Humanitarian Goals Research Articles

EU Coordination Weaknesses: Transaction Costs

Both the Euroland and the EURO projects face increasing scepticism from several member states as well as nationalist movements. The call for economic reforms augmenting flexibility and work zest in EU member states meets resistance, as it poses threats to the specific European welfare state. The management of the great refugee crisis has led to fundamental questioning of the concept of “Europeanisation” as the commitment of the EU to humanitarian goals and universal human rights. Where lays the basic weakness of the inefficient and bureacratic European model of regional integration? Reply: Transaction costs.

Computing for the social good and cultivating cultures for ethical computing

Computing for the social good and cultivating cultures for ethical computing

Integrating ethics in public health education: the process of developing case studies.

The study of ethics in public health became a societal imperative following the horrors of pre World War II eugenics, the Holocaust, and the Tuskegee Experiment (and more recent similar travesties). International responses led to: the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trials, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), and the Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CCPCG, 1948), which includes sanctions against incitement to genocide. The Declaration of Geneva (1948) set forth the physician’s dedication to the humanitarian goals of medicine, a declaration especially important in view of the medical crimes which had just been committed in Nazi Germany. This led to a modern revision of the Hippocratic Oath in the form of the Declaration of Helsinki (1964) for medical research ethical standards, which has been renewed periodically and adopted worldwide to ensure ethical research practices. Public health ethics differs from traditional biomedical ethics in many respects, specifically in its emphasis on societal considerations of prevention, equity, and population-level issues. Health care systems are increasingly faced with the need to integrate clinical medicine with public health and health policy. As health systems and public health evolve, the ethical issues in health care also bridge the gap between the separation of bioethics and public health ethics in the past. These complexities calls for the inclusion of ethics in public health education curricula and competencies across the many professions in public health, in the policy arena, as well as educational engagement with the public and the lay communities and other stakeholders.

Palimpsests of Power

This article maps the development of UNESCO’s sponsored film programs. Funded simultaneously by religious organizations, philanthropic foundations, and corporate and governmental interests, early UNESCO educational films were particularly adept at utilizing diverse resources to bring diffuse networks of institutions and individuals together to produce films that promoted a specific form of participatory democracy and civil society. Via UNESCO’s Communication Programme, these films served to advance not only UNESCO’s humanitarian goals but also larger political and economic goals. By understanding the circulation and distribution of these productions, a clearer picture emerges of NGO- and state-sponsored visual information campaigns that utilized film to advocate for a particular form of neoliberal state building during the height of the Cold War.

Principles of rhetoric and its general origins

The most prominent findings of the rhetoric since its first roles are: 1- Rhetoric was known as the art of persuasion and one of its first roles in addition to its ethical goals. 2- Rhetoric carried humanitarian goals that linked it to sociology, so it was the only art that demanded human rights from tyrants, so it was the link between logic and language and linked it to sociology. 3- Because man is a social being, his needs were met that he did not reach through other arts. 4- It represented the means by which the prophets armed themselves since the descent of man to earth, up to the Islamic religion, in which preachers were known to quote a lot from the Book of God, which resulted in effects that contributed to the development of rhetoric in later ages. . .

The Notion of Combatancy in Cyber Warfare

The class of combatant constitutes one of the most important instrumentalities of the law of war. Combatant status resolves critical and enduring legal questions such as immunity from prosecution for warlike acts, susceptibility to intentional targeting, and, in part, treatment upon capture. Since the late nineteenth century, codifications of the international law of war have included criteria for combatant status keyed to ensuring desirable battlefield conduct and, to the extent possible, humanity in war. This paper revisits the author's prior work on the topic of combatancy in cyber warfare. Building on recent public revelations concerning state capacity for offensive cyber attacks, as well as new developments in computer network attack, this paper highlights logical and normative shortcomings in current understandings of combatant status in cyberspace. In place of rote reliance on existing criteria intended for the kinetic battlefield, this paper proposes reliance on State affiliation as the sole criterion for evaluating combatant status in cyber warfare between States. An admitted interpretive gloss on current criteria, the proposed framework offers a workable and realistic reconciliation of humanitarian goals and emerging State practice in cyber warfare.

Ethics of social innovation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the main reasons for social innovations to be successful in developing countries. Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, four famous cases of social innovation are studied and contrasted in the following dimensions: goals, means and skills/resources needed by the user. Findings – Exemplary social innovations do not have profit as their primary objective but emphasize social, spiritual and humanitarian goals such as minimizing suffering, empowering people and strengthening local communities. Originality/value – The paper shows that sensitivity to local culture and an ethos for serving the common good are preconditions of successful and lasting social innovations by business.

