My aim is to extend and complement the arguments that others have already made for the claim that women who are citizens of economically disadvantaged states and who have been trafficked into sex work in economically advantaged states should be considered candidates for asylum. Familiar arguments cite the sexual violence and forced labor that trafficked women are subjected to along with their well-founded fear of persecution if they’re repatriated. What hasn’t been considered is that reproductive rights are also (...) at stake. I explain how reproductive rights are implicated in sex trafficking. Moreover, I contend that sex traffickers’ abuse of women’s reproductive rights is persecutory and that that this persecutory abuse obliges destination states to offer asylum to transnational sex trafficking victims. I start by sketching reproductive human rights doctrine. I then examine studies of women who are in post-trafficking recovery programs in order to ascertain the impact of their past experience of forced sex work on their reproductive freedom and health. On the basis of these findings, I maintain that, among other outrages, sex trafficking systematically violates victims’ reproductive human rights. In view of this abuse, women trafficked into sex work might seem to be prime candidates for asylum in destination states. Yet, economically well-off destination states are not particularly receptive to this idea, and international law provides some justification for their chilliness. Preliminary to challenging them, I explicate four ways in which international anti-trafficking law and international refugee law interfere with viewing women trafficked into sex work as refugees and approving their applications for asylum. The second half of my paper aims to overcome those legal obstacles. In the interest of parsimony and because there are many continuities between U.S. refugee law and anti-trafficking law and the policies of similar destination states, I focus mainly on the U.S. in this part of the paper. To anchor my argument, I spotlight two precedents in refugee law for taking reproductive human rights seriously and several precedents for treating trafficked women as members of a distinct social group as required by refugee law. I then urge that a law enforcement gestalt has gained undue influence over U.S. legal practices where anti-trafficking law intersects with refugee protection law. A human rights gestalt is needed as a counterweight, for otherwise victims of sex trafficking and the reproductive abuse they’ve suffered are erased. Taking up a human rights perspective and mobilizing the precedents I’ve identified, I show that respecting the reproductive human rights of women who have been trafficked into sex work entails that affluent destination states must recognize their right to asylum. (shrink)

Under the UDHR, all persons have the right to "seek and to enjoy . . . asylum from persecution." From this designation as fundamental followed codification of the right in the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol Relating (collectively 'the Convention'), the "centrepiece" of treaties and customary norms that make up international refugee law. It defines and regulates the status and rights of refugees; its purpose is to safeguard the basic rights (...) of persons "outside their country of origin," who have fled due to a legitimate fear of persecution. Fundamentally, it guarantees that asylees and refugees enjoy rights without discrimination; without penalization for illegal territorial entry; and, without expulsion or return to "territories where . . . life or freedom would be threatened on account of . . . race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion," —or 'non-refoulement'. What follows is background on development of the principle of non-refoulement, evasive US Asylum Cooperative Agreements ('ACAs') and implementing legislation, and the resulting erosion to the right to asylum. (shrink)

Marie Oldfield, Pro Bono Economics & Refugee Council. Over half the total applications for asylum the UK receives each year are initially rejected, yet nearly a third of these initial rejections are subsequently overturned on appeal. This process that fails to get decisions right first time imposes significant costs, not just on the applicants themselves, but also more widely on UK taxpayers. Asylum seekers are not entitled to welfare benefits nor employment except in some limited cases, and are (...) often placed in unsuitable conditions with lack of appropriate support to prepare their case for asylum. These unfortunate circumstances mean that they are unable to gather and present all the required evidence first time, even when the case for asylum is legitimate. As a result, the application is rejected and thus begins a cycle of appeals that might eventually lead to a successful outcome for the asylum seeker but will, in the process, burden the taxpayer with unnecessary administrative cost and cause the asylum seeker needless distress and prevent them from accessing suitable economic opportunities. • Our study estimates that there are approximately 4,000 initial rejections that are successfully appealed each year and, with each appeal incurring direct administrative costs of around £1,000, the price tag of incorrect initial decisions adds up to a hefty £4 million per year in unnecessary administrative costs alone. • There are other costs, too, that negatively impact asylum seekers and taxpayers, albeit in a more indirect manner. The longer the appeals process is dragged out, the more delay there is to successful asylum seekers entering the labour market which means lost economic activity and forgone tax revenue for the Exchequer. Long periods of unemployment also result in skills attrition and lower the probability of the asylum seeker successfully entering the labour market in the future. • A lengthy appeals process heightens stress and worsens mental health in asylum seekers, a group arguably already more vulnerable on this front. Unnecessary human suffering aside, there is also a monetary cost borne by the taxpayer should NHS mental health services become involved. Thus, there is a pressing and viable case for providing asylum seekers a stable environment in which to complete their applications for asylum. This would increase the likelihood of reaching correct decisions in the first instance, avoid unnecessary administrative costs of an arduous appeals process, enable successful asylum seekers to access the labour market and contribute to the Exchequer, and avoid placing extra demands on already strained NHS mental health services. (shrink)

