In her book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo documents how the residents of Annawadi, the shantytown that exists on land belonging to Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport in Mumbai, struggle day in and day out to survive. She concludes with an arresting and sorrowing note: “Annawadi boys accepted the basic truths: that in a modernizing, increasingly prosperous city, their lives were embarrassments best confined to small spaces, and their deaths would matter not at all.”Footnote ¹ Boo’s indictment about how those who reside in Annawadi are treated isn’t limited to Mumbai or India in particular. “What was unfolding in Mumbai,” she writes, “was unfolding elsewhere, too.”

After concluding her narration of Annawadi and the lives of those who live there, Boo offers her own reflections. Having previously reported on poor communities in the United States, she wonders about India, which while growing in affluence and power still houses nearly a third of the world’s severely poor people. Witnessing “ribby children with flies in their eyes and other emblems of abjectness that one can’t help but see within five minutes of walking into a slum,”Footnote ³ she asks several pointed questions.

Here, Boo offers more than reflections and questions for the committed reader. She morally indicts the institutions that govern in such a way that they perpetuate severe poverty and downplay or ignore severe poverty’s ongoing human costs. But Boo levels an even more serious charge: “The effect of corruption I find most underacknowledged is a contraction not of economic possibility but of our moral universe.”Footnote ⁵ We affluent people – individually and institutionally – have contracted our moral universe and our moral obligations. “For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” (Mark 8:36).

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We have obligations to others. We have especially demanding obligations to those who are vulnerable and unable to protect themselves. But what do these claims mean for a world like ours? In our contemporary world, we are witness to a sharp and growing divide between those of us who live advantaged lives in the Global North and those who live disadvantaged lives in the impoverished Global South. But acknowledging the commonsense view that we have obligations to others and highlighting the empirical data about the divergences between the Global North and the Global South isn’t enough. Why do we affluent people in particular have demanding obligations to assist severely poor people? In this book, I have attempted to develop and defend an answer to this question. If the argument I have developed is persuasive, then affluent people are responsible for our complicity in benefiting from and perpetuating an inhumane and unjust state of affairs. And in each chapter of this book, I have attempted to argue that this responsibility conflicts with widely held moral, political, and religious commitments.

In order to consume goods at particular market prices or protect our privileged ways of life, we affluent people participate in and uphold an international institutional order that coercively and systemically denies others the substance of their right to basic material needs. Moreover, given our acquisitiveness and delimited and localized scope of concern, most affluent people have not fulfilled our interpersonal obligations to assist severely poor people. Examined institutionally and interpersonally, such failures of action (and the attitudes that motivate such failures) are morally problematic. Morally and politically speaking, we affluent people haven’t taken sufficiently seriously the standing that severely poor people have in our shared moral and political communities. And speaking religiously, we affluent people haven’t recognized and responded to those who live under conditions of severe poverty as neighbors. Furthermore, we have failed to prove ourselves neighbor. If we affluent people did take seriously the circumstances into which severely poor people are cast, we would reorganize our lives and commit to three ends. Specifically, we would (1) work to rectify the unjust-making features of the institutions that mediate our interactions with severely poor people, (2) contribute to charitable causes that combat severe poverty, and (3) simplify our lives materially in order to minimize our participation in unjust institutions and dedicate greater resources to helping others.

Most affluent people find ways to downplay or ignore our obligations to assist severely poor people. In Chapter 3, I examined two anti-cosmopolitan theses, the Strong Statist and Patriotic Priority Theses, that claim that our obligations to severely poor people are delimited by our obligations to one class of special relations, that is, our fellow nationals. Because we are subject to the coercive policies set by our shared domestic basic structure, proponents of these theses argue, our obligations are delimited to our fellow nationals. Moreover, they advocate for these theses despite the fact that we interact, via shared international institutions, with those beyond our borders. In response to these theses, I developed an associative account of obligations. On this account, international economic interdependence triggers obligations that demand that we aim to promote autonomy, equality, and reciprocity both abroad and domestically. These obligations, I further argued, may be as demanding as our obligations toward our fellow nationals; but at the very least, these obligations are demand that we respect that all people possess a basic right to subsistence. Our institutionally mediated interactions, therefore, must not deprive others of the substance of their right to subsistence by perpetuating a state of affairs that doesn’t respect this basic right. Given the overwhelming portion of the global population that is adversely affected by institutionally mediated interactions, the laws and policies that shape these supra- and transnational interactions must be amended in order to protect people’s rights to basic material needs.

