Today's national leaders face a seemingly insurmountable dilemma. They are entrusted with the weighty responsibility of promoting the interests of their respective nations. Yet, they are acutely aware of great human suffering beyond their nations' borders. Morality prescribes helping those who are suffering. The job description demands furthering national interest.

Child being given a vaccine in Sudan. UNICEF Photo.

I argue that these two actions are not in conflict. In fact, leaders and citizens of one nation further their national interest by helping those whose human rights are violated. When the people of a nation fail to aid victims of oppression in a far-off place, they find it more difficult to act against hatred and violence when they encounter it on their own doorstep. Happily, the reverse is also true. Defenders of freedom and peace beyond their own immediate spheres are better equipped to defend freedom and peace at home. Adversity is a great source of strength. Battling against hatred and oppression on behalf of others, however, does more than create strength through adversity. It helps build a foundation of moral courage, a platform from which all forms of injustice can be combated.

All human beings are endowed with an amazing set of gifts they are capable of sharing with the world. If the world stands by when other humans are persecuted, when adherents of a particular religion are marginalized, when people of a certain sex are silenced, when members of a race are enslaved, the potential gifts of the oppressed are lost. Perhaps a Nuer boy in southern Sudan will not grow up to forge reconciliation between North and South in his country's interminable civil war because his loving mother starved to death last week as a result of that war. These effects will ripple throughout the world, throughout time.

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

All human actions generate reactions. Oppression begets oppression. Compassion begets compassion. All human behaviour has consequences for all other humans. In fact, this is more true today in the age of globalization than ever in human history. Humans are increasingly bound to one another. The Internet, fax, satellites and the jet plane cause information to travel more quickly, cheaply and widely than ever before. These new, space-shrinking technologies make people conscious of the plight of all humankind.

The role of multilateral commitments is stronger than ever before. Nations adhere to an unprecedented number of international conventions and treaties. International financial institutions are of great importance. The United Nations is more significant than ever. An international criminal court is an issue of great debate.

In addition to a strengthened role for multilateral organizations, the world is increasingly integrated economically. The fall of communism, the rise of transnational corporations and the use of new technologies to transport commodities have made the world more economically interdependent. Two significant threats -- weapons of mass destruction and environmental hazards -- also bind world population together. Nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and the missiles to deliver them, are in more hands than ever before. Technology used in highly industrialized nations poses a threat to the environment of the entire planet. Ozone deterioration, water and air pollution, and global warming are a few examples of global environmental dangers.

For the human rights struggle, globalization means much more than that activists can cluster in a chat room on-line to discuss the news of the day. It has more significant effects than CNN airing 24-hour coverage of a famine in the Horn of Africa or a war in the Balkans. Because of globalization, the fate of every human on Earth is tied to the actions of all other people in an unprecedented way. An incomprehensibly intricate web of actions and reactions, causes and effects, binds all humanity together. Positive efforts at making peace, stemming the tide of pain and promoting human rights have an exponential effect.