The asylum system faces problems on two fronts. States undermine it with populist politics, and migrants use it to satisfy their migration preferences. To address these problems, asylum services should be commodified. States should be able to pay other states to provide determination and protection-elsewhere. In this article, I aim to identify a way of implementing this idea that is both feasible and desirable. First, I sketch a policy proposal for a commodification of asylum services. Then, I (...) argue that this policy proposal is not only compatible with the right to asylum, but also supported by moral considerations. Despite some undesirable moral features, a market in asylum facilitates the provision of asylum to those who need it. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt argued that refugees pose a major problem for liberalism. Most liberal theorists endorse the idea of human rights. At the same time, liberalism takes the existence of sovereign states for granted. When large numbers of people petition a liberal state for asylum, Arendt argued, these two commitments will come into conflict. An unwavering respect for human rights would mean that no refugee is ever turned away. Being sovereign, however, allows states to control their borders. States (...) supposedly committed to human rights will thus often violate the rights of refugees by denying them entry. I attempt to defend liberalism from Arendt’s criticism by outlining a rights-based model of asylum that is enforceable by sovereign states. This approach avoids the question of what border-enforcement measures, if any, are defensible at the level of ideal justice, and instead seeks to outline a framework of refugee rights that can be realized in a world in which migration controls are a fact of life. Central to my argument is a distinction between the place where a person is recognized as a rights-bearing agent and the potentially different place where he or she exercises those rights. (shrink)

This article addresses the question of how ‘Country of Origin Information’ reports—that is, research developed and used to support decision-making in the asylum process—can be published in an ethical manner. The article focuses on the risk that published COI reports could be misused and thereby harm the subjects of the reports and/or those involved in their development. It supports a situational approach to assessing data ethics when publishing COI reports, whereby COI service providers must weigh up the benefits and (...) harms of publication based, inter alia, on the foreseeability and probability of harm due to potential misuse of the research, the public good nature of the research, and the need to balance the rights and duties of the various actors in the asylum process, including asylum seekers themselves. Although this article focuses on the specific question of ‘how to publish COI reports in an ethical manner’, it also intends to promote further research on data ethics in the asylum process, particularly in relation to refugees, where more foundational issues should be considered. (shrink)

Mens rea means a guilty mind; guilty knowledge and wilfulness without clear permission to do so. The 1924 Declaration of the Rights of the Child and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, followed by the 1959 Declaration of the Rights of the Child have all been ignored by the UK Home Secretary and the UK Prime Minister. These universal laws place the child in the nexus of the State, the parents, and the broader society. The 1959 (...) Declaration claims in its Preamble, that “mankind owes to the child the best it has to give” and it contains ten principles outlining numerous rights of children. See also, Philip Alston, “The Best Interests Principles towards a reconciliation of culture and human rights”, (1994), 8, International Journal of Law and the Family, 1-25, 6. -/- . (shrink)

Discriminatory attitudes towards Muslim refugees are common in liberal democracies, and Muslim citizens of these countries experience high rates of discrimination and social exclusion. Uniting these two facts is the well-known phenomenon of Islamophobia. But the implications of overlapping discrimination against citizens and non-citizens have not been given sustained attention in the ethics of immigration literature. In this paper, I argue that liberal societies have not only duties to discontinue refugee policies that discriminate against social groups like Muslims, but remedial (...) duties to citizens who are in these social groups to adopt a more welcoming stance towards the groups that they are in. Further, I argue that a fitting way of adopting this more welcoming stance is to give refugees in these groups preferential treatment in asylum and resettlement. (shrink)

In this chapter, I bring non-ideal theory to bear on the ethics of immigration. In particular, I explore what the obligations of liberal states would be if they were to attempt to implement migration arrangements that conform to liberal-cosmopolitan principles. I argue that some of the obligations states have are feasibility-insensitive, while some are feasibility-sensitive. I show that such obligations can have as their content both the inclusion and exclusion of prospective immigrants, and that they can be grounded in the (...) requirements of liberal justice, mere capacity to assist, as well as past or foreseeable contribution to harm. The chapter therefore explores the possibility of an international migration regime that takes human rights seriously whilst avoiding the twin pitfalls of strict immigration restrictions and the complete liberalization of immigration. (shrink)

This paper explores the relation between victims’ stories and normativity. As a contribution to understanding how the stories of those who have been abused or oppressed can advance moral understanding, catalyze moral innovation, and guide social change, this paper focuses on narrative as a variegated form of representation and asks whether personal narratives of victimization play any distinctive role in human rights discourse. In view of the fact that a number of prominent students of narrative build normativity into their (...) accounts, it might seem obvious that there is a connection between victims’ stories and moral insight. However, the category of victims’ stories spans an enormous variety of texts – private diaries, memoirs written for publication, interviews with journalists or social scientists, depositions prepared by human rights workers, stories shared with like-minded activists or with support groups, stories told to medical professionals, and testimony in courts, truth commissions and asylum hearings, to mention just some of the possibilities. The different contexts of elicitation and the different rules governing expression in these sites should make us wary of ready generalizations about the nature of victims’ narratives. Moreover, I doubt that existing explications of the way in which norms figure in narratives yield satisfactory theories of the contribution victims’ stories can make to discovering and defending just policies and practices. I consider two of the most prominent accounts of the relation between narrative and normativity. For different reasons, the account Anthony Amsterdam and Jerome Bruner present in their work on narrative and law and the account Hayden White presents in his work on narrative and history fail to appreciate the capacity of victims’ stories of abuse to advance understanding of and increase respect for human rights. In defense of the value of victims’ stories, I propose an account of the relation between normativity and a salient type of victim’s narrative that seems especially resistant to integration into human rights discourse. -/- . (shrink)