In other instances, affluent people actively turn away from severely poor people. In some instances, we act like the priest or the Levite in the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37), crossing over to the other side of the proverbial road and abandoning our vulnerable and wounded neighbors to their fate. In other instances, we act like Chuck or Baron, who pull few (if any) drowning children from the shallow pond. In these cases, we don’t critically reflect on and revise our privileged ways of life, which includes not only basic material needs but also many luxuries, in order to help those who don’t have the necessary resources to live minimally decent and autonomous ones. When we think about our lives, we often believe that there is nothing wrong, morally speaking, with how we live. But in the face of Singer’s interpersonalist arguments and Jesus’s commandments, should we continue to live how we live? Our quest to maintain lives of luxury comes at the cost of failing to fulfill our interpersonal obligations to severely poor people.

To fulfill our obligations, we affluent people have both institutional and interpersonal obligations to assist severely poor people. First, we ought to reform the unjust institutions that mediate our interactions with severely poor people. If these institutions were made more just, we affluent people wouldn’t be able to get our goods at the prices that unjust market interactions command. But the cost of such interactions is the chronic and systemic deprivation of others’ basic right to subsistence. What affluent person could reasonably recommend as a morally permissible course of action the purchase of a new article of clothing or the latest consumer electronic that was produced by sweatshop labor? Or even more morally problematically, goods produced by child labor? Through these institutionally mediated interactions, we treat others as mere instruments for the satisfaction of our own self-interests. Treating others as mere instruments requires failing to treat them as neighbors and us failing to prove ourselves neighbors.

In our globalized and interconnected world, what would it mean to prove ourselves neighbor to those who live under conditions of severe poverty? In Chapter 4, I argued affluent people have interpersonal moral obligations to assist severely poor people, with such obligations coming in both negative and personal forms. On the argument that I developed, our negative obligations are comparatively local and nominal. In poetic terms, we shouldn’t act like Charles Dickens’s character Mrs. Jellyby and interpersonally deprive others of the substance of their right to subsistence. Or in more prosaic terms, we affluent people ought not act like Teddy in Abuse, believing we have satisfied all our obligations to others via institutions alone. We affluent people have demanding positive obligations as well. Following Jesus’s commandments and Singer’s arguments based on the shallow pond, we should act more like Moral Maude or Supererogatory Sam, both of whom donate meaningful percentages of their income to charities that combat poverty-related harms. We shouldn’t act like Bill in High Flyer, that is, we should not behave like someone who doesn’t act at all on his positive obligations toward severely poor people because he privileges his own commitments toward luxury.

Despite the fact that we have demanding obligations toward severely poor people, I have argued that we have moral obligations to ourselves as well, protecting our own moral status and (in light of our obligations to others) our own moral integrity. These obligations extend not only to ourselves but also to our special relations: those with whom live in particular communities or share bonds of family and friendship. In Chapter 5, I argued that we are permitted to form and maintain relationships with our family and friends; we are also permitted to pursue some personal prerogatives while still fulfilling our obligations to assist severely poor people. The presence of these intrinsically life-enhancing goods, to use Cullity’s term, makes our lives go better and their absence would make our lives worse. Our obligations to special relations and to ourselves may seem to place competing demands on our time and resources. In response, I have argued that affluent people can balance our obligations to self-regard, special relations, and neighbor-love. To fulfill these obligations, we are morally obligated to examine the prerogatives that we have taken up unchecked and to weigh these commitments against the claims of severely poor people.

