A world in which the richest 1% owns 48% of global wealth, and in which this imbalance continues to accelerate, is obscene. Radical inequality inevitably sustains extreme poverty just as surely as it sustains extreme wealth. And extreme poverty is best defined as a condition in which the vast majority of human rights cannot possibly be realized. In other words, inequality is not just as an economic issue, but also one of human rights.
International economic actors like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have begun to speak about the negative economic consequences of such inequalities. Yet it is no coincidence that these are the very same organizations that steadfastly resist policies that will factor human rights into their policies and programs. Of course, it is not so much the organizations themselves that are to blame, but the governments that control them. It is telling that, when economic and financial issues are raised in the Human Rights Council, someone invariably makes the argument that it is not the appropriate forum and these matters should be dealt with elsewhere. And when efforts are made to raise human rights in the economic forums, the same governments insist that these issues be addressed in the Human Rights Council. They seek, in other words, to silo off issues that are deeply intertwined.
Extreme inequality should also be seen as a cause for shame on the part of the international human rights movement. Extreme inequality should also be seen as a cause for shame on the part of the international human rights movement. Just as global economic institutions have eschewed human rights, so too have the major human rights groups avoided tackling the economics of rights. These lop-sided and counter-productive institutional choices should not, however, be conflated with the actual structure of human rights law. It is patent nonsense to claim, as Samuel Moyn does, that “even perfectly realized human rights, are compatible with … radical inequality,” or that human rights “have nothing to say about inequality.”