In this chapter I focus on two problems facing immigration systems around the world, and Australia in particular. The topics addressed are chosen because each one involves important fundamental rights and because significant improvement in these areas is possible even if each state acts alone, without significant coordination with others. First, I examine refugee programmes, focussing specifically on the ‘two- tier’ refugee programmes pioneered by Australia with the introduction of Temporary Protection Visas by the Howard Government in 1999. Next, (...) I look at recent declines in refugee resettlement schemes from already stingy levels and, in relation to Australia in particular, I show how the tying of resettlement numbers to the number of affirmative asylum claims granted is both wrong- headed and counterproductive. The second area of immigration policy explored is family migration, another area where immigration systems around the world have been moving in the wrong direction, often via less than transparent administrative processes. Australia is no exception. While Australia’s family migration system is reasonably good on its face, in practice there are several factors which make the programme significantly less than satisfactory from the perspective of protecting the basic rights of migrants and, arguably more importantly, citizens. These problems can and should be fixed in straightforward ways, and since doing so would be more just, would have few— if any— significant negative consequences, and in fact would have a number of clear benefits, those changes should be made. (shrink)

Since 2023, the UK government's response to the “migrant crisis” has revolved around two controversial flagship policies: the deportation of asylum seekers to Rwanda, and the detention of migrants aboard a giant barge. In this short article, I examine the colonial and gendered dimensions of the two policies, finding them to be examples of the coloniality of gender. What this indicates, I suggest, is that the purpose of these policies is not merely to deter potential migrants—particularly LGBTQIA+ migrants—but also (...) to create a political narrative that allows the Conservative Party to garner right-wing votes by participating in high-profile culture wars; namely, the debate over transgender rights and the debate over how the UK should reckon with its imperial past. (shrink)

This paper argues that potential cases of oppression, such as sex trafficking, can sometimes comprise autonomous choices by the trafficked individuals. This issue still divides radical from liberal feminists, with the former wanting to ‘rescue’ the ‘victims’ and the latter insisting that there might be good reasons for ‘hiding from the rescuers.’ This article presents new arguments for the liberal approach and raises two demands: first, help organizations should be run by affected women and be open-minded about whether or not (...) the trafficked individuals should remain in the sex industry. Second, the career choices of trafficked individuals should be expanded by the introduction of an opportunity-extending right to asylum. (shrink)

With the rise of populism, European solidarity risks being eroded by a clash of solidarities based on nation and religion. Ranging from hospitality to hostility, ‘refugees welcome’ to ‘close the borders’, asylum seekers from Syria and other war-torn countries test the very ideas upon which the EU was founded: human rights, tolerance and the free movement of people. European solidarity is not only rooted in philosophical ideas of equality and freedom but also in the memory of nationalism, war (...) and violence. The response to refugees seeking asylum into Europe cannot only be resolved by appealing to emotions, moral sentiments and a politics of pity. Disenchantment with government, fear of terrorism and resentment towards foreigners weaken European solidarity at a time when it is needed most. (shrink)

As the war in Syria and the destruction of the Calais camp in France in 2016 bitterly demonstrate, declarations of human rights and asylum devolve into empty promises without a common sense of solidarity and an implicit understanding that we share responsibility for the world and one another. Today’s refugee crisis demonstrates that many of the problems that Hannah Arendt identified during the first half of the twentieth century are still with us. National security and the state of (...) exception increasingly place refugees and migrants at the borders of international law. This article argues that Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace and Arendt’s postwar reflections on the stateless as modern pariahs continue to frame current debates on hospitality, human rights, and responsibility. Without a recognition of our common humanity and shared world, sovereign states will continue to find exceptions to the legal status of refugees and migrants, thus enabling their exclusion from political life and the very laws that should protect them. Falling outside human rights law and the rights of refugees leads to the uncertainty of the pariah. (shrink)

Criminal courts make decisions that can remove the liberty and even life of those accused. Civil trials can cause the bankruptcy of companies employing thousands of people, asylum seekers being deported, or children being placed into state care. Selecting the right standards when deciding legal cases is of utmost importance in giving those affected a fair deal. This Element is an introduction to the philosophy of legal proof. It is organised around five questions. First, it introduces the standards of (...) proof and considers what justifies them. Second, it discusses whether we should use different standards in different cases. Third, it asks whether trials should end only in binary outcomes (e.g. guilty or not guilty) or rather use more fine-grained or precise verdicts. Fourth, it considers whether proof is simply about probability, concentrating on the famous 'Proof Paradox'. Finally, it examines who should be trusted with deciding trials, focusing on the jury system. (shrink)

A -/- abortion and infanticide/ academic freedom/ academics/ action/ act-omission doctrine/ addiction and dependence/ adoption/ advertising/ affirmative action/ age of consent/ age of criminal responsibility/ age of majority/ agent/ aggression/ agriculture/ aid, foreign/ AIDS/ air/ akrasia/ allies/ altruism/ American Civil War (1861-1865)/ American exceptionalism/ American War of Independence (1775–1783)/ anarchic social order/ anarcho-capitalism/ anarchy/ animal rights/ animal welfare/ apartheid/ apathy/ appeasement/ apriorism/ aristocracy/ arms trade/ arms race/ artificial intelligence/ arts and sciences/ assassination/ asset stripping/ asylum seekers/ atomism, social/ (...) Austrian School of economics/ authoritarianism/ authority/ autonomy, intellectual/ axis/ -/- B -/- balance of trade/ balance of power (international)/ banking/ bankruptcy, insolvency, and limited liability/ barriers to entry/ begging/ belief/ betting/ big business/ bigotry/ biodiversity/ bioethics/ black market/ blackmail/ blasphemy/ booms and slumps/ borders, political/ boxing and dangerous sports/ boycott/ bribery/ British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)/ BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy)/ bureaucracy/ business cycles/ . (shrink)

