Alyssa Bernstein, Ph.D. is an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at Ohio University. She holds a PhD from Harvard University. After receiving her PhD in 2000 she was a Fellow of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government for two years. Her research interests include contemporary conceptions of human rights and global justice, and Kant's ethics and political philosophy.

Presentation: The 2005 Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (UDBHR) and the Duty of International Assistance

The epidemics of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria ravaging much of the 'Third World' are perpetuated by poverty, inadequate health care services, and state dysfunctionality, all aggravated by heavy national debts to the World Bank and the IMF and by their 'structural adjustment' policies. Thus these epidemics have international economic and political dimensions. In view of this as well as the fact that the 2005 UDBHR "aims to establish the conformity of bioethics with international human rights law," it is striking that this document says so little about international obligations of states and nothing about international development assistance. By contrast, John Rawls and other influential contemporary philosophical writers about human rights and global justice argue that well-functioning, prosperous states have prima facie moral obligations to give other states the assistance necessary to enable them to secure the human rights of their people, including those to life and health.