In our present context, we cannot but do otherwise.

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In my book, I have developed my argument about our obligations to severely poor people in abstract and general terms. I believe that there is an important role for such reflection in contemporary religious ethics. For religious ethicists, such reflection invites us to think critically about the problems that we’re concerned with and the methodologies that we employ when responding to such problems. Furthermore, such reflection also requires self-reflexivity: How are we morally involved in the problems that we’re concerned with and how (if at all) do we join with others for the sake of promoting the common good?Footnote ⁶ Considering these points, I wish to conclude by calling our attention to three topics that are becoming ever more urgent and consequently demand the attention of religious ethicists. These problems – migration, equitable global healthcare, and violence against women – are intimately linked to severe poverty.Footnote ⁷ Much like our thinking about obligations to severely poor people in our globalized and interconnected world, these problems invite theoretical and practical reflection for their ever-increasing costs are very human.

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Migration. According to a recent estimate from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, there are approximately 258 million people living in a country other than the one of their birth.Footnote ⁸ While some choose to migrate from impoverished countries and settle in affluent ones, an increasing number of people are forced to do so. Following the collapse of colonialism, one reason for migration is cultural and religious persecution and conflict.Footnote ⁹ For others, it is to escape severe poverty. And for others still, it is increasingly because of environmental change. While lacking an official designation from international agencies, the World Bank projects that there could be 143 million so-called climate refugees by 2050: People displaced because of desert expansion and sea level rise. These climate refugees will predominantly come from already vulnerable populations in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America.Footnote ¹⁰

For ethicists, there are theoretical challenges confronting migration. For example, since the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the topic of migration has been the subject of heated debate. While the UDHR (Art. 13) and subsequent human rights documents affirm that each and every person has the right to leave their own country, the claims made in these articles conflict with others made in the very same documents. For example, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights affirms that “[e]veryone shall be free to leave any country, including his own” (Art. 12.1) but also recognize restrictions on migration that are “provided by law” and are “necessary to protect national security, public order, public health or morals or the rights and freedom of others, and are consistent with the other rights recognized in the present Covenant” (Art. 12.2).

Similar challenges confront religious ethics. For example, in Strangers No Longer: Together on the Journey of Hope, the Catholic Bishops of the United States and Mexico write: “The Church recognizes the right of sovereign nations to control their territories but rejects such control when it is exerted merely for the purpose of acquiring additional wealth. More powerful economic nations, which have the ability to protect and feed their residents, have a stronger obligation to accommodate migration flows” (no. 36). And a few paragraphs later, the Catholic Bishops note that the “Church recognizes the right of a sovereign state to control its borders in furtherance of the common good. It also recognizes the right of human persons to migrate so that they can realize their God-given rights” (no. 39). While the Catholic Bishops hold that these teachings complement each other, it is less than clear what counts as “reasonable limits on immigration.”

The increasing migration crisis implicates salient moral, political, and religious concerns. On the one hand, there is the moral status of individuals who have been displaced by climate change, political conflict, and severe poverty. On the other hand, states have the right to self-determination, including prioritizing the rights and liberties of their own citizens and determining who they may admit as migrants and on what terms. How should we adjudicate these competing claims between individual status and state sovereignty? While idealized moral, political, and theological arguments demand admitting far more immigrants,Footnote ¹¹ our present global political order is determined by neoliberalism: “a politicized mutation of capitalism, where the state’s primary function is to foster market processes” whereby “the needs of people and the earth are secondary to those of capital, because the world economy rules supreme as omniscient and unwaveringly just.”Footnote ¹² Or in theological terms, neoliberalism is a “comprehensive program of market sacrifice.”Footnote ¹³

For those of us lucky enough to live affluent lives in the Global North, the extensive and intensive suffering of others can’t be ignored, especially when the migrant is at our very doors.

