Launched in 2008 by Thomas Pogge, the Global Justice Program unites an interdisciplinary group of scholars with the aim of taking morality seriously in shaping foreign policy and in negotiating transnational institutional arrangements. The program has a special interest in the evolution of severe poverty and its relationship with public health. The program supports the work of the Global Justice Fellows and their projects, including the Health Impact Fund and Academics Stand Against Poverty.

Director – Global Justice Program at the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University

The Health Impact Fund (HIF) is a new way of stimulating research and development of life-saving pharmaceuticals. To provide wide access to the most effective pharmaceuticals, prices need to be affordable. Low prices, however, do not create strong incentives for innovators to invest in research and development. Financed mainly by governments, the HIF would offer pharmaceutical firms the option to be rewarded according to a new product’s health impact, if they agree to sell it at cost.

President, Director – Health Impact Fund

Worldwide, human lives are rapidly improving. Heavily promoted by Western governments and media, this comforting view of the world is widely shared, at least among the affluent. Pogge's book presents an alternative view: Poverty and oppression persist on a massive scale; political and economic inequalities are rising dramatically both intra-nationally and globally. A powerful moral analysis that shows what Western states would do if they really cared about the values they profess.

Author – Politics as Usual: What Lies Behind the Pro-Poor Rhetoric

Some 2.5 billion human beings live in severe poverty, deprived of such essentials as adequate nutrition, safe drinking water, basic sanitation, adequate shelter, literacy, and basic health care. Just 1 percent of the national incomes of the high-income countries would suffice to end severe poverty worldwide. Most citizens of affluent countries believe that we are doing nothing wrong. Thomas Pogge seeks to explain how this belief is sustained.

Author – World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms

John Rawls was one of the most important political philosophers of our time, and promises to be an enduring figure over the coming decades. Thomas Pogge's short introduction gives a thorough and concise presentation of the main outlines of Rawls's theory, introduces biographical information when necessary, and draws links between the Rawlsian enterprise and other important positions in moral and political philosophy.

Author – John Rawls: His Life and Theory of Justice

The Global Financial Crisis is acknowledged to be the most severe economic downturn since the 1930s, and one that is unique in its underlying causes, its scope, and its wider social, political and economic implications. This volume explores some of the ethical issues that it has raised.

Editor / Author – Global Financial Crisis: The Ethical Issues

Collected here are cutting-edge essays by leading academics which together clarify and defend the claim that freedom from poverty is a human right with corresponding binding obligations on the more affluent to practice effective poverty avoidance. The authors largely agree in concluding that there is a human right to be free from poverty and that this right is massively violated by the present world economy which creates huge unfair imbalances in income and wealth among and within countries.

Editor / Author – Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right: Who Owes What to the Very Poor?

Global Justice is part of a two-volume set (with Global Ethics) that will aid in the study of global justice and global ethical issues with significant global dimensions. Some of those issues directly concern what individuals, countries, and other associations ought to do in response to various global problems, such as poverty, population growth, and climate change. Others concern the concepts that are commonly used to discuss such issues, such as "development" and "human rights."

Author – Global Justice: Seminal Essays

Global Ethics, along with its companion volume Global Justice, will aid in the study of global justice and global ethical issues with significant global dimensions. In recent decades, literature on such issues has started to build up in the Western philosophical tradition. Until now, though, no up-to-date sample of this literature has been available. These two books, companion volumes sold separately, fill this gap by providing a sample of the best recent work on these themes.

Author – Global Ethics: Seminal Essays

Highest Honors ; thesis on Peirce and Habermas

Dissertation on Kant, Rawls, and global justice

Some 2.5 billion human beings live in severe poverty, deprived of such essentials as adequate nutrition, safe drinking water, basic sanitation, adequate shelter, literacy, and basic health care. One third of all human deaths are from poverty-related causes: 18 million annually, including over 10 million children under five. However huge in human terms, the world poverty problem is tiny economically. Just 1 percent of the national incomes of the high-income countries would suffice to end severe poverty worldwide. Yet, these countries, unwilling to bear an opportunity cost of this magnitude, continue to impose a grievously unjust global institutional order that foreseeably and avoidably perpetuates the catastrophe. Most citizens of affluent countries believe that we are doing nothing wrong. Thomas Pogge seeks to explain how this belief is sustained. He analyses how our moral and economic theorizing and our global economic order have adapted to make us appear disconnected from massive poverty abroad. Dispelling the illusion, he also offers a modest, widely sharable standard of global economic justice and makes detailed, realistic proposals toward fulfilling it.  Thoroughly updated, the second edition of this classic book incorporates responses to critics and a new chapter introducing Pogge's current work on pharmaceutical patent reform.

