical ideological position. Measuring whether a country is a responsible country depends on whether the country's internal and external policies are consistent. To be responsible countries is the only way to move towards global human rights.

 

Based on the rights to subsistence and development, responsible countries should earnestly fulfill their correlative obligations based on peaceful development. Rights and obligations are inseparable. Without the obligations, the realization of human rights based on peaceful development is impossible. Therefore, peaceful development emphasizes the priority of the rights to subsistence and development, which requires responsible countries to give priority to meeting the basic needs of people all over the world, which is a positive obligation. To ensure and realize the rights to subsistence and development of the world's people, it is necessary to set up a diversified obligation bearing mechanism. The first obligation is the obligation of no harm between international members. The second obligation is the safeguard obligation of the national government. The third obligation is the humanitarian assistance obligation of the international community. The first obligation is the most basic and original moral requirement, which should be set according to the principle of justice. The second obligation should be set according to the principle of political legitimacy. The third obligation is extrinsic good deed, which should be set based on the ability principle.

 

 

The first obligation is a categorical imperative that applies universally to all people and nations. The rights to life, liberty and personal security, stipulated in Article 3 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are requirements for every individual. Everyone has the obligation not to harm the lives, human body and freedoms of others. The obligation to do no harm is a negative obligation, an absolute obligation, a complete obligation and a universal obligation of every individual. According to Immanuel Kant's Deontological ethics, the categorical imperative was stated this way: “Act only according to the rules you can also become universal laws”[Kant, Immanuel. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, New York: MacMillan Publishing, 1990. p.38.]. One can find the foundation of pacifism in Immanuel Kant's Moral Law, “No one should at any time regard themselves and others as mere tools, but should always regard themselves as an end”[Kant, Immanuel. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, New York: MacMillan Publishing, 1990.p.46.]. War treats people as means, but does not respect them as an end. Respecting people for their own ends requires us not to kill them. War betrays human dignity and is a violation of human rights. For example, all human beings have the right to life, but killing in war violates the right. Peace, above all, refers to the absence of violence or war. The bottom line ethics of peace is doing no harm, i.e., doing no harm to others and to the people of other countries. This is the first obligation. If a party imposes a burden on the other party without the consent of the other party and thereby gains an undue advantage, the unilateral aggrieved party shall be entitled to require the offender to bear a corresponding burden, at least equivalent to the previous undue gains, in order to restore equality.[Shue, Global Environment and International Inequality, International Affairs, 75(1999), 534-541.]

 

(2) Setting of the second obligation

 

As far as the relationship between a government and its citizens is concerned, the government has the obligation to protect the economic and social rights of its citizens.  Protection of human rights is the purpose of establishing a government and the criterion to evaluate the legitimacy of government behavior. The government to which a citizen belongs should undertake the obligation. Only the government to which a person belongs has the obligation to respect and protect his or her human rights. The more obligations a country assumes to its citizens, the more it can win recognition and the more political legitimacy it has. If a country fails to fulfill its obligations to the human rights of its citizens, or improperly fulfills its obligations, it lacks legitimacy. According to the provisions of international human rights documents, the government is the bearer of the obligation to protect human rights. The Preamble to Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulates the rights of “the peoples of Member States”, and requires that Member States should undertake the obligation that “it is necessary that human rights be protected by the rule of law so that mankind is not compelled to take the risk of rebelling against tyranny and oppression”. In Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the right to freedom from torture, the right to migration, the right to social security, and the right to education are specified in Article 5, Article 13, Articles 22 and 25, and Article 26, respectively. Relevant obligation should be undertaken by the government. Of course, some human rights items, such as the rights to life, liberty and personal security specified in Article 3 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, appear to be demands on every individual, but they are also demands on governments, i.e., governments have the obligation to provide legal and security mechanisms to protect the rights to life, liberty and personal security of members of society.

 

According to political legitimacy, a government does not assume active obligations to citizens of other countries. The obligations arising from universal human rights are limited to the society to which the subject of the right belongs. Just like in a family, if there is a problem with the upbringing of children, who should be responsible for the upbringing of children? The family, first and foremost, has the perfect obligation. If the family cannot perform its duty, other families can do their imperfect obligation to help the child. The same is true of the distribution of obligations related to human rights in an international community of sovereign states. For instance, if A claims for the welfare right, the government to which A belongs should undertake the obligations. The government has an obligation to protect the welfare rights of their citizens, but have no obligation to protect welfare right of the citizens of other countries. It can be seen that a government does not assume perfect obligations to citizens of other countries, but only the imperfect obligation.

 

(3) Setting of the third obligation

 

Humanitarian assistance falls into imperfect obligation, and it is difficult to determine its subject and scope. Setting of imperfect obligations should resort to the principle of utilitarianism. The principle of utilitarianism requires capable people to assume moral obligations. This is based on practical and rational considerations. Amartya Sen holds that “the recognition of human rights does not mean that everyone, no matter where they are, shall prevent any human rights violations from happening, no matter where such violations occur. Or rather, if recognition of human rights requires a person in a reasonable position to be able to effectively prevent the violations, such person should have an obligation to prevent violations.”[Amartya Sen, Elements of a Theory of Human Rights, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol.32, No.4 (2004).] For example, blind people have no obligation to help the elderly cross the street. Suppose a child falls into water, only Zhang San can save her, and Zhang San's cost is negligible, then almost all people agree that Zhang San bears the moral obligation to save the child. Zhang San may think that he did not push the child into the water, so he has no obligation to rescue him. But if Zhang San is indifferent and walks away, he would be morally reprehensible. Seen from moral teleology, the question is not why this child got into the current danger, but who can rescue her. Zhang San finds that he is in this position, i.e., he can rescue her, so he should assume the moral obligation to rescue the child. It can be seen that respect for human rights does not necessarily mean that anyone, at any time or anywhere has an obligation to prevent human rights violations. Or rather, if a person can effectively prevent violations under the right circumstances, he has the obligation to prevent violations from happening. According to Peter Singer, it is wrong not to prevent bad things from happening when we have the ability to do so without sacrificing any comparability. Therefore, we have a broad responsibility to help the poor around the world. As long as we make the same minimum effort, they can get out of trouble.[Singer, P., 1972, “Famine, Affluence and Morality”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1: 229-43.] Thomas Bogge holds that developed countries have imposed a coercive global order on the poor, and the order can be foreseen to bring about a large-scale human rights deficit, so the order is unfair. The whole world has a responsibility to reform the global order to better protect human rights.[Thomas Pogge, 2002, World Poverty and Human Rights, Cambridge: Polity Press.] In the face of global climate changes and global poverty, capable people have imperfect obligations, just as the relatively rich have the obligation to help the relatively poor, and those with capacities have the moral obligation to prevent global climate changes. The obligation of cosmopolitanism is also stipulated in some international human rights documents.[As stipulated in Paragraph 1 of Article 32 in American Convention on Human Rights, everyone has a responsibility to his/her family, society, and human beings. Here, the object of obligation is family, society and human beings, and the subject of obligation is everyone. As stipulated in Paragraph 1 of Articles 27, 28, and 29 of African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, everyone has obligations to his/her family and society, the state and other legally recognized communities, and the international community.] It should be pointed out that in the face of global issues, although the global community has joint obligations, the principle of political legitimacy and justice should be first considered for setting of international obligations before considering the principle of capacity.

 

（The author is deputy director of the Human Rights Research Center of the Party School of the Central Committee of the CPC）