Brain–computer interfaces and dualism: a problem of brain, mind, and body

The brain---computer interface (BCI) has made remarkable progress in the bridging the divide between the brain and the external environment to assist persons with severe disabilities caused by brain impairments. There is also continuing philosophical interest in BCIs which emerges from thoughtful reflection on computers, machines, and artificial intelligence. This article seeks to apply BCI perspectives to examine, challenge, and work towards a possible resolution to a persistent problem in the mind---body relationship, namely dualism. The original humanitarian goals of BCIs and the technological inventiveness result in BCIs being surprisingly useful. We begin from the neurologically impaired person, the problems encountered, and some pioneering responses from computers and machines. Secondly, the interface of mind and brain is explored via two points of clarification: direct and indirect BCIs, and the nature of thoughts. Thirdly, dualism is beset by mind---body interaction difficulties and is further questioned by the phenomena of intentions, interactions, and technology. Fourthly, animal minds and robots are explored in BCI settings again with relevance for dualism. After a brief look at other BCIs, we conclude by outlining a future BCI philosophy of brain and mind, which might appear ominous and could be possible.

A Commentary on Ronald Dworkin’s Religion Without God

Ronald Dworkin’s posthumous book Religion Without God searches for the possibility of atheistic religiosity. Rather than clarifying the situation, this book does more to confuse it, and succeeds in undermining his expressed humanitarian goals.

Refining the Nation's ‘New Gold’: Music, Youth Development and Neoliberalism in South Africa

This essay explores the work of the Field Band Foundation (FBF) in South Africa, a non-governmental organisation that has been working nationwide since 1997 to create opportunities for the development of ‘life skills’ in youth in predominantly socioeconomically underprivileged communities through music education. It positions the work of the FBF as a pragmatic interaction with the government's efforts to rectify profound levels of socioeconomic inequality over the past two decades, which have relied upon neoliberal reform. I examine the political and economic developments in South Africa that mobilise such ideologies, attending to the historical trajectory of development discourse through the colonial and apartheid period. Observing the flexibility with which neoliberalism manifests in diverse settings, I identify conflicting moralities invoked within both neoliberalism and social development work, as music is harnessed to achieve humanitarian socioeconomic goals.

Ethics of sponsored research.

The combined effort of private sponsors and academic researchers will undoubtedly bring in the forms of clinical trials is expected to usher in tremendous progress in science. Unfortunately, if not monitored, such trials can deviate from the humanitarian goals. Hence, registration in a common platform of such trials is mandatory and monitoring of such platforms is also necessary. Furthermore, caution should be exercised at all levels during the conduct of a trial.

La tentative PIPRA (Public Intellectual Property Resource for Agriculture) un « commun » en propriété intellectuelle sur les biotechnologies agricoles ?

Un consortium d’universites et instituts de recherche a but non lucratif, base en Californie, PIPRA, vise a liberer la recherche agricole entravee par la croissance spectaculaire des droits de propriete intellectuelle. Au regard du probleme qu’elle entend resoudre (celui des taillis de brevets dans le secteur des biotechnologies agricoles), de la finalite qu’elle poursuit (faciliter l’acces aux biotechnologies agricoles pour les cultures orphelines de recherche), et des moyens qu’elle imagine mettre en œuvre (former un centre d’echange en propriete intellectuelle et constituer des communautes de brevets), PIPRA se presente tel un « commun ». En depit de quelques realisations, l’initiative n’a toutefois pas remporte le succes escompte et l’on peut s’interroger sur les causes de cette faillite : reposant sur des erreurs d’evaluation, l’entreprise ne pouvait prosperer. Un « pseudo-commun » et/ou un « commun contrarie », PIPRA etait sans doute vouee a l’echec en raison de sa nature meme.

Contemporary Investigations of Pakistan Food Insecurity and Trends of Global Food Supply and Demand

This paper is an overview to a collection of reviews about situation of global food supply and demand. It has discussed the major drivers affecting the demand and consumption patterns of food in the world. Despite that state of food insecurity of Pakistan has been reported and highlights the few causes of this phenomenon. Indeed, there are 852 million people are hungry in the world and that are living in the developing countries. It is required to design food policy that should serve humanity to improve the accomplishment of humanitarian goals of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. However, these goals have become quite challenging by emerging rapid increase in population growth, climate change, energy crises, credit crises, water scarcity and instability of peace. It is essentials to increase the production of high quality of food with reduced inputs to feed billions of people in the world. Hence new technologies must be developed to accelerate the crops production and focus on those traits which possessed the greatest potential to enhance the yield.