A Significant percentage of the people outside their country of citizenship or residence who are unable to meet their basic needs on their own, and need international protection, do not fall under the definition set out in the UN Refugee Convention. This has led many - both academic commentators and activists - to call for a new, expanded refugee definition, preferably backed up by a new, binding, international convention. In earlier work I have resisted this call, arguing that there is (...) good reason to pick out a sub-stet of those in need of international aid - a set that largely, if not completely, corresponds to those picked out by the Refugee Convention - for special benefit and protection. However, even if Convention refugees are in some ways special, we are left with the question of what, if anything, is owed to those in need of aid who are not Convention refugees. In this chapter, I set out philosophical foundations for so-called complementary protection, and show how this may and should apply to people in need of international aid who are not Convention refugees. (shrink)

Philosophizing is at risk in the face of dogmatism, either political or religious. In political and/or religious circumstances where freedom of expression is curtailed, the risk of critical and discursive philosophizing (pursued both analytically and synthetically) is extremely far above the ground. As a case in point, getting into a balanced critical and appreciative philosophical deliberation (reflection and discourse) on the Israeli-Palestinian political conflicts and controversies right inside Israel with politically fired-up Israelis both intellectual and non-intellectual alike is a risky (...) engagement. What is specifically tolerable in such a particular context is ¨imbalanced philosophizing¨ (which is an oxymoron) wherein one is only allowed to DISCURSIVELY APPRECIATE the merits of just one side of the political divide over the other and never to be critical of the downsides discovered on the same side. Of course, the other philosophical operation of REFLECTIVE CRITICISM doesn´t get apparent, much less obvious, in such condition as it is forbidden to see the light of day. The risk lies in an open defiance of the restriction and could even be a matter of life and death. Similar to this was the situation in the erstwhile Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites during the so-called Cold War era. Discursive criticism even within the strict purview of philosophical analysis and synthesis of certain political principles and theories operative within the system was a proscribed exercise whose violation could put involved individuals in a gulag, a mental asylum or at worst before a firing squad. (shrink)

Attacks on migrant and refugee entrepreneurs and their properties by South African rivals and ordinary citizens have become a common phenomenon throughout the country, including the city of Cape Town. Business robberies often result in deaths or serious injuries. The Somali Community Board has noted that over 400 Somali refugees, many of them informal traders, were murdered in South Africa between early 2002 and mid-2010. The police are frequently accused by migrants of fomenting or turning a blind eye to xenophobic (...) attacks on their businesses. Meanwhile, the government refuses to acknowledge the existence of xenophobia or the xenophobic rhetoric in many of these attacks, claiming instead that they are simply the actions of criminal elements. Photographs published in the media of the looting of migrant stores do not tend to feature hardened criminals, but ordinary citizens including children in school uniform. -/- Migrant businesses are portrayed by officials, citizens and the media as having a negative impact on the South African economy and undermining the livelihoods of South Africans. The prevalence of such perceptions helps to explain growing xenophobic sentiment against migrants and refugees. Contrary to these popular perceptions, an emerging literature on migrant entrepreneurship is beginning to demonstrate the positive economic contributions of migrants and refugees to the country. This report examines the nature of informal migrant and refugee entrepreneurship in Cape Town and whether or not the negative stereotypes have any validity. It also seeks to examine what economic contributions migrants and refugees make to the local economy. -/- The report is based on the research conducted by the Growing Informal Cities project, a partnership between SAMP/IMRC, the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town, the Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO) and Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo. A questionnaire was administered to a sample of 518 migrant owners of microenterprises, which had to meet three basic criteria for inclusion: (a) owned by a non-South African; (b) in operation for at least two years; and (c) unregistered with the South African Revenue Services (SARS). Although migrant entrepreneurs are located in most areas of the city, certain areas have particular concentrations of migrant-owned businesses. "e questionnaires were administered in four such areas: Imizamo Yethu, Philippi, Bellville, and Cape Town CBD. Thirty in-depth interviews were also conducted with selected owners of informal micro-enterprises. Two focus group discussions were held in the Cape Town CBD and Philippi respectively. Fifteen key informant interviews were held with various stakeholders in Cape Town to understand the operation and constraints faced by migrants operating in the city’s informal economy. -/- The major findings of the personal profile of the migrant and refugee entrepreneurs were as follows: -/- • The entrepreneurs came from over 20 different countries of which Zimbabwe, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Nigeria, Malawi, Ethiopia and Cameroon were the most prominent. Just over a third were from other countries in the SADC. The prominence of Zimbabwean entrepreneurs in the Cape Town informal economy is not surprising, given the events in that country over the past decade and a half and resultant mass migration to South Africa. A total of 57% of the entrepreneurs were from other African countries, especially the DRC, Somalia, Nigeria and Ethiopia. "e majority of migrants from these countries (except Nigeria) came to South Africa as refugees. -/- • A third of the entrepreneurs had refugee permits. Of these, nearly 60% came from only three countries: the DRC, Ethiopia and Somalia. A further 31% held asylum-seeker permits. Of these, 32% were Zimbabwean while another 30% came from DRC, Ethiopia and Somalia. Nearly 12% had permanent residence permits while 8% were holders of work permits. Only 7% of the respondents indicated that they did not have official documentation to stay in South Africa. Thus, the majority of migrant entrepreneurs have forced migrants who are entitled to human rights protection under international and South African refugee law. • Very few of the entrepreneurs entered South Africa before 1994. Only 8% arrived in the immediate post-apartheid years. While another 20% came in the period 2000to 2004, the vast majority (70%) came during the last decade. As many as 44% arrived between 2005 and 2009 and a further 27% thereafter. Migration from Zimbabwe, in particular, escalated between 2005 and 2009 as the country plunged deeper into crisis. • Despite the perception that unemployment at home is a driver of migration to South Africa, only 14% of the entrepreneurs were unemployed immediately before leaving for South Africa. Another 19% were students. Twenty-six percent were working in the informal economy in their home countries. -/- .......INCOMPLETE..... (shrink)

