Chapter 3 - Does Global Poverty Trigger the Right to Resistance?

Summary

This chapter examines whether global poverty is sufficient to justify resistance. It sets a high bar for activating the right to resistance by aligning it with crimes against humanity and genocide. These are test cases that intuitively justify resistance. If one could not resist Nazism, then the right to resistance would be meaningless. It argues that comparisons between global poverty and genocide are inaccurate; they fail to capture the distinctive collective nature of genocide as a crime. The same cannot be said with crimes against humanity. There is no reason to disqualify global poverty based on the elements of a crime against humanity. This, however, does not make a comparison valid.

The second half of the chapter argues that global poverty is comparable to the crimes of slavery and apartheid. This is because each case is characterised by extreme domination either interactionally or systemically. This is sufficient to make the case that global poverty is comparable to a crime against humanity and therefore triggers the right to resistance.