1

Introduction
On November 8, 2013, typhoon Yolanda hit the eastern seaboard of the Philippines
and quickly barreled across its central islands. Even though the authorities evacuated about
800,000 people ahead of the typhoon, the death toll was high. The casualties from the super
typhoon draws close to 6,000, the countrys disaster bureau reported on December 12, 2013.
National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) spokesperson
Major Reynaldo Balido said that 1,779 individuals remained missing but he explained that
only few cadavers were been retrieved more than a month after Yolanda ravaged most of the
cities and towns in Samar and Leyte Provinces.
Upon news of the catastrophe from typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines, more than a
few countries have immediately pledged assistance. According to the Department of Foreign
Affairs (DFA), they have already monitored a total of 23 countries (as of November 11,
2013) along with the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU) that have offered
humanitarian assistance and disaster relief to the victims of Yolanda. The offers of assistance
vary from deployment of search-and-rescue teams and medical personnel; provision of relief
goods, such as food, water, tents, and blankets, among others; provision of medical supplies
and vaccine; deployment of ships and aircrafts; and cash donations.
Below is the list of countries that have made offers of assistance:
1. Australia
2. Belgium
3. Canada
4. China
5. Denmark
6. Finland
7. Germany
8. Hungary
9. Indonesia
10. Israel
11. Japan
12. Malaysia
13. The Netherlands
14. New Zealand
15. Norway
16. Russia
17. Singapore
18. Spain
19. Sweden
20. Turkey
21. UAE
22. UK
23. USA

Financial aid
Medics, rapid response team, search and rescue personnel
Financial aid; in-kind donations
Financial aid
Financial aid
In-kind donations
Medics, rapid response team and search and rescue
Medics, rapid response team and search and rescue
In-kind donations
Medics, rapid response team and search and rescue
Medics, rapid response team and search and rescue
Medics, rapid response team and search and rescue, supplies
Financial aid
Financial aid
Financial aid
Medics, rapid response team, search and rescue personnel
Financial aid
In-kind donations
Financial aid
In-kind donations, medics, rapid response and search and rescue
Financial aid
Financial aid
Financial aid, deployment of ships and aircrafts, and medics

The outreach made in the Philippines is just one of the many instances where various
affluent countries have extended their arms to give aid and support for those who are needy.
Generally, people might think that it is a natural consequence for richer nations to give aid to
poorer nations since they have concentrated wealth within their hands. For many, they
consider this altruistic act as the right thing to do. But, there are several questions worth
exploring. For instance, do wealthy people acquire their wealth at the expense of the needy?
How great is the discrepancy between the rich and the poor? How poor are the poor? How
great a burden will fall on the haves if they come to the assistance of the have nots? In
the main, the answers to these question even lead us further to the ultimate issue: Do rich
nations have an obligation to help poor nations?
In an attempt to give answers to the issue, this paper will look into some facts about
poverty and about wealth. It seeks to find the reasons behind why there are some who
support the idea of helping the poor and why there are others who oppose it. Moreover, this
paper aims to correlate the views of two of the most famous theorists regarding the issue
Peter Singer from Practical Ethics and Garret Hardin from Lifeboat Ethics.

Some Facts About Poverty

More than one billion people live in extreme poverty, surviving on less than one
dollar a day. The worlds poor suffer from a lack of adequate shelter, health care, education,
protection from violence, and a voice in what happens in their communities. Every year,
almost 11 million children die from preventable diseases and more than half a million
women die during pregnancy or childbirth. It has been recently estimated that more than 4
billion of the worlds poor are excluded from the rule of law1, resulting in the lack of legal
protection of their rights and entitlements.2
McNamara has summed up absolute poverty as a condition of life so characterized
by malnutrition, illiteracy, disease, squalid surroundings, high infant mortality and low life
expectancy as to be beneath any reasonable definition of human decency. Absolute poverty,
is as McNamara has said, responsible for the loss of countless lives, especially among
infants and young children. When absolute poverty does not cause death, it still causes
misery of a kind not often seen in the affluent nations.
Death and disease apart, absolute poverty remains a miserable condition of life, with
inadequate food, shelter, clothing, sanitation, health services and education. The Worldwatch
Institute estimates that as many as 1.2 billion people or 23 percent of the worlds
population live in absolute poverty. For the purposes of this estimate, absolute poverty is
defined as the lack of sufficient income in cash or kind to meet the most basic biological
needs for food clothing, and shelter. Absolute poverty is probably the principal cause of
human misery today.3

