Migrants, State Responsibilities, and Human Dignity

Abstract

This article addresses two questions: First, how does the value of human dignity distinctively bear on a state's responsibilities in relation to migrants; and, secondly, how serious a wrong is it when a state fails to respect the dignity of migrants? In response to these questions, a view is presented about the distinction between wrongs that violate cosmopolitan standards and wrongs that violate the standards that are distinctive to a particular community; about when and how the contested concept of human dignity might be engaged; and, elaborating a three-tiered and lexically ordered scheme of state responsibilities, about how we should assess the seriousness of a state's failure to respect the dignity of migrants.

When worlds collide: Non‐state actors, philanthropy and the commercial promotion of fertility control options in developing countries

“…Even if we recognise cosmopolitan state responsibility to other peoples, the obligations that states owe to their own people will need to be tailored to accommodate the specific interests within that particular community (Brownsword, 2021). This specificity provides a further basis for distinguishing interventions within any given area.…”

“…It is one thing to claim a global cosmopolitan obligation to preserve the essential preconditions for human existence, and another to claim an obligation to promote variants of reproductive control that do not immediately and exclusively underpin that existence. To be clear, we are not diminishing the importance of individual reproductive autonomy, but we are claiming that local conditions and values have a greater bearing on the content and scope of state responsibilities concerning matters that are not an immediate threat to the pre‐conditions for human existence, development and agency – so called ‘first‐tier’ responsibilities (Brownsword, 2021). Unless philanthropists are acting pursuant to these first‐tier responsibilities, we cannot see how they can maintain a cosmopolitan justification for action.…”

“…There is no conceptual difficulty in state actors owing positive obligations to their people, including a duty to protect and preserve the human commons or the conditions that make human social coexistence possible (Brownsword, 2021;Brownsword & Wale, 2021;Rawls, 1993Rawls, , 1999. Critically, however, the nature, source and quality of these obligations will be different to those that a philanthropist might owe.…”

Book review: Law at the Frontiers of Biomedicine

“…What does matter is not so much how the question is put, but that it is put. 26 Currently, our governance of new technologies does not engage this level of concern. Rather, regulators 27.…”