Human Security and Global Ethics: Can International Organisations Be Moral Agents?

Korać, Srđan (2017) Human Security and Global Ethics: Can International Organisations Be Moral Agents? In: 3rd International Conference on Human Security. Faculty of Security Studies, Belgrade, pp. 55-64. ISBN 978-86-80144-09-2

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Abstract

The paper examines how moral agency of an international organisation aff ects implementation of the human security policy on the global level. The author hypothesizes that an organisation of any kind is capable of acting with reference to right and wrong—making ethical decisions and putting them into action. The source of an international organisation’s moral agency is its collective power to act and affect the world by its decision-making and performance. Th is is particularly true with a view to the United Nations’ array of diff erent activities regarding the promotion of human security worldwide. Th e author argues that the UN’s responsibility to make ethical decisions has to be grounded on the theoretical positions of both moral cosmopolitanism and deontological global ethics, because much of contemporary moral philosophy insists on the duty to aid foreigners who are suffering. The concept of human security itself is profoundly connected to the notion of empathy, which lies at the very centre of the psychological basis of morality supporting the standpoint of universal moral commitments. The author concludes that the ethical perspective has to be embedded into the process of making and implementation of the UN’s human security policy—if the policy is to be legitimate on the ground of global values promoted by the UN as well as effective for those in need.

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