World Poverty and Human Rights

Worldwide, human lives are rapidly improving. Education, health-care, technology, and political participation are becoming ever more universal, empowering human beings everywhere to enjoy security, economic sufficiency, equal citizenship, and a life in dignity. To be sure, there are some specially difficult areas disfavoured by climate, geography, local diseases, unenlightened cultures or political tyranny. Here progress is slow, and there may be set-backs. But the affluent states and many international organizations are working steadily to extend the blessings of modernity through trade and generous development assistance, and it won't be long until the last pockets of severe oppression and poverty are gone.Heavily promoted by Western governments and media, this comforting view of the world is widely shared, at least among the affluent. Pogge's new book presents an alternative view: Poverty and oppression persist on a massive scale; political and economic inequalities are rising dramatically both intra-nationally and globally. The affluent states and the international organizations they control knowingly contribute greatly to these evils - selfishly promoting rules and policies harmful to the poor while hypocritically pretending to set and promote ambitious development goals. Pogge's case studies include the $1/day poverty measurement exercise, the cosmetic statistics behind the first Millennium Development Goal, the War on Terror, and the proposed relaxation of the constraints on humanitarian intervention. A powerful moral analysis that shows what Western states would do if they really cared about the values they profess.

Politics as Usual: What Lies Behind the Pro-Poor Rhetoric

Global Justice is part of a two-volume set (with Global Ethics) that will aid in the study of global justice and global ethical issues with significant global dimensions. Some of those issues directly concern what individuals, countries, and other associations ought to do in response to various global problems, such as poverty, population growth, and climate change. Others concern the concepts that are commonly used to discuss such issues, such as "development" and "human rights." And still others concern the legitimacy of various phenomena that structure the global scene, such as national borders, the institutions of national sovereignty and self-determination, and attitudes such as nationalism and patriotism. In recent decades, literature on such issues has started to build up in the Western philosophical tradition. Until now, though, no up-to-date sample of this literature has been available to students and other interested parties. These two books, companion volumes sold separately, fill this gap by providing a sample of the best recent work on these themes.

Global Justice: Seminal Essays (Paragon Issues in Philosophy)

Collected here in one volume are fifteen cutting-edge essays by leading academics which together clarify and defend the claim that freedom from poverty is a human right with corresponding binding obligations on the more affluent to practice effective poverty avoidance. The nature of human rights and their corresponding duties is examined, as is the theoretical standing of the social, economic and cultural rights. The authors largely agree in concluding that there is a human right to be free from poverty and that this right is massively violated by the present world economy which creates huge unfair imbalances in income and wealth among and within countries. This searing indictment of the status quo is all the more powerful as the authors endorsing it exemplify diverse philosophical methods and moral traditions and also highlight different aspects of poverty and global institutional arrangements. This volume will be of great interest and value to academics working in the fields of philosophy, political science and international relations, as well as to undergraduate and graduate students in these disciplines. It will also be a crucial aid and challenge to practitioners in international governmental organizations (such as the UN and its agencies) and NGOs who think of their work in human-rights terms. Indeed, in view of the magnitude of the human rights deficit at issue, any moral citizen has reason to engage with the arguments of this book. And the book makes this possible for most in that, throughout, even the most complex aspects of rights theory is discussed in clear, direct language, making the text accessible to specialists and lay readers alike.This volume is co-published with UNESCO publishing. 

Freedom from Poverty As a Human Right: Who Owes What to the Very Poor?

John Rawls was one of the most important political philosophers of our time, and promises to be an enduring figure over the coming decades. His Theory of Justice (1971) has had a profound impact across philosophy, politics, law, and economics. Nonetheless Rawlsian theory is not easy to understand, particularly for beginners, and his writing can be dense and forbidding. Thomas Pogge's short introduction (originally published in German) gives a thorough and concise presentation of the main outlines of Rawls's theory, introduces biographical information when necessary, and draws links between the Rawlsian enterprise and other important positions in moral and political philosophy.

John Rawls: His Life and Theory of Justice

Realizing Rawls

Global Ethics, along with its companion volume Global Justice, will aid in the study of global justice and global ethical issues with significant global dimensions. Some of those issues directly concern what individuals, countries, and other associations ought to do in response to various global problems, such as poverty, population growth, and climate change. Others concern the concepts that are commonly used to discuss such issues, such as "development" and "human rights." And still others concern the legitimacy of various phenomena that structure the global scene, such as national borders, the institutions of national sovereignty and self-determination, and attitudes such as nationalism and patriotism. In recent decades, literature on such issues has started to build up in the Western philosophical tradition. Until now, though, no up-to-date sample of this literature has been available to students and other interested parties. These two books, companion volumes sold separately, fill this gap by providing a sample of the best recent work on these themes.

Global Ethics: Seminal Essays (Paragon Issues in Philosophy)

Global Financial Crisis: The Ethical Issues

Thomas Pogge is the Director of the Global Justice Program and the Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale University.

Pogge's work has examined such specific issues as extreme poverty and the responsibility of others in eradicating it, justice in health care, human rights, justice for people with disabilities, pharmaceutical research and global access to medicines, and moral philosophy and ethics, among other topics.