Thomas Elsaesser’s recent scholarship has examined the “mind-game film”, a phenomenon in Hollywood that is broadly characterised by multi-platform storytelling, paratextual narrative feedback loops, nonlinear storytelling, and unreliable character perspectives. While “mind-game” or “puzzle” films have become a contentious subject amongst post-cinema scholars concerned with Hollywood storytelling, what is to be said of contemporary European independent cinema? Elsaesser’s timely publication, European Cinema and Continental Philosophy, examines an amalgam of politically inclined European auteurs to resolve this query. Elsaesser concedes that there (...) exists a phenomenological confluence between the mind-game film and contemporary European cinema. For instance, both produce characters afflicted by productive pathologies, designating new socially useful forms of agency and identity. One only needs to consult the amnesiac protagonist M (Markku Peltola) in Aki Kaurismäki’s The Man Without a Past (Mies vailla menneisyyttä, 2002) or, as regards Lars von Trier’s cinema, Beth (Emily Watson) in Breaking the Waves (1996), Selma (Björk) in Dancer in the Dark (2000), “She” (Charlotte Gainsbourg) in Antichrist (2009) or Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) in Nymphomaniac (2013) to evince this overlap. However, this book is more concerned with performative self-contradictions, whereby cinema-as-enunciator is put under erasure, thus aggravating the inherent discrepancies troubling Europe today. Elsaesser, indeed, evaluates a growing general disaffection with politics, the rise of populist nationalism and far-right fringe parties, as well as an increasing population of economic migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. (shrink)

This paper examines how stances and understandings pertaining to whether home education is civically legitimate within liberal democratic contexts can depend on how one conceives normative roles of the secular state and the religious neutrality that is commonly associated with it. For the purposes of this paper, home education is understood as a manifestation of an educational philosophy ideologically based on a given conception of the good. -/- Two polar conceptions of secularism, republican and liberal-pluralist, are explored. Republican secularists declare (...) that religious expressions do not belong in the public sphere and justify this exclusion by promoting religious neutrality as an end in itself. But liberal-pluralists claim that religious neutrality is only the means to ensure protection of freedom of conscience and religion, which are moral principles. Each conception is associated with its own stance on whether exemptions or accommodations on account of religious beliefs have special legal standing and thereby warranted. The indeterminate nature of religion and the allegedly biased exclusion of secular beliefs, cited by some when denying religious exemptions, can be overcome by understanding all religious and conscientious beliefs as having equal standing as conceptions of the good. -/- Analysis of court documents from the Uwe Romeike et al asylum case are guided by these understandings, and relationships among themes are explored. -/- In summary, any stance regarding home education may depend on one’s view of secularism, particularly in relation to whether one views religious neutrality as a means to ensure protection of freedom of conscience or an end in itself. (shrink)

This research note argues that political theorists of refuge ought to consider the experiences of refugees after they have received asylum in the Global North. Currently, much of the literature concerning the duties of states towards refugees implicitly adopts a blanket approach, rather than considering how varied identities may affect the remedies available to displaced people. Given the prevalence of racism, xenophobia, and homophobia in the Global North, and the growing norm of dissident persecution in foreign territory, protection is (...) not guaranteed after either territorial or legal admission. This research note considers the case of LGBTQ refugees in order to demonstrate the analytical potential of more inclusive and diverse normative approaches. Taking the origin and extension of harm seriously requires a conceptualization of sanctuary after asylum that accurately reflects the experiences of the displaced. In doing so, questions arise regarding the nature and efficacy of territorial asylum. (shrink)

A credible fear test is an in-depth interview process given to undocumented people of any age arriving at a U.S. port of entry to determine qualification for asylum-seeking. Credible fear tests as a typical immigration procedure demonstrate not only what structural epistemic violence looks like but also how this violence lives in and through the design of asylum policy. Key terms of credible fear tests such as “significant possibility,” “evidence,” “consistency,” and “credibility” can never be neutral in the (...) context of colonial administrative violence. We argue that these terms function as mechanisms of exclusion and demonstrate that the capacity to be violent (i.e. to be an instrument of violence) is built into these tests, ready to be deployed when an administration wants to stop certain people from certain places from entering without regard to their own ongoing occupation of Indigenous lands. Not only are such practices instruments of violence, but the concept of ‘violence’ continues to be organized, defined, and conceived within settler colonial epistemologies so as to exclude these administrative forms of violence deployed against Indigenous peoples and people of color from recognition and nameability. We argue that this is an intentional strategy of colonial power preservation that is functionalized through social processes that remain structurally stable and self-regenerating across historical and political changes. (shrink)

The “Right to be forgotten” lies at the heart of the infosphere debate. It embodies how mature information societies cope and deal with their memories. As such, it has become a defining issue of our time. Drawing on the author’s experience as a member of the Google Advisory panel, this paper discusses some of the salient points of the “Right to be forgotten” discourse, including: privacy vs. freedom of speech and availability vs. accessibility of information. It argues that, while there (...) should be no removal of past information, steps must be taken to ensure that this is not constantly, or unnecessarily, recalled. (shrink)

