Gillian Brock

What sort of moral importance do people's needs have? Can people's needs defensibly make claims on anyone ? Recent arguments concerning the moral importance of needs adopt a distinctive approach: the importance of needs is evaluated in terms of how needs fare in contests with preferences or desires in distributive contexts. I suggest some explanations for this move, but argue that the moral importance of needs is not best evaluated using this strategy. Rather, whether needs can trump, or in other ways significantly affect property rights, is a more adequate test of their importance--indeed, is the crucial issue if needs are to have the kind of moral importance recent arguers want to claim for needs in the kinds of distributive contexts identified. ;So, can people's needs defensibly affect others' property rights? I argue that this question, once thoroughly examined, conceals some important misconceptions about property rights and the kinds of arguments by which they can be justified. I argue that claims of need can have a significant impact on property rights: people's needs can define the limits of defensible property rights in certain sorts of cases. Indeed, failure to recognize the constraints imposed by people's needs leaves one with an indefensible account of property rights. So, if according property rights and rewarding labor are to be defensible practices, there are some needs which legitimately make claims on others

My primary goals in this article are to show: first, that we can identify and justify which basic freedoms are important ones to protect in the global context; second, that we can monitor whether we are making progress with respect to whether more or fewer people are enjoying the important freedoms; third, that we can identify some key institutions that play a central role in fortifying those freedoms; fourth, that we can help build or fortify local capacity with respect to protecting basic freedoms; fifth, that external support and building international institutions can play an important role in securing local capacity to protect basic liberties. The emphasis is on trying to construct local capacity to protect basic freedoms. However external support has a key role to play. I argue that protecting press freedom and building institutions of international justice play crucial roles in securing local capacity to protect basic liberties. We have obligations to support those institutions that would facilitate progress with respect to protection of basic liberties. So, for instance, we have a range of responsibilities to support press freedom in all countries, along with international efforts to bring to justice violators of basic liberties