1 The UN rule of law approach is based on international norms and standards,

including the countless UN treaties, declarations, guidelines and bodies of
principles that represent universally applicable standards.
2 Poverty Reduction, United Nations Rule of Law, available at
http://www.unrol.org, last viewed December 13, 2013
3 Practical Ethics, 2nd ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1993)

Some Facts About Wealth

We are all aware of the inequality affecting the distribution of wealth in the world. The fact
that 50% of the adult population accounts for 90% of the wealth in the world comes as no
surprise. The fact that 10% of the population possesses 83% of the wealth is a little more
surprising. But the fact that 43% of the worlds wealth is in the hands of only 1% of the
population is not easy to accept and probably very unfair. These are some of the conclusions
drawn from the report published by the Credit Suisse Research Institute under the title of
Global Wealth Report in October 2010.
Even so, the geographical distribution of wealth is logically concentrated in the areas
with the highest levels of economic development. Europe accounts for 32% of the worlds
wealth. North America accounts for 31% and the Pacific basin (excluding India and China)
accounts for 22%. The remaining 15% is divided between China (8%), Latin America (4%),
India (2%) and Africa (1%), which together account for 50% of the population. In terms of
countries, the top places on the ranking correspond to Switzerland, Norway, Australia,
Singapore and France as the five countries with the highest level of individual wealth, in
excess of $250,000 per adult. On the second level, above $200,000, we have the United
States, Japan, United Kingdom and Canada. The countries with the highest increase in
wealth in the last decade include Russia and Indonesia, where levels have grown fivefold.4
Against the picture of absolute poverty that McNamara has painted, one might pose a picture
of absolute affluence. Those who are absolutely affluent are not necessarily affluent by
comparison with their neighbors, but they are affluent by any reasonable definition of human
needs. This means that they have more income than they need to provide themselves
adequately with all the basic necessities of life. After buying food, shelter, clothing, basic
health services, and education, the absolutely affluent choose their food for the pleasures of
the palate, not to stop hunger; they buy new clothes to look good, not to keep warm; they
move house to be in a better neighborhood or have a playroom for their children, not to keep
out of the rain; and after all this there is still money to spend on stereo systems, video
cameras, and overseas holidays. These, therefore, are the countries and individuals who
have wealth that they could, without threatening their own basic welfare, transfer to the
absolutely poor.

4 Wealth Distribution, Staggering Facts About Global Rich, available at

http://www.businessinsider.com, last viewed December 13, 2013

The Obligation to Assist

In "Famine, Affluence, and Morality", one of Singer's best-known philosophical
essays, he argues that some people living in abundance while others starve is morally
indefensible.5 Singer proposes that anyone able to help the poor should donate part of their
income to aid poverty relief and similar efforts. Singer reasons that, when one is already
living comfortably, a further purchase to increase comfort will lack the same moral
importance as saving another person's life. Singer himself reports that he donates 25 percent
of his salary to Oxfam and UNICEF and he is a member of Giving What We Can, an
international society for the promotion of poverty relief inspired by Singer's arguments. In
"Rich and Poor", the version of the aforementioned article that appears in the second edition
of Practical Ethics, his main argument is presented as follows:
If we can prevent something bad without sacrificing anything of comparable
significance, we ought to do it; absolute poverty is bad; there is some poverty we can
prevent without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance; therefore we
ought to prevent some absolute poverty.
Singer's most recent book, The Life You Can Save, makes the argument that it is a
clear-cut moral imperative for citizens of developed countries to give more to charitable
causes that help the poor. While Singer acknowledges that there are problems with ensuring
that money goes where it is most needed and that it is used effectively, he does not think that
these practical difficulties undermine his original conclusion (that people should make a
much greater effort to reduce poverty).6
In view of this, helping is not as conventionally thought, a charitable act that it is
praiseworthy to do, but not wrong to omit; it is something that everyone ought to do. To
formally set the argument abovementioned, it would look like this:
First premise:

If we can prevent something bad without sacrificing anything

of comparable significance, we ought to do it.

