“That’s not fair!” This quote comes from YOU. Life is not fair. In fact, it comes with unavoidable, inherent inequalities. Your sibling may simply be stronger because they are older. However, there are also deliberate, unjust inequalities, such as when your sibling has a higher chance of success merely because of their gender. 

When two individuals have different chances in life due to factors like class, gender, ethnicity, or religion, one means an inequality of opportunity. Inequalities of opportunity result in misallocated talent as people get positions due to their background instead of their merit, potentially hindering national development.

The other form of inequality concerns outcome. An example is the wealth and income gap between the richest and the poorest people. The main victims of this unequal distribution are people at the lower end. Even in the United States, around 42 million people live below the poverty line. According to the World Bank, societal poverty affects over 2 billion people worldwide. Since so much wealth is concentrated at the top, a wealth tax of just 5% on the richest individuals would be enough to lift these people out of poverty (Oxfam). The middle class suffers too because their income rises only around half as fast as that of the top 1% across industrialized countries (OECD). The growing gap threatens social cohesion and democracy by making people feel left behind (UChicago). 

The UN tackles both inequality of opportunity and of outcome in the tenth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), which aims to “Reduce inequality within and among countries.” The 4th and 5th SDGs also focus specifically on education and gender inequalities, whereas the 1st SDG puts ending poverty at its forefront. The UN also focuses on equity as a guiding principle when fighting various inequalities. According to UN-Habitat, “Equality is a human rights principle meaning ‘the same’, while equity is a concept of justice, which means ‘fair.’” When fighting poverty, for example, an equal solution would be to give each country the same amount of resources. An equitable policy would provide those countries with more aid that have more poor people.

To fully understand justice in the context of fighting inequality, it is essential to consider the four different types: procedural (due process), retributive (punishment), restorative (e.g. reparations), and distributive. While holding similar weight in global political discourse, distributive justice is most relevant to our conference.

Distributive justice concerns itself with the fair allocation of resources, opportunities, rights, and responsibilities in a society. Several theories offer different perspectives on what constitutes a just distribution, with one being the theory by political philosopher John Rawls. His theory consists of the liberty principle and the difference principle. The liberty principle states that each person has an equal right to basic liberties. The difference principle asserts that inequalities are only acceptable when benefiting the least advantaged. An example would be education inequalities. Allowing talented individuals to obtain a higher level of education than the least advantaged benefits them, too, because it results in innovations that would not occur if the resources were spread out thinly yet equally. Although there are different views on distributive justice, such as Nozick's libertarianism, which holds that any distribution resulting from acquiring holding justly is just, Rawls presents one of the most influential theories on the issue.

We hope to tackle inequalities of opportunity and outcome at this year’s BERMUN2 conference. Each resolution, amendment, and speech will bring us closer to realizing the goal the United Nations has set itself in 2015 when envisioning sustainable development—be it by reducing inequalities of gender, education, or wealth and income.