I argue that the right to sexual satisfaction of severely physically and mentally disabled people and elderly people who suffer from neurodegenerative diseases can be fulfilled by deploying sex robots; this would enable us to satisfy the sexual needs of many who cannot provide for their own sexual satisfaction; without at the same time violating anybody’s right to sexual self-determination. I don’t offer a full-blown moral justification of deploying sex robots in such cases, as not all morally relevant concerns can (...) be addressed here; rather, I put forward a plausible way of fulfilling acute sexual needs without thereby violating anybody’s sexual rights. (shrink)

Chapter 1 of this book argued that moral philosophy should be based on seven principles of theory selection adapted from the sciences. Chapter 2 argued that these principles support basing normative moral philosophy on a particular problem of diachronic instrumental rationality: the ‘problem of possible future selves.’ Chapter 3 argued that a new moral principle, the Categorical-Instrumental Imperative, is the rational solution to this problem. Chapter 4 argued that the Categorical-Instrumental Imperative has three equivalent formulations akin to but superior to (...) Kant’s formulations of the Categorical Imperative. Chapter 5 argued that my principle’s three formulations make it rational to adopt a Moral Original Position to derive moral principles. The present chapter derives Four Principles of Fairness from the Moral Original Position--principles of coercion minimization, mutual assistance, fair negotiation, and virtue—and unifies them into a single principle of rightness: Rightness as Fairness. Finally, this chapter argues that Rightness as Fairness entails a novel approach to applied ethics called ‘principled fair negotiation’, illustrating how the theory provides a plausible new framework for addressing applied cases including lying, suicide, trolleys, torture, distribution of scarce resources, poverty, and the ethical treatment of animals. (shrink)

The human rights often are cited as an ultimate goal for the discipline of social science. It guides the UN in the pursuit of its organizational mission, and the civil democratic government generally endorses this paradigm of state rule as supreme. Nonetheless, it seems a mishap if the human rights are thought to be valued only in the courtroom or police office. They are the kind of ubiquitous concept that we could share and must share, who would be (...) the scientists in ideological pursuit, the policy makers and administrators in state engineering, and even the business enterprises in the emerging influence. It is typically regrettable if the human rights are not one of foremost concern, but a penumbra from the callous public officers while the human rights allow them to stand fundamentally. They comprise the magic code they are required to respect than any other priority, and also provide the basis of ethics on which the administrators deliberate. The paper attempts to deal with the theme of human rights, and delineates the elements of them with the aid of history and philosophy as well as comparative summary if adequate. Then the author leads the discussion to any new perspective or suggestion in the face of modern administrative state and social progress. (shrink)

This article proposes a teleological ethical approach for the analysis of the conflict between the right to the city and the right to tourism. Unlike the understanding of this conflict through a deontological lens, which is based on universal and unconditioned moral duties, a teleological perspective allows us to observe much more underlying and intricate problems that can arise in any cultural and socio-historical context of each tourist city. By taking the teleological model of the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre as a (...) starting point, the article suggests the basis of a framework for an ethical understanding of the complexity of teleological conflicts that can appear in the pursuit of situated internal goods —sought cooperatively— and external goods —sought competitively— within and between social practices related to both rights. (shrink)

What rights and duties do adults have with respect to raising children? Who, for example, has the right to decide how and where a particular child will live, be educated, receive health care, and spend recreational time? I argue that neither biological (gene-provider) nor..

The article presents a theory of the basis and nature of parents’ rights that appeals to the goods distinctively produced by intimate-but-authoritative relationships between adults and the children they parent. It explores the implications of that theory for questions about parents’ rights to raise their children as members of a religion, with particular attention to the issue of religious schooling. Even if not obstructing the development of their children’s capacity for autonomy, parents exceed the bounds of their legitimate (...) authority in so far as they aim deliberately to influence their children’s religious views. Healthy familial relationships involve some identification of child with parent and require a sphere of spontaneous interaction between parent and child that are in any case likely to influence those views and constitute a standing threat to autonomy. Correcting over-deferential understandings of parents’ rights enables schools better to promote not only children’s autonomy but also other legitimate civic goals. (shrink)

The claim I want to explore in this paper is simple. In social ontology, Margaret Gilbert, Abe Roth, Michael Bratman, Antonie Meijers, Facundo Alonso and others talk about rights or entitlements against other participants in joint action. I employ several intuition pumps to argue that we have reason to assume that such entitlements or rights can be ascribed even to non-sentient robots that we collaborate with. Importantly, such entitlements are primarily identified in terms of our normative discourse. Justified (...) criticism, for example, presupposes that another person acted wrongly, i.e., was not entitled to this action. Praise is supposed to encourage another person and acknowledge that one did more than one was obligated to. I show that such normative talk serves the same function when cooperating with robots. This, I argue, suggests that they have the same kind of entitlements and duties at least in the context of a joint action. (shrink)

Conservative opponents of abortion hold that from the moment of conception, developing fetuses have (or may have) full humanity or personhood that gives them a moral standing equal to that of postnatal human beings. To have moral standing is to be a recognized member of the human moral community, perhaps having moral duties to others or rights against them, at least as being the recipient of duties owed by others. Conservatives give neo-conceptuses full moral standing, including a right to (...) life that is equal to adults. They sincerely equate feticidal abortions with murder. This article presents both legal and philosophical considerations that count strongly against this conservative position. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is a close connection between basic human rights and communal bonds. It reviews the views expressed by Alan Gewirth and Alasdair MacIntyre, which in differing ways deny this connection, and concludes that the deficiencies in their accounts reinforce the case for communal bonds.

