Readers can download free PDF copies by clicking on the icons above.

Feel free to circulate or cite in your work. But citations must attribute to the original source.

The Global Justice Index is an ongoing research project conducted by Fudan-IAS to measure the level of global justice achieved by nation-states. Our goal is to provide readers with an accurate understanding of each country’s contribution to global justice as a whole. We have published results from 2010 to 2019 and are now presenting our fourth-year results for 2020.Footnote1 This year’s report contains four sections: an introduction, findings, main results, and a conclusion.

The Global Justice Index study for 2020 takes the form of an updated version of previous years’ reports. This year, we take into account changes to global justice caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, the global COVID-19 pandemic had a profound effect on global justice.Footnote2 It intensified economic inequality, widened gender gaps, and increased discrimination against vulnerable populations. A variety of measures have been implemented to promote global justice in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. These include the provision of economic relief to families and businesses, expanding access to healthcare, increasing the use of digital technology to bridge the digital divide, protecting vulnerable populations from discrimination, and strengthening international cooperation. To achieve an accurate measurement of each country’s contribution to greater global justice, we have incorporated novel indicators in certain issue areas (health and humanitarian aids), expanded the number of countries (education), and strengthened our analysis by adding a discussion of the influence of the pandemic. However, our methodology, main indicator system, and data sources remain consistent with those of last year’s report to enable cross-comparison.

In our introduction, we discuss the development of a conceptual framework to justify our choice of issues, dimensions, and indicators for measurement. Although this was covered in previous reports, it is important to repeat it here as part of maintaining the integrity of this year’s Global Justice Index research. Global justice is widely understood to be a complex concept including multiple components belonging to both normative and empirical realities, requiring an integrated theoretical framework that covers these aspects. In our theoretical paper, published in 2019, we clarified our conceptualization of global justice and presented our issue-area system based on it.Footnote3

Our conceptualization of global justice synthesizes multiple theories and intellectual traditions from different social, cultural, and political contexts. We recognize three main approaches—rights-based, goods-based, and virtue-based—as the foundation for a coherent theoretical framework with a normative basis for measurement. A rights-based approach focuses on the principles, rules, and sources of legitimacy. A goods-based approach concentrates on the material and institutional support provided by governments or institutions. A virtue-based approach considers justice to be something an individual must pursue rather than comply with. The relationship between these three is interdependent, forming one holistic whole. They all work together, as follows: the rights-based conceptualization provides the basic structure (the bones), the goods-based conceptualization provides substantial material support (the muscles), and the virtue-focused conceptualization provides personal motivation and internalized willingness (the heart).

Based on this theoretical framework, we proposed two evaluative principles to better understand and justify the selection of issue areas for evaluation. These are Common but Differentiated and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC) and Cosmopolitan but Due-diligent Responsibilities (CDDR). CBDR-RC addresses the issues “for which no single nation-state can be held directly accountable or responsible, matters that can only be tackled through the globally concerted efforts of all stakeholders.”Footnote4 For example, issues such as climate change require a collective effort on the part of all countries to be adequately addressed, and that this effort cannot be undertaken by one nation alone. The second principle, CDDR, asserts that “all-nation-states are morally obligated to provide cosmopolitan aid, in which context the least advantaged will have a due-diligent responsibility” (Guo et al. 2019). This principle is based on the concept of mutual accountability as proposed in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, adopted in 2005 at the Second High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness to promote better cooperation between actors in aid and development. According to this principle, anti-poverty and education policies are part of domestic affairs, and nation-states are expected to provide material and institutional assistance to their citizenry within their territories.

Drawing on the principles of CBDR-RC and CDDR, we have selected two clusters of global justice issue areas in our measurement. The issue areas that relate to CBDR-RC are (1) climate change (global warming), (2) peacekeeping, (3) humanitarian aid, (4) terrorism and armed conflict, (5) cross-national criminal police cooperation, and (6) refugees. The issue areas that relate to CDDR are (7) anti-poverty, (8) education, (9) public health, and (10) the protection of women and children. In the following sections, we provide rankings for individual nations’ contributions to global justice across these 10 issue areas for 2020. We also provide regional comparisons, detailed policy analysis, and visualization tools to enable a more accurate understanding of each country’s contribution to achieving global justice.

The full article is available online here : https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41111-023-00240-0