Many, indeed most, of the contributors to this volume address aspects of one or other of two rather different discourses that are prominent within the contemporary literature on international humanitarian assistance. The first is the basis for, and extent of, our individual, personal obligations towards those with whom we have no connection but who are suffering grievously. The second is the obligation that richer countries have towards much poorer countries.

Although the contributors include some of the most prominent scholars currently addressing these issues, the volume is likely to disappoint many of its readers. Perhaps its greatest weakness is that little if any effort has been taken to relate the contributions one to the other. The contributors, for example, in almost every case show no sign of having read the contributions of their co-authors. There is, as a result, no direct joining of issues. This problem is most clearly evident in the separate contributions of Peter Singer, Richard Arneson and F.M. Kamm. Arneson and Kamm each offer substantial criticisms of Peter Singer's classic article “Famine, Affluence and Morality” (Philosophy and Public Affairs 1, no. 2 [1972]: 229–43) but make no reference to his chapter in this volume, which is an updated and significantly more nuanced statement of his 1972 position. Singer, in turn, makes no reference to the criticisms of his position offered by Kamm and Arneson.

The authors, as well, do not seem to agree on the audience for their contributions. Peter Singer and Thomas Pogge offer updated overviews of their already well-known positions on the obligation of the rich towards global poverty. These chapters are most likely to be useful to students and interested general readers, but not to their fellow scholars. Most of the other contributors appear to have written about their current preoccupations. Thus, the contributions cover the following diverse topics: a neat and elegant article by Onara O'Neil addresses a secondary issue, the moral obligations of NGOs; a fine piece by Henry Shue suggests that a study of what the variety of different cultures that are present in our global community have to say, not about first principles, but instead on their positions on specific moral issues, reveals a growing moral consensus; an accessible if occasionally casual chapter by David Miller points to the probable conflict between two obligations, the one to help the needy and the second to accept others as responsible agents who must carry responsibility for their own errors; there are two pieces (mentioned above) that criticize Peter Singer's position; and a further two (by Martha Nussbaum and Charles Beitz) that are primarily concerned with criticizing aspects of John Rawls' The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), despite the fact that neither Rawls himself nor anyone sympathetic to his analysis offers an integrated summary of that analysis.

This rapid overview of many of the chapters is likely to suggest, and appropriately so, that most of the chapters other than those by Singer and Pogge are unlikely to be easily understood by anyone other than their fellow scholars. Even Singer, a master expositor, allows himself to deal with a question that centrally challenges his position, namely, why should we act morally, by footnoting another of his books.

This comparative randomness of the subjects discussed does serve one important purpose; it illustrates how extensive are the disagreements in this field about what is important. Alas it also illustrates an even more fundamental disagreement. Some of the contributors, and in particular Singer, Shue, Beitz and Pogge, are keen to substantiate the force of our obligations towards those who are needy but with whom we are distant and without connection. For others, in sharp contrast, ethical obligations only arise when they have a contractual basis or when they are a logical consequence of benefits that we each enjoy because of shared interactions. Those who take the first of these two positions regard as the real task of any ethics of assistance worth its salt, to establish the intellectual and moral foundations for assistance to the distant needy with whom we have no links. For the second group, kindness towards the distant needy may well be a nice thing to do, but we are under no ethical obligation to assist them. What is thus revealed is that these Western moral philosophers offer a putative philosophical rationale to underpin the championing of the pursuit of self-interest and the hostility towards international humanitarianism that are features of the powerful neo-conservative political forces in Western societies.

This perhaps explains why several of the contributors to this volume are clearly out of sympathy with the whole endeavour to think philosophically about our obligations towards the distant needy. Judith Lichtenberg, for example, advocates that we should instead seek to understand how public opinion in the rich countries can best be made more responsive to the needs of the global poor. And Thomas Pogge argues convincingly and with ill-concealed impatience that no more subtle argument is needed to establish the ethical obligation of the rich countries to assist the poor far more than they now do than that provided by the fact that the rich and powerful states, through their domination of international trade and the international financial institutions, can secure unfair economic advantages over the poor.