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Equitable Global Health. What the global pandemic has made plain is that we don’t presently have equitable global healthcare. First, consider global health inequity from the perspective of the argument that I developed over the course of my book: We have failed to ensure that severely poor people enjoy the substance of their right to subsistence, which includes their right to basic preventive healthcare such as vaccines. For example, high income countries such as the United States have benefited from immunization campaigns against COVID-19. But middle- and low-income countries haven’t been able to benefit from similar campaigns. In other words, what the pandemic makes explicit is that severely poor people disproportionately bear the global burden of disease, being subject to and dying prematurely from preventable illnesses.Footnote ¹⁴ What’s more, the pandemic implicates us for vaccine hoarding: We citizens and residents of high-income countries have had no issues receiving vaccines and vaccine boosters; however, those who live in middle- and low-income countries don’t have access to even first-round vaccinations. Because we have hoarded vaccines, universal vaccine coverage and by extension herd immunity is now difficult if not impossible.Footnote ¹⁵

To be sure, our vaccine hoarding conflicts with what Jesus commands in the Judgment of the Nations (Matt. 25:31–46). We can also compare it to Jesus’s teaching in the Parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:13–21):

In the Parable of the Rich Fool, Jesus indicts us for our greed, with the rich fool building a larger barn to store a greater harvest than what he himself needs. From the parable, there’s no telling whether the rich fool will be able to consume his harvest before it goes bad. But in our present context, we have hoarded more vaccines than we need, and vaccines do expire. Since vaccines have become widely available, the United States alone has wasted at least 15 million doses.Footnote ¹⁶

In our context of interdependence, what the global pandemic demands is global responses. And from the lessons Jesus imparts in the Parable of the Rich Fool and the Judgment of the Nations, we are required to move beyond our parochial interests to distribute such resources to achieve equitable global health.

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Violence against Women. In 1981, the United Nations General Assembly instituted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Starting from the premise stated in the Preamble to the UDHR and subsequent documents that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity, the CEDAW notes that “despite these various instruments extensive discrimination against women continues to exist.” “The full and complete development of a country, the welfare of the world and the cause of peace,” the CEDAW adds, “require the maximum participation of women on equal terms with men in all fields.” According to the terms of the CEDAW, discrimination against women includes “exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field” (Art. 1).

Despite its emphasis on discrimination against women, the CEDAW nowhere mentions violence against women. The prevailing view was that compared to discrimination, violence against women was a private and not public matter requiring institutional intervention.Footnote ¹⁷ Given the prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV), in 1993 the General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (DEVAW). The DEVAW defines violence against women as “physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life” (Art. 1). Since they are entitled to the equal enjoyment and protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms, women should be free from:

Unfortunately, whatever gains that were made through the implementation of these documents seem to have been undone over the course of the pandemic. According to “The Shadow Pandemic,” a report from UN Women in November 2021, violence against women has intensified since early 2020. The ways that such violence manifests are various. With widespread stay-at-home orders aimed at public health, women have been increasingly locked down with their abusers. According to the report, since the start of the pandemic, a quarter of women say that household conflicts have become more frequent, and fifty percent of women have experienced violence or know a woman who has. Such violence isn’t limited to the home: Sexual harassment and other forms of sexual violence in public spaces have also intensified during the pandemic, with an increasing number of women saying that they feel unsafe walking alone in either the day- or nighttime. For women in middle- and low-income countries, the situation is even more precarious, with severe poverty, lack of access to infrastructural resources, and violence reinforcing one another.Footnote ¹⁸

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Severe poverty prohibits people from living minimally decent and autonomous lives. Furthermore, it makes already vulnerable populations even more vulnerable, whether through climate change, lack of access to basic preventive healthcare, or violence against women. Our challenge and our burden is to respond to these issues that are becoming ever more dire.