Sri Guru Granth Sahib, through its comprehensive worldview, offers a perfect set of values and an applicable code of conduct. Its cardinal message is addressed to the welfare of all humans irrespective of their caste, color, creed, culture, and religion. SGGS emphasizes love, respect, empathy, and acceptance of others' existence. It prohibits us from infringing on the freedom and rights of others. The life and works of the Sikh Gurus exemplify the practicability of these ideas. Their inter-faith dialogues highlighted (...) that human unity and oneness could be achieved through tolerance, communication, and respect for others. Besides a matchless elaboration of spirituality, Sri Guru Granth Sahib enshrines a powerful expression of the message of revolutionary ideals of social welfare, human rights, multicultural distinctness, and religious freedom. In the present era, when the threats and fear of interfaith conflicts, military aggression, terrorism, etc., have overpowered human sentiments, the teachings of Sri Guru Granth Sahib are even more relevant to resolving all these problems. (shrink)

Recent interpretations of Kant’s international political philosophy have argued that the formation of a coercive world-state (Völkerstaat) is morally required. While these interpretations highlight the importance of a strong world government, they ignore Kant’s alternative to a Völkerstaat, a world-federation (Völkerbund). For both theoretical and practical reasons, the Völkerbund plays a crucial role in cosmopolitan right, and Kant can only justifiably reject the formation of the Völkerstaat because of the structure of the Völkerbund. This article explains the constitution and functions (...) of the Völkerbund, and thereby shows why Kant was not ultimately committed to supporting a coercive world-state. (shrink)

This article discusses the rights enjoyed by irregular combatants in detention, that is, members of organized groups (who may be fighting an insurgency or engaging in terror attacks) who fail to qualify for POW status. The paradigmatic example of such a detainee would be an al-Qaeda agent.

Alasdair MacIntyre has argued that our contemporary discourse about “rights,” and “natural rights” or “human rights,” is alien to the thought of Aristotleand Aquinas. His worry, it seems, is that our contemporary language of rights is often taken to imply that individuals may possess certain entitlement-conferringproperties or powers (typically called “rights”) entirely in isolation from other individuals, and outside the context of any community or common good. In thispaper, I accept MacIntyre’s worries about our contemporary (...) language of “rights”; however, I seek to show that some of our contemporary language or discourseabout “justice” and “rights” is not altogether misguided, but does—in fact—reflect a properly critical (Aristotelian-Thomistic) understanding of what is meant by“justice” and “rights.”. (shrink)

Several philosophers argue that individuals have an interest-protecting right to parent; specifically, the interest is in rearing children whom one can parent adequately. If such a right exists it can provide a solution to scepticism about duties of justice concerning distant future generations and bypass the challenge provided by the non-identity problem. Current children - whose identity is independent from environment-affecting decisions of current adults - will have, in due course, a right to parent. Adequate parenting requires resources. We owe (...) duties of justice to current children, including the satisfaction of their interest-protecting rights; therefore we owe them the conditions for rearing children adequately in the future. But to engage in permissible parenting they, too, will need sufficient resources to ensure their own children's future ability to bring up children under adequate conditions. Because this reasoning goes on ad infinitum it entails that each generation of adults owes its contemporary generation of children at least those resources that are necessary for sustaining human life indefinitely at an adequate level of wellbeing. (shrink)

This article proposes a teleological ethical approach for the analysis of the conflict between the right to the city and the right to tourism. Unlike the understanding of this conflict through a deontological lens, which is based on universal and unconditioned moral duties, a teleological perspective allows us to observe much more underlying and intricate problems that can arise in any cultural and socio-historical context of each tourist city. By taking the teleological model of the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre as a (...) starting point, the article suggests the basis of a framework for an ethical understanding of the complexity of teleological conflicts that can appear in the pursuit of situated internal goods —sought cooperatively— and external goods— sought competitively— within and between social practices related to both rights. (shrink)

Bringing a unique perspective to the burgeoning ethical and legal issues surrounding the presence of artificial intelligence in our daily lives, the book uses theory and practice on animal rights and the rights of nature to assess the status of robots. -/- Through extensive philosophical and legal analyses, the book explores how rights can be applied to nonhuman entities. This task is completed by developing a framework useful for determining the kinds of personhood for which a nonhuman (...) entity might be eligible, and a critical environmental ethic that extends moral and legal consideration to nonhumans. The framework and ethic are then applied to two hypothetical situations involving real-world technology—animal-like robot companions and humanoid sex robots. Additionally, the book approaches the subject from multiple perspectives, providing a comparative study of legal cases on animal rights and the rights of nature from around the world and insights from structured interviews with leading experts in the field of robotics. Ending with a call to rethink the concept of rights in the Anthropocene, suggestions for further research are made. -/- An essential read for scholars and students interested in robot, animal and environmental law, as well as those interested in technology more generally, the book is a ground-breaking study of an increasingly relevant topic, as robots become ubiquitous in modern society. (shrink)