5 "Famine, Affluence, and Morality, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 1, no. 3
(Spring 1972), pp. 229243.
6 Life You Can Save: How to Live, or How to Give?, Philanthropy Action, 1 April
2009

Second premise: Absolute poverty is bad

Third premise:

There is some absolute poverty we can prevent without

sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance.

Conclusion:

We ought to prevent some absolute poverty.

The first premise is the substantive moral premise on which the argument rests. The
second premise is unlikely to be challenged. Absolute poverty is, as McNamara put it,
beneath any reasonable definition of human decency and it would be hard to find a
plausible ethical view that did not regard as a bad thing. The third premise is more
controversial. It claims only that some absolute poverty can be prevented without the
sacrifice of anything of comparable significance. But the point is not whether a personal
contribution will make any noticeable impression on world poverty as a whole, but whether
it will prevent some poverty. Thus, if without sacrificing anything of comparable moral
significance we can provide with just one family with the means to raise itself out of
absolute poverty, the third premise is vindicated.
Our affluence means that we have income we can dispose of without giving up the
basic necessities of life, and we can use this income to reduce absolute poverty.

The Case Against Helping the Poor

Taking care of our own.
The moral theory known as the ethics of care implies that there is moral
significance in the fundamental elements of relationships and dependencies in human life. 7
Considering this, there is no doubt that we do instinctively prefer to help those who are close
to us. Few could stand by and watch a child drown; many can ignore a famine in Africa. But
the question is not what we usually do, but what we ought to do, and it is difficult to see any
sound moral justification for the view that distance, or community membership makes a
crucial difference to our obligations.
Generally, we feel obligations of kinship more strongly than those of citizenship. After all,
which parents could give away their last bowl of rice if their own children were starving? To
do so would seem unnatural and contrary to our nature as biologically evolved beings. Thus,

7 Care Ethics, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, available at

http://www.iep.utm.edu, last viewed December 13, 2013

we should look after those near us, our families, and then the poor in our own country,
before we think about poverty in distant places.

Population and the Ethics of Triage

Perhaps the most serious objection to the argument that we have an obligation to
assist is that since the major cause of absolute poverty is overpopulation, helping those now
in poverty will only ensure that yet more people are born to live in poverty in the future.
Thus, this objection is taken to show that we should adopt a policy of triage. The
term comes from medical policies adopted in wartime. With too few doctors to cope with all
the casualties, the wounded were divided into three categories: those who would probably
survive without medical assistance, but otherwise would not, and those who even with
medical assistance probably would not survive. Only those in the middle category were
given medical assistance. The concept was to use limited medical resources as effectively as
possible. For those in the first category, medical treatment was not strictly necessary; for
those in the third category, it was likely to be useless.
It has been suggested that we should apply the same policies to countries, according
to their prospects of becoming self-sustaining. We should not aid countries that even without
our help will soon help to feed their populations. We would not aid countries that, even with
our help, will not be able to limit their population to a level they can feed. We should aid
only those countries where our help might make a difference.
Lifeboat Ethics
Lifeboat ethics is a metaphor for resource distribution proposed by the ecologist
Garrett Hardin in 1974. Hardin's metaphor describes a lifeboat bearing 50 people, with room
for ten more. The lifeboat is in an ocean surrounded by a hundred swimmers. The "ethics" of
the situation stem from the dilemma of whether swimmers should be taken aboard the
lifeboat. Hardin compares the lifeboat metaphor to the Spaceship Earth model of resource
distribution, which he criticizes by asserting that a spaceship would be directed by a single
leader a captain which the Earth lacks. Hardin asserts that the spaceship model leads

to the tragedy of the commons. In contrast, the lifeboat metaphor presents individual
lifeboats as rich nations and the swimmers as poor nations.8
To further elaborate, Hardin argues that rich nations are like the occupants of a crowded
lifeboat adrift in a sea full of drowning people. If they try to save the drowning by bringing
them aboard, their boat will be overloaded and they shall all drown. Since it is better that
some survive than none, they should leave others to drown. In the world today, according to
Hardin, lifeboat ethics apply. Thus, the rich should leave the poor to starve, for otherwise
the poor will drag the rich down with them.

