It is widely thought that the international community is required to take action in order to prevent injustices such as genocide, ethnic cleansing, or the harmful effects of climate change. This raises the question of how the costs of preventing such injustices should be distributed among states. Some theorists argue that one way through which states can require a responsibility to bear the costs of preventing injustice is by being in possession of resources that have come about as a result of historical injustice. On this view, the fact that a state’s resources stem from unjust activities in the past provides a special moral reason why such resources can be disgorged for the purposes of preventing global injustices, either individually, or as part of a global fund. It might be argued, however, that states whose resources have come about as a result of brute luck have a similar responsibility to contribute. On this view there is still a special moral significance to the genesis of resources, but it denies the unique importance of whether the resources have come about as a result of injustice. The aim of this paper is to examine whether those that have benefited from injustice have a special moral reason to give up these resources that others, in general, do not have.
