Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
The 4th International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Health, Culture and the Human Body: Migration, Health and Ethics, Bremen, Almanya, 8 - 09 Eylül 2016, ss.13, (Özet Bildiri)
Due to various compelling reasons, many people in today’s world are forced to leave their homeland and escape toward an uncertain life in foreign territories. It is obvious that normally people will not abruptly leave their hometowns where they were born and raised unless they face compelling and constraining circumstances there. During their desperate search for refuge, morally problematic and unacceptable situations of humanity may emerge. Their first encounter with the societies they seek to take refuge in may constitute a social shock, and the cultural exchange begins under very unfavorable conditions. Even if they are granted refugee status, they may continue to face inequality of opportunity in access to social resources including shelter, education and healthcare services in the following adaptation process. Moreover, even when these people have managed to become a citizen of the country they once entered as a refugee, problems in the form of inequality of opportunity, discrimination, and inequality in various freedoms of expression and practice may still mar their lives. In multicultural societies moral problems and debates are always more abundant and unique.
If refugees have entered a country and begun living there, then they have become an element and a reality of that country, no matter how or why they have come. Given the admissible principle that the unequal allocation of social resources is permissible if it is for the good of the disadvantaged groups in the society (“the difference principle”), which Rawls addressed together with the notion “fair equality of opportunity” in his theory of justice, can we reasonably allocate more social resources and goods to the refugees, who are becoming new members of the society?
In the case of the Syrian refugees, for example, the ongoing debate over which country will or should admit the refugees has gone beyond the legitimate expressing of opinions on the needs and circumstances, and rendered the refugees a subject of political negotiations. This has reached an extent that violates human dignity, a notion that has frequently been mentioned and considered. This presentation will discuss the fair allocation of resources to refugees, the appropriate ethical perspective that the cultural conflict should be addressed from, and the situations that are incompatible with refugees’ dignity.