A common assumption within the migration ethics literature is that it is only states that have the power to admit foreigners to their territory. However, this assumption misses something important. While it is true that it is states that have the ultimate power to admit, other actors can possess a derivative power from the laws that states put in place. By establishing a system of work visas, for instance, states lend private corporations, and other employers, the power to nominate foreigners (...) for admission by making job offers. For many foreigners, a job offer is what they require to start a new life in a new country. The question then arises how corporations should use this derivative power? One might assume that they should use it as they typically do: to pursue their business interests and by doing so (we hope) benefit their stakeholders including the state and its citizens. However, could there not be other reasons, besides profit seeking, to offer refugees a visa-conferring job? If hiring refugees does not greatly harm their business, it is arguable that corporations could be obliged to use their derivative power to do so on humanitarian grounds. Moreover, some corporations also seem to be obliged to use this power on grounds of corrective justice. This paper advances these possibilities. It has three sections. First, I will look at how much discretion corporations have in terms of employment and migration laws in some European countries. Second, I will present an argument for why corporations are morally permitted to facilitate admission for refugees by offering them a visa-conferring job. In the final section, I will then defend a stronger claim, namely that corporations are possibly obliged to do so on humanitarian grounds or on grounds of corrective justice. (shrink)

Sadly, there are few restraints on the endings of wars. There has never been an international treaty to regulate war's final phase, and there are sharp disagreements regarding the nature of a just peace treaty. There are, by contrast, restraints aplenty on starting wars, and on conduct during war. These restraints include: political pressure from allies and enemies; the logistics of raising and deploying force; the United Nations, its Charter and Security Council; and international laws like the Hague and Geneva (...) Conventions. Indeed, in just war theory—which frames moral principles to regulate wartime actions—there is a robust set of rules for resorting to war (jus ad bellum) and for conduct during war (jus in bello) but not for the termination phase of war. (shrink)

Abstract:Economic sanctions have been subject to extensive criticism. They are often seen as indiscriminate, intending the harms that they inflict, and using the suffering of the innocent as a means to enact policy change. Indeed, some reject outright the permissibility of economic sanctions. By contrast, in this essay, I defend the case for economic sanctions. I argue that sanctions are not necessarily morally problematic and, in doing so, argue that sanctions are less morally problematic than is often claimed. I go (...) on to argue that sanctions may sometimes be morally preferable to the leading alternatives and, in particular, to wars and doing nothing. This is in part because sanctions are more likely to distribute fairly the currently inevitable harms to innocents of tackling aggression and mass atrocities. In the final part of the essay, I draw on this point to argue more generally that that we should often favor a “Harm-Distribution Approach” in the ethics of war and peace. (shrink)

Do a threatened state’s obligations of assistance extend to the enemy’s needy people and the needy people in non-hostile countries equally? This paper examines five arguments defending the political boundary between hostile and non-hostile countries. The aid workers, defence capacity, and pre-emptive self-defence arguments highlight the unreasonable burdens for a threatened state to protect its own citizens, as a result of its assistance to the enemy’s needy people, while the limited and comprehensive negative duties arguments underscore a threatened state’s involvement (...) in harmful activities. Unfortunately, these five arguments cannot accomplish the task. Certain arguments (i.e. the aid workers argument and the negative duties approach in general) encounter the insufficiency problem by not completely denying the potential for assisting the enemy’s needy people, while other arguments (i.e. the defence capacity, the limited and comprehensive negative duties, the pre-emptive self-defence arguments) face the over-extension problem by prohibiting assistance to needy people in nonhostile countries. Therefore, when a threatened state provides assistance to needy foreigners, the distinction between hostile and non-hostile countries should not constitute a decisive reason to affect the distribution of its assistance, because it cannot clearly maintain this distinction. (shrink)

Joy Gordon has made a major contribution to both the ethical analysis and the policy evaluation of economic sanctions. Her claims against sanctions should be understood as critique rather than condemnation of sanctions on ethical grounds.

As part of the roundtable “Economic Sanctions and Their Consequences,” this essay discusses whether economic sanctions are morally acceptable policy tools. It notes that both conventional and targeted sanctions not only often fail to achieve their stated objectives but also bring about significant negative externalities in target countries. Economic dislocation and increases in political instability instigated by sanctions disproportionately affect the well-being of opposition groups and marginalized segments of society, while target elites and their support base remain insulated from the (...) intended costs of foreign pressure. Sanctions might also incentivize target governments to use repressive means to consolidate their rule and weaken the opposition. Given these serious shortcomings, I argue that sanctions are ethically problematic tools of foreign policy. Nonetheless, this does not mean that sanctions should be rejected outright, as there might be cases where sanctions are the only viable option, and they might work effectively under certain circumstances. Rather, the essay suggests that policymakers should apply more caution in considering the use of sanctions given their low probability of success, and should be more concerned with the delicate balance between political gain and civilian pain before levying sanctions, whether comprehensive or targeted. (shrink)