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08/04/2008 14:35

Erfurt Manifest

Jens Panse Pressestelle
Universität Erfurt

An international group of economists, legal scholars, moral philosophers, development practitioners, political scientists and theologians met in Erfurt for a workshop of the German Research Community (DFG) on "Absolute Poverty and Global Justice and published the following manifest at the end of July 2008.

The discussions focused on absolute poverty and global inequality: their levels, trends, and determinants; their moral assessment; and their eradication through specific policies and structural reforms. While there were differences among the participants, they agreed on the following key findings and practical recommendations:

Facts
Absolute poverty in the world is unacceptably large, affecting at least 1 billion human beings. Despite great progress in poverty reduction in some countries, poverty has not been meaningfully reduced in most developing countries.
Much faster progress against absolute poverty is possible through reductions in national and global inequalities that produce economic growth for poor countries and households.

Moral responsibility
Among the causes of poverty in developing countries are historical factors, such as colonialism and slavery, inadequate endowments, defective social institutions, illconceived national policies, and flaws in the international order which sustain absolute poverty and undermine efforts to reduce it. In particular, the international order offers too few opportunities for economic integration of the world's poorest populations and also encourages support ? through trade, debt, and investment relations ? of corrupt and authoritarian governments that foster or neglect poverty in their own countries.
Rich countries contribute to absolute poverty by placing additional burdens of climate change on poor countries and their poor citizens.
Diverse moral views imply that international agencies as well as the citizens,
corporations, and governments of affluent countries bear a moral responsibility to reduce absolute poverty. These views variously invoke requirements:
- to avoid violating the human right to a decent standard of living;
- to help protect and fulfill the human rights of the poor;
- to respect and promote human dignity which is undermined by absolute poverty;
- to strengthen the legitimacy of international institutions by working toward absolute poverty eradication;
- to accord substantial weight, in the shaping of policies and social institutions, to the underrepresented interests of future generations and the poor worldwide.

Actions
Because it is of the greatest moral importance and requires only modest efforts and resources, the goal of overcoming absolute poverty must be given much higher political priority by international agencies and by the citizens, corporations and governments of the affluent countries, including Germany. These agents and agencies ought to facilitate and promote the following initiatives:
- The global trading system must be reformed so that it better accommodates the needs and interests of poor countries and poor producers. Such reforms ought greatly to improve access to rich country markets (including agriculture) for the good and services poor countries can offer. Preferential trade access for poor producers may also be called for, at least temporarily.
- Affluent countries, such as Germany, must do more to support the existence of, and access to, global public goods such as vital medicines. Poor people must not be excluded by high monopoly prices from the medicines they need. And the current patent regime enshrined in the TRIPS Agreement should be complemented by
additional mechanisms ? such as advance purchase/market commitments and a
Health Impact Fund ? that encourage the development and affordable
distribution of new medicines targeting diseases that are concentrated among the
poor.
- Affluent countries, including Germany, should curtail economic interactions with regimes that violate basic human rights and fail to promote economic
development and poverty reduction. Affluent countries might, in particular, refuse to buy natural resources from, and refuse to sell arms and grant loans to, such regimes and might treat natural resources bought from such a regime as stolen from their rightful owners: the country's population.
- Having produced the lion's share of greenhouse gas emissions, rich countries bear a weighty responsibility to ensure that emissions and climate change are slowed down and that poor countries can adjust to climate change without aggravating absolute poverty.
- The affluent countries must live up to their long-standing promise to increase their development assistance to the UN target (0.7% of each country's social product) and to the intermediate targets agreed within the European Union. While the German aid budget has increased recently, it still falls far short of this goal. Moreover, far too much development assistance is spent on supporting domestic export firms and "friendly" regimes abroad. A much higher share must be devoted to the poorest countries and to reducing absolute poverty.
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Signers of the Erfurt Manifest:
Professor David A. Crocker, Ph.D.
Senior Research Scholar
School of Public Policy; Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy
University of Maryland, USA
Professor Dr. Stefan Gosepath
Chair of Political Theory and Philosophy
University Bremen, Germany
Professor Stephan Klasen, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics
University of Göttingen, Germany
Professor DDr. Peter Koller
Department of Philosophy of Law, Sociology of Law, and Law?s Computer Sciences
Karl-Franzens-University Graz, Austria
Professor Dr. Gerhard Kruip,
Director of the Research Institute for Philosophy Hannover,
Department of Christian Anthropology and Social Ethics
Mainz University, Germany
Professor Dr. Elke Mack
Department of Christian Social Sciences
Erfurt University, Germany
Professor Dr. Lukas H. Meyer
Department of Philosophy
Bern University, Switzerland
Professor Darrel Moellendorf, Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy
Director of the Institute for Ethics and Public Affairs San Diego State University, USA
Professor Dr. Johannes Müller
Professor of Social Sciences and Politics of Development, Institute of
Social and Development Studies at the Jesuit Munich School of Philosophy, Germany
Professor em. Dr. Else Øyen
Former Scientific Director of CROP
University of Bergen, Norway
Professor Dr. Fabienne Peter
Department of Philosophy
University of Warwick, England
Professor Thomas Pogge, Ph.D.
Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs
Yale University, USA
Professor Sanjay G. Reddy, Ph.D.
Department of Economics
Barnard College, Columbia University, USA
Professor Dr. Michael Schramm
Department of Catholic Theology and Business Ethics
University of Hohenheim, Germany
Professor DDDr. Clemens Sedmak
F.D. Maurice Professor of Moral and Social Theology
Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King's College
London, England
Director of the Center for Ethics and Poverty Research
Universität Salzburg, Österreich
Professor Dr. Johannes Wallacher
Professor of Economics and Ethics, Institute of
Social and Development Studies at Jesuit Munich School of Philosophy, Germany
Professor Michael Ward, Ph.D.
International Economics Department, The World Bank, USA
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Dr. Norbert Anwander
Department of Philosophy,
Humboldt-University Berlin, Germany
Dr. Elizabeth Ashford
Lecturer in Philosophy,
University of St Andrews, Scotland
Dr. Barbara Bleisch
Head of the Advanced Studies in Applied Ethics, Zürich University
Centre for Ethics, Zürich, Schweiz
Dr. Eike Bohlken
The director?s assistant
Research Institute for Philosophy Hannover, Germany
Dr. Henning Hahn
Post-Doc at the department of Political Theory and Philosophy
Bremen University, Germany
Michael Hartlieb
Research Assistant at the department of Christian Social Sciences,
University of Erfurt, Germany
Nils-Hendrik Klann
Research Assistant at the department of Theory of National Economics and Development Economics
University of Göttingen, Germany
Dr. Martin Lampert
Research Assistant at the department of Christian Social Sciences,
University of Erfurt, Germany
Dr. Corinna Mieth
Fellow at the Research Institute for Philosophy Hannover, Germany
Doris Schubert
Lecturer at the Catholic-Social Academy "Franz Hitze Haus"
Sebastian Vollmer
Research Assistant at the department of Development Economics and at the Centre for Statistics,
University of Göttingen, Germany

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Criteria of this press release:
Economics / business administration, Law, Philosophy / ethics, Politics, Religion, Social studies
transregional, national
Miscellaneous scientific news/publications, Scientific Publications
English

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