Will Globalization Be A Tool For Global Equality?

By Maia Brener

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948. This nonbinding treaty, which has currently been signed by 192 states around the world, is one of the most important documents in the field of human rights. It outlines the thirty universal human rights. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights." Article 2 ensures this equality by stating that everybody has the right to freedom from discrimination. These rights are indivisible and interdependent. They can only be enjoyed to the fullest extent when all of them are in use. If only some are granted and others are restricted, then the people are not fully free.

The topic of human rights encompasses a plethora of different issues, including economic rights, civil rights, social rights, and cultural rights. Each of these are dependent on the other to ensure that a person is able to live life to the freest and fullest extent humanly possible. 

Globalization does not have one set definition, but can be attributed to the increasing interdependence of nations, especially regarding trade and exchange. This exchange can be of commercial goods, money, or even a cultural exchange. Legally, there have been many advancements in international law which has led to the creation of new global legal institutions. 

There are direct links to the well-being of an economy and the human rights that people are able to enjoy. Generally, economies that are more advanced also see societies where citizens are more able to exercise the rights outlined in the UDHR. Developing economies are less likely to allow people all of the freedoms stated in the UDHR. Looking at the impacts of globalization, there is a positive correlation between economic growth and an increase in human rights in a country. In addition, increasing economic growth, in theory, is supposed to help lower classes of a society improve their standard of living.   

One study shows, “What researchers have found is that, in general, when countries open up to trade, they tend to grow faster and living standards tend to increase… But, that said, it is virtually impossible to find cases of poor countries that were able to grow over long periods of time without opening up to trade. And we have no evidence that trade leads to increases in poverty and declines in growth.” Globalization has the potential to help poorer countries develop and grow. Opening up borders for trade allows countries to increase their wealth and to increase the standard of living for the people living there.

During the 1990s in Vietnam, the country rid itself of a law that set a quota on how much rice the farmers were allowed to export abroad. Once this quota was eliminated, the demand for Vietnamese rice skyrocketed. This led to the increase in the price of Vietnamese rice, which then allowed the farmers a higher standard of living and even lifted many out of poverty. As a result of this, many more children started going to school because they no longer needed to work to survive.

One article asserts, “...globalization’s effects on a country’s growth depend crucially on how much a nation is already integrated into the global economy… The less wired a country is into the global economy, the greater the positive impact of increasing globalization.” The amount that each country can potentially gain from the effects of globalization depends on how advanced the country’s economy already is. Countries with early and middle stages of integration, such as Ethiopia or Brazil, see many more gains than countries that are already in more advanced stages of development, such as the United States. In many cases, globalization has been seen to increase the economic well-being of a country, while also being a factor in the reduction of poverty.

On the other hand, in many cases globalization has also been shown to keep the poor down. In India and many countries in Latin America, there is a wider economic gap between the people who are more educated and the people who are less educated. The people who are more educated tend to be richer. The extent to which the inequality increases varies from country to country, but it is suggested that the more educated classes benefit more from things such as trade reforms than people who are less educated. Essentially, people who have more money tend to benefit more from globalization than the lower classes. One source reads, “It finds that globalization is often associated with widening economic inequality, putting more money into the pockets of the rich than into those of the poor. While in the average developing economy the poor as well as the wealthy benefit from globalization, in many advanced economies globalization often has little effect on the incomes of the poor.” In theory, globalization should help pull people out of poverty in developing nations, and while in some cases it has, this is not usually the case. It is believed that people are able to earn both more money, and eventually, people will also slowly gain more human rights. In practice, it has been proven to help the rich earn more, and to keep the poor down many times. 

Slavery is by no means a new or recent concept. With that being said, it is formally outlawed in most countries around the world, yet still being practiced. Globalization has led to an outsourcing of factory jobs in more developed countries and has brought these jobs to developing nations across the world. These countries generally have looser restrictions on human rights, banning slavery while still secretly allowing it to occur, all in the name of bettering their economies. Many corporations exploit this, leaving countries with stricter workers’ rights and higher wages, for places that will allow them to underpay their workers with few safety regulations that generally go unmonitored.  

The People’s Republic of China has been shown to have violated many of the human rights of the Uighur Muslims. Currently, these people are in concentration camps in the northwest part of China in a province called Xinjiang. Many of these rights that the government of China have violated are stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which China is a signatory to. Although the UDHR is nonbinding, the rights of the people and the principle of the UDHR should still be respected.

Countless amounts of human rights abuses have been committed inside of these Uighur concentration camps. This discrimination is based on religion, as the Uighurs are a majority Muslim, which is a minority religion in the country. They are being discriminated against by the government, enslaved in these camps, tortured both physically and mentally, arrested and forced to go to these camps, and even more. For the purpose of the topic pertaining to how globalization has affected human rights, only a few of these violations which are more directly linked to globalization will be discussed.

In these concentration camps, the Uighurs are forced to do manual labor in incredibly poor conditions for hours a day. If they do not comply, they face the risk of extreme torture or even death. In spite of this, there are many companies from around the world who use this slave labor in order to make their products cheaper. This, in turn, allows for more profit for these corporations, who can then pay the workers very little money, sell the product for the same price as before, and gain a larger amount of profit than before.  

China has various anti-discrimination laws that are still currently in place, including clauses in the most recent constitution for the country, the 1982 Chinese Constitution. These include Article 33, which states that all citizens are equal under the law. The Chinese Constitution also guarantees the rights of ethnic minorities, which also includes the Uighurs. While committing these atrocities, the Chinese government is not only directly and blatantly challenging the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, but also their own constitution as well, which is the basis and the framework for the laws in its country.. 

In the Xinjiang region, immense amounts of raw materials like cotton, coal, sugar, tomatoes, and polysilicon are made. In addition to this, it helps to supply workers for China’s apparel and footwear factories. Many human rights groups and news reports have associated many multinational companies with suppliers in that province. This includes connecting Coca-Cola to sugar that was produced in Xinjiang, and having documented proof that Nike uses Uighur slave labor to produce their shoes in a factory in Qingdao.

Child labor is also widely used in the system of globalization. Child labor is the use of people under the age of eighteen for manual labor which impairs the development and the well-being of the child. This practice is highly regulated in most developed countries, but in developing countries this is not the case. Due to globalization, children around the world have been forced to work in factories with unsafe and even deadly working conditions. One of the main reasons that children work is due to poverty. The parents need the children to work so that they can send money home and help support their family. The International Labor Office estimates that at least 250 million children between the ages of five and fifteen are victims of child labor. Most children are employed by their families.

In Vietnam during the 1990s, a study was conducted examining over 4,000 cases of child labor. It was found that when globalization improves the income of households that are in poverty, more children in the household are more likely to be sent to school. This would be in accordance with Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that everybody has a right to education, and that at least elementary education shall be free and compulsory. This is only when globalization can improve the wages and help pull people out of poverty though. Another study suggests, “Increased earning opportunities may increase the demand for child labor and the wages paid to children. Indirectly, increased earnings opportunities to parents may change the types of work performed by parents. Children may be forced to take over some of the activities usually performed by adults within their household.” This means that as more countries open their borders to foreign investments, more child labor may be needed in order to keep up with demand. It then goes on to explain that even if children are not working outside of the home, there may be an increase in the demand for children to take over the jobs of the household. 

Despite this, the fight for human rights continues around the globe. Globalization has been shown to both improve the lives of some, but has also led to the exploitation of many. There are many different organizations that try and combat repressive policies all around the world, and have stated that the battle will not cease until every person is granted the human rights that they were born with. Globalization has the potential to both suppress human rights or uplift it, depending on who it benefits most in the country.

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