His book "World Poverty and Human Rights" is considered one of the most important works on global justice. He is particularly known for his argument that the global rich have a "positive duty" to help others in need as well as a "negative duty" not to contribute to the imposition of global institutional order that impedes the fulfillment of basic socioeconomic rights.

Having received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard, Thomas Pogge has published widely on Kant and in moral and political philosophy, including various books on Rawls and global justice. In addition to his Yale appointment, he is the Research Director of the Centre for the Study of the Mind in Nature at the University of Oslo and a Professorial Research Fellow at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics.

With support from the Australian Research Council, the UK-based BUPA Foundation and the European Commission (7th Framework) he currently heads a team effort towards developing a complement to the pharmaceutical patent regime that would improve access to advanced medicines for the poor worldwide and toward developing better indices of poverty and gender equity.

The philosopher has been a visiting fellow or scholar at the University of Maryland, the Princeton University Center for Human Values All Souls College at Oxford University and in the Department of Clinical Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health.

He has led graduate seminars at schools throughout Europe and in Brazil, Taiwan and China, and has delivered more than 900 lectures in 42 countries. Pogge is also editor for social and political philosophy for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science.

Ethics and Moral Philosophy

Globalization and Inequality

Justice in Health Care

Social and Political Philosophy

Personal Website

Global Justice Program

Health Impact Fund

Thomas Pogge on Global Poverty

ETHICS MATTER: A Conversation with Thomas Pogge

Thomas Pogge on “Globalization, Inequality and the State” Lessons from the International Financial Playground

How the poor can pay for life-saving medicines

The Dilemma of Global Justice Deficits

Medicine for the 99 percent

Education and Sustainable Development – Two Sides of the Same Coin?

KEYNOTE SPEECH

Gender and the Measurement of Poverty

Coercion and Poverty: How First- and Second-Generation Human Rights Relate

What Do Human Rights Demand from You and Me?

World Poverty: Explanations and Responsibilities

Gender Differences in Poverty

KEYNOTE SPEECH: Lighting Many Fires With ASAP (Academics Stand Against Poverty)

Are We All in the Soup?

Thomas Pogge discusses the critical global health problem of "Medicine for the 99 percent" in this talk. He focuses on ways to develop necessary pharmaceutical drugs and to secure medications for pressing global health issues. Thomas also describes his work with the Health Impact Fund and his proposal of a $6 billion plan to decrease this unequal distribution and focus more money towards diseases with the highest global burden.

Novel reward systems are needed to develop valuable, life-enhancing biomedical technologies and to ensure that people in poor countries, and the government programmes that often pay for treatment, can afford them. The Health Impact Fund will be discussed as an enduring, systematic reform to give pharmaceutical innovators stable financial incentives to develop new medicines for the world’s poor and to sell them worldwide at no more than the lowest feasible cost of production and distribution.

Medicines for Neglected Diseases

Many human beings do not have all their human rights fulfilled. A better world must surely be possible. But who has what obligations to help bring it about? What do we really owe distant strangers? And is this debt measured in resources we sacrifice or in gains thereby achieved for those in need? Political philosopher, Thomas Pogge, looks at the big questions that confront all of us concerned with human rights and global justice today.

Director, Global Justice Program ; Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs

Interview with Thomas Pogge, Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs, Yale University, about the Health Impact Fund. More on www.futurechallenges.org.

FutureChallenges - Interview with Thomas Pogge, Prof of Philosophy and Intern. Affairs, Yale

By reforming harmful supranational regulations, Thomas Pogge is developing a complement to the patent system to stimulate pharmaceutical innovations that would be accessible, without delay, to poor and affluent patients alike around the world. In this talk at TEDxCanberra 2011, ANU and Yale academic and ethicist, Professor Thomas Pogge outlines an idea that could revolutionise health outcomes and distribution of pharmaceuticals in both the developed and developing world. In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations).

TEDxCanberra - Thomas Pogge - Reimagining pharmaceutical innovation

Professor Thomas Pogge | JGLS | 25 Oct 2011 Video

Having received his PhD in philosophy from Harvard, Thomas Pogge has published widely on Kant and in moral and political philosophy. He is Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale, Professorial Fellow at the Australian National University, Research Director at the Oslo University Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature (CSMN) and a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science. Pogge's current work is focused on a team effort toward developing a complement to the pharmaceutical patent regime that would improve access to advanced medicines for the poor worldwide (www.healthimpactfund.org). In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

TEDxYale - Thomas Pogge - We Are All In The Soup?

Jan. 28, 2010 Moral and political philosopher Thomas Pogge discusses ways governments and pharmaceutical companies can work together to reduce the 18 million deaths attributed annually to poverty-related causes. bakerinstitute.org

The Health Impact Fund: How Not to Exclude the Poor from Advanced Medicines

Thomas Pogge lays out his plan to revamp the pharmaceutical system with the Health Impact Fund. This Carnegie Council event took place on January 19, 2012. For complete video, audio, and transcript, go to: www.carnegiecouncil.org

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