Correlation
In the main, the wealth of our planet is unevenly distributed. There are several
factors that have an impact on the life prospects of an individual such that some countries
benefit from the foresight of their politician, while others suffer from revolution or political
corruption. This is where the question comes in whether these matters affect a rich nations
responsibility to a poor one.
Singer argues that the need in poor countries is indeed great and that wealthy nations
have the ability to help. By cutting back on luxuries, he says, the well-to-do can prevent
people from starving to death. Moreover, because great good can be accomplished at a
relatively low cost, wealthy nations have an obligation to do so. Hardin, on the other hand,
does not believe that the cost is really so low. He argues that good can be done, suffering can
be relieved, and lives can be saved, but he warns that the populations of poor countries will
rise at faster rates than will the populations of rich countries. As a result, in the end, the
suffering is just postponed, and more lives will be devastated.
Singers view is indeed remarkable but Hardin equally has a strong point.
Nevertheless, if Hardin is right that poor countries have population problems, then these are
the problems that rich nations should address. Singers concept of aid would include
contraceptive devices, information, and programs, in addition to food and medicine.
However, there is always the possibility that a given nation will be opposed to contraception
or population control and that its population grow unchecked. In such a case, Hardin would
be on a stronger ground. The sovereignty of nations comes into play here.

8 "Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor," Psychology Today pp. 38
43.

Millennium Development Goals and Poverty Reduction

World leaders have recognized that the rule of law is crucial for sustained economic
growth, sustainable development and the eradication of poverty and hunger. The United
Nations development agenda, articulated in the eight Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs), based on the Millennium Declaration, calls for the eradication of extreme poverty
in all its dimensions- income poverty, hunger, disease, lack of adequate shelter, gender
inequality, poor education, and environmental degradation. The MDGs include
commitments made by developed nations, such as increased official development assistance
and improved market access for exports from developing countries. The Goals target cutting
global poverty in half by 2015.
Recent international initiatives to highlight the legal empowerment of the poor have
drawn renewed worldwide attention to the linkages among poverty, legal exclusion and
injustice. In many developing countries, laws, institutions, and policies governing economic
and social interactions do not afford equal opportunity and protection to a large segment of
the population, who are mostly poor, minorities, women, children and other disadvantaged
groups. In some cases, laws and institutions impose barriers and biases against the poor and
marginalized groups. Where laws exist protecting and upholding the rights of the poor and
marginalized, institutions and processes can be too difficult and costly for them to access.
The prevalence of corruption and abuse of power in many justice systems most greatly
affects those who are poor and most vulnerable. In many developing countries, informal
justice mechanisms, norms, and practices govern the everyday life of the poor.
UN rule of law activities seek to address the legal exclusion of the poor and
marginalized, ensuring legal protection of and justice for all. This involves a bottom-up
approach of legal empowerment to enable the poor and disadvantaged groups to understand
and claim their entitlements and rights, and access justice, security and services for this
purpose. Support for gender equality, and the inclusion of marginalized groups and groups
subject to discrimination is a key aspect of this work.
The UN rule of law approach is based on international norms and standards,
including the countless UN treaties, declarations, guidelines and bodies of principles that
represent universally applicable standards. It involves support for the realization of
economic, social and cultural rights, as well as civil and political rights. Legislative reform,
institution-building and support for legal assistance and access to justice focus on birth
registration and legal identity, labor, employment and business, housing rights, property and

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land governance, reproductive health, and environmental protection. Many of these activities
are targeted towards reaching specific MDGs, and creating an overall enabling environment
in countries for social and economic progress.9

In fact, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the most successful Global
Anti-Poverty push in history. The first goal therein is to eradicate extreme poverty and
hunger. Apparently, the target was met five years ahead of the 2015 deadline. The global
poverty rate at $1.25 a day fell in 2010 to less than half the 1990 rate. 700 million fewer
people lived in conditions of extreme poverty in 2010 than in 1990. Moreover, the hunger
reduction target, which is to halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who
suffer from hunger, is within reach by 2015.
However, at the global level 1.2 billion people are still living in extreme poverty.
About 870 million people are estimated to be undernourished and more than 100 million
children under age five are still undernourished and underweight. Seeing that the target is
within reach by 2015, nevertheless, the United Nations are encouraging us to step up
because ultimately we can end poverty.
To conclude, we would like to quote the famous words of Nelson Mandela:
In this new century, many of the worlds poorest countries remain
imprisoned, enslaved and in chains. They are trapped in the prison of poverty. It is
time to set them free. Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is manmade and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.

9 Poverty Reduction, United Nations Rule of Law, available at

http://www.unrol.org, last viewed December 13, 2013