The Ethical Obligations of Humanity towards Refugees

Abstract

The thesis examines, philosophically and practically, what duties humanity has towards refugees. As the foundation for the thesis, a philosophical background related to human development is provided. Next, a control group of countries in the European Union is used to investigate how refugees impact societies in reality in order to analyze whether countries have an ethical duty to protect their own domestic population, overriding obligations towards refugees. Continuing in this vein, certain political ideologies and religious doctrines are examined in order to determine if there is an underlying theme towards refugees. Stemming from this is an analysis of various international treaties in order to understand what the treaties require and permit countries to do legally. Finally, everything is combined, and the ethical and moral argument related to helping refugees is thoroughly explored. The aim is to uncover the problematization of the current literature and to establish that everyone has ethical duties towards refