The Responsibility of States

Abstract

This chapter explores the rationale for the special responsibility of nation-states to secure human rights and structural justice. It explains what makes states unique moral agents, in particular their responsibility to address structurally unjust conditions that give rise to human rights violations within their borders. However, it rejects prominent arguments for the conclusion that states have only a preventive and remedial role in the presence of domestic structural unfairness and human rights violations. The chapter defends the Principle of Interstate Reciprocity, which sets moral limits on the pursuit of national benefit, global advantage, and the exercise of power over others, and it concludes with an account of four unfair forms of control exercised by various supranational institutions, often in combination with powerful states and other non-state institutional agents.