Climate change threatens to infringe the human rights of many. Taking an optimistic stance, climate engineering might reduce the extent to which such rights are infringed, but it might also bring about other rights infringements. This Forum, leading off the special issue on climate engineering governance, engages three scholars in a discussion of three core issues at the intersection of human rights and climate engineering. The Forum is divided into three sections, each authored by a different (...) scholar and discussing a distinct aspect of this relationship. First, Toby Svoboda gives an overarching view of three competing approaches to human rights, grounded in philosophy; then, Holly Jean Buck looks at lessons from how the climate migration conversation brings a human rights approach to a climate policy issue; and finally, Pablo Suarez illustrates how a humanitarian approach to climate engineering works with a human rights framework. The conclusion of the Forum draws together points of overlap across the three sections and suggests a path forward for policy and research on this topic. Together, the sections show that climate engineering, should it materialize, will pose novel human rights challenges, and may well force reconsideration of how human rights are applied as a guide to action. (shrink)

What should we make of claims by members of other groups to have moralities different from our own? Human Rights in Chinese Thought gives an extended answer to this question in the first study of its kind. It integrates a full account of the development of Chinese rights discourse - reaching back to important, though neglected, origins of that discourse in 17th and 18th century Confucianism - with philosophical consideration of how various communities should respond to contemporary Chinese (...) claims about the uniqueness of their human rights concepts. The book elaborates a plausible kind of moral pluralism and demonstrates that Chinese ideas of human rights do indeed have distinctive characteristics, but it nonetheless argues for the importance and promise of cross-cultural moral engagement. (shrink)

The right to food is recognized as a basic right under international human rights law. The lack of implementation of the right is a challenge for societies around the world. The failures in implementation are leading stakeholder's to strongly advance more appropriate standards vis-a-vis the right to food. The concept of food sovereignty for instance has gained importance in this regard. The concept of food sovereignty is interpreted to be larger in scope than the right to food. Food sovereignty (...) is not limited to the making "provision" of food to the beneficiaries by the state. In addition, it also mandates the empowerment of communities by the adoption of policies to secure land, food production and consumption, etc. -/- In 2010, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food recognized the wider import of the right to food based on the concept of food sovereignty. The Rapporteur emphasised on the provision of land for instance as essential to right to food. The acceptance of food sovereignty as a benchmark for state performance is one of the most notable developments in the field of economic, social and cultural rights. This chapter discusses the role of the concept of food sovereignty, and how it is shaping international and domestic policy frameworks. (shrink)

Right- and wrong-making features ("moral grounds") are widely believed to play important normative roles, e.g. in morally apt or virtuous motivation. This paper argues that moral grounds have been systematically misidentified. Canonical statements of our moral theories tend to summarize, rather than directly state, the full range of moral grounds posited by the theory. Further work is required to "unpack" a theory's criterion of rightness and identify the features that are of ground-level moral significance. As a result, it is not (...) actually true that maximizing value is the relevant right-making feature even for maximizing consequentialists. Focusing on the simple example of utilitarianism, I show how careful attention to the ground level can drastically influence how we think about our moral theories. (shrink)

The Republic of Ireland is introducing major human rights-based reform to its mental health laws. This paper outlines the new legal landscape in which psychologists must operate against the backdrop of present day effects of Ireland’s dark legacy of institutionalisation. A rights-based approach aims to positively transform mental health service delivery and we advocate for person-centred treatments as the ‘new normal’. We summarise the recent advocacy work undertaken by the Psychological Society of Ireland’s Special Interest Group in Human (...) Rights & Psychology. Finally, we present an innovative best practice case promoting future rights-based delivery via the Socio-Ecological Model of Health – Kyrie Farm. Keywords: UNCRPD; Assisted Decision Making Act 2015 (ADMA) in the Rep. of Ireland; The Socio-Ecological Model of Health. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that certain Machines can have rights independently of whether they are sentient, or conscious, or whatever you might call it.

The right to withdraw from participation in research is recognized in virtually all national and international guidelines for research on human subjects. It is therefore surprising that there has been little justification for that right in the literature. We argue that the right to withdraw should protect research participants from information imbalance, inability to hedge, inherent uncertainty, and untoward bodily invasion, and it serves to bolster public trust in the research enterprise. Although this argument is not radical, it provides a (...) useful way to determine how the right should be applied in various cases. (shrink)

States cannot legitimately enforce their borders against migrants if dominant conceptions of sovereignty inform enforcement because these conceptions undermine sufficient respect for migrants’ basic human rights. Instead, such conceptions lead states to assert total control over outsiders’ potential cross-border movements to support their in-group’s self-rule. Thus, although legitimacy requires states to prioritize universal respect for basic human rights, sovereign states today generally fail to do so when it comes to border enforcement. I contend that this enforcement could only (...) be rendered legitimate if it was predicated on more desirable conceptions of sovereignty that supported the universal prioritization of basic human rights. Specifically, desirable conceptions would not establish and require absolute state sovereignty over borders as a necessary precondition for true popular self-governance. (shrink)

I argue that all rights exist by convention. According to my definition, a right exists by convention just in case its justification appeals to the rules of a socially shared pattern of acting. I show that our usual justifications for rights are circular, that a right fulfills my criterion if all possible justifications for it are circular, and that all existing philosophical justifications for rights are circular or fail. We find three non-circular alternatives in the literature, viz. (...) justifications of rights by consequences, by autonomy or by divine commands. I show that all three alternatives fail, and I conclude that all rights exist by convention. This ontological result has a surprising and beneficial consequence. A common argument against conventionalism is that it implies cultural relativism. I finish by showing that the suggested conventionalism is incompatible with cultural relativism. (shrink)