The Scientist’s Pledge

Medical students transition to their profession with the recitation of the Hippocratic Oath. However, no analogous oath has been widely adopted for students graduating with doctorates of philosophy (PhDs) in the various sciences. Oaths taken upon entering a profession reflect a need to recognize the power and responsibility bestowed upon a graduate. It is then surprising that most scientists have escaped the privilege and duty of an oath. Scientists face tremendous ethical challenges, such as the development of human embryonic stem cells or tools of biological wars, to mention but a handful. An oath for scientists should include many of the same issues of professional identity and ethics that were addressed by Hippocrates, 1 but should also pose additional matters pertinent to the sciences. Sir Joseph Rotblat 2 proposed ethical codes in science, highlighting the need for scientific oaths. Davis et al 3 offered a broad oath focusing on pride, integrity, and pursuit of knowledge. We believe that a scientist’s oath should reflect the professional activities inherent to being a scientist, be a pledge to responsible conduct, and embody commitments to help humanity and society at large. An effective oath should be inspiring without being confining. Such an oath should also emphasize the value and impact of PhD graduates on society. With this in mind, we have proposed and implemented at our medical school the following oath: Oath of the Scientist By accepting my Doctor of Philosophy degree, I earnestly assert that I will apply my scientific skills and principles to benefit society; I will continue to practice and support a scientific process that is based on logic, intellectual rigor, personal integrity, and an uncompromising respect for truth; I will treat my colleagues’ work with respect and objectivity; I will convey these scientific principles in my chosen profession, in Mentoring, and in public debate; I will seek to increase public understanding of the principles of science and its humanitarian goals. These things I do promise. The Hippocratic Oath has been modified to reflect the evolution of medicine in society, and we expect that the above oath will also evolve over time. 1 We believe this oath provides a good foundation for the current generation of scientists, and will help to inspire graduates to reach for their highest ideals as they continue in their careers.

The Olympic Movement and the sports–media complex

The history of sport is inseparable from the history of the mass media. The rules and the ways games are played, the values and narratives associated with sports, teams and rivalries, the audiences that follow or ignore particular sports and of course the revenues that certain athletes and enterprises enjoy have all been profoundly shaped by the mass media. In most countries in the world today, most people form their knowledge of sports from the mass media and not from direct experience. While mass media coverage of sports is usually presented as a series of neutral windows, and most of those who report on sport try their best to be as accurate as possible, the presentations of sports in the media are deeply structured – if not deliberately framed – by the institutions that produce and disseminate them, as the last several decades of scholarship have clearly shown. In the world of rights fees, very few broadcasts are independent of the interests they cover; on the contrary, they are contractually controlled by those very interests in the partnerships Sut Jhally called ‘the sport–media complex’. These partnerships now extend to the Olympic Games. In this paper, the keynote address to a conference in Calgary on the eve of the 1988 Olympic Winter Games, I reviewed this history and its implications for the Olympic Movement. I argued that the International Olympic Committee should use its control over the Games in the way that other sports enterprises do to ensure that Olympic broadcasters contributed to the humanitarian educational goals of the Olympic Movement and, at the very least, to ensure a multitude of broadcasting perspectives. At the time, I was chair of the Olympic Academy of Canada.

Conflict Minerals Legislation: The SEC's New Role as Diplomatic and Humanitarian Watchdog

Buried in the voluminous Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is an oft-overlooked provision requiring corporate disclosure of the use of “conflict minerals” in products manufactured by issuing corporations. This article scrutinizes the legislative history and lobbying efforts behind the conflict minerals provision to establish that, unlike the majority of the bill, its goals are moral and political, rather than financial. Analyzing the history of disclosure requirements, the article suggests that the presence of conflict minerals in a company’s product is not inherently material information, and that the Dodd-Frank provision statutorily renders non-material information material. The provision, thus, forces the SEC to expand beyond its congressional mandate of protecting investors and ensuring capital formation by requiring issuers engage in additional non-financial disclosures in order to meet the provision’s humanitarian and diplomatic aims. Further, the article posits that the conflict minerals provision is a wholly ineffective means to accomplish its stated humanitarian goals, and likely will cause more harm than good in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In conclusion, this article proposes that a more efficient regulatory model for conflict minerals is the Clean Diamond Trade Act and the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme.

Development by Technology Seeding

AbstractTechnology is critical to international development, but the theory and practice of leveraging technology for humanitarian goals is not well developed. Technology Seeding is thus presented as a comprehensive model that draws upon proven design and technology transfer scholarship. Key characteristics include (i) design as the point of intervention, (ii) the building of technology from first principles (both scientific and disciplinary) and (iii) local adaptation. A case study that led in part to the methodology's development is presented. Technology Seeding, which enables and empowers the marginalized, is shown to be well suited for socially just long‐term sustainable development. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Noble Commitments and Harsh Realities

When UN Secretary- General Boutros-Ghali introduced his Agenda for in 1992, Canadians welcomed the prospect of international commitment to more effective conflict prevention and sustained peacebuilding. Two decades of subsequent experience have left us somewhat chastened. The harsh realities of our experience in Afghanistan have severely challenged our once-noble aspirations as peacemakers and nation-builders. So, too, have our interventions in African conflicts. Twenty years have made us much the wiser about what is really required for successful and lasting peacebuilding.The paragraphs that follow are a personal reflection on how three of Canada's interventions in Africa have, through the harsh realities of experience, shifted the Canadian public and government from rather widespread and noble commitments to more limited aspirations: Somalia in 1992-93, when we joined the United States in providing security for humanitarian aid delivery; our more successful traditional peacekeeping role with the United Nations mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea in 2000; and our whole-of-government contribution over several years to building peace and human rights in Sudan and Darfur. The lessons we have learned in these multilateral initiatives are important in considering Canada's responses to current and future demands, not least in South Sudan, and for moving forward with a renewed agenda for peace.SOMALIA, 1992-93In the year immediately following the publication of An agenda for peace, Canada joined the United States in a major intervention in Somalia. The UN's unified task force, of which Canadian troops were a substantial part, was to act under a security council mandate to provide the immediate security necessary to get food past feuding warlords to starving Somalis. Canadian diplomatic, aid, and defence officials had initially been dubious about a Canadian military role in Somalia: Somalia was not a traditional Commonwealth or francophone partner and it had little strategic or commercial connection with Canada. Indeed, it was largely unknown to most Canadians.Canadians, however, were clearly distressed at the highly visible scale of man's inhumanity to man and the media and parliamentarians reflected a popular concern that Somalis could not just be left to starve: Canada must take decisive action to help. Perhaps even more persuasively, top levels of the US administration urged our prime minister to send Canadian troops to join their forces in an American-led intervention. Canada went to Somalia for humanitarian goals, but also for foreign policy reasons well beyond Canada's immediate interests in the Horn of Africa. We were part of a broader multilateral scheme led from Washington, rather than New York, that recognized an anarchic Somalia as a threat to international security.Our forces made it work, up to a point. Our technical competence was not questioned. Our troops fulfilled their humanitarian mission by providing secure food aid delivery and working successfully to combine emergency assistance with longer-term development. By early 1993, they were well embarked on many of the goals outlined in the Agenda for peace.When the Canadian effort fell apart, it was over an entirely unexpected incident involving members of the Canadian Airborne Regiment's brutal beating death of a Somali teenager, rather than a serious challenge from Somalia. And when the American forces fell into their own peacebuilding trap, it was because, as sophisticated and overwhelming as they were, they had met their match in little-understood local networks, commitments, and clan loyalties, as well as mission creep.The truth is, none of us succeeded in Somalia, neither the unified task force nor the subsequent United Nations operation in Somalia. Somalia is today an even greater international threat than it was when Canada first went there. Somalis still suffer the ravages of bad or no government, lack of development, and deprivation. …

Commercialization versus open science: Making sense of the message(s) in the bottle

Efforts to improve research outcomes have resulted in genomic researchers being confronted with complex and seemingly contradictory instructions about how to perform their tasks. For example, increasing pressure to commercialise (academic) research is paralleled by pressure to collaborate, share data, and disseminate knowledge quickly so as to encourage scientific progress, maximise research impact, and meet humanitarian goals. This article briefly explores some of the relevant instructions in Canada and the United Kingdom and concludes that commercialisation and more open collaborative practices are not necessarily irreconcilable. They should be viewed as complementary elements of an innovation framework for which more evidence must be gathered with respect to the impact of this coexistence.

The Case for Decoupled Armed Interventions

AbstractThis article suggests that if the humanitarian goals of armed interventions are decoupled from coerced regime change and nation building, they can be carried out effectively and at rather low costs. In addition, the standard for justifying a humanitarian intervention must be set at a high level (to be specified below). We shall see that this high level is justified by strong normative reasons and not merely prudential ones. The thesis for narrowly crafted armed humanitarian interventions is supported in the following pages by showing that a mixture of idealism and hubris drives the West to assume that it can achieve much more, and that its repeated failure to accomplish these expansive goals is leading to calls to avoid armed humanitarian interventions—including those missions whose normative standing is strong and which can be carried out effectively. The observation that nations can employ non lethal (normative and economic) means to promote human rights and democracy further supports the thesis that the use of force should be reserved to large scale saving of life and not to be allowed to morph into coerced regime change, not to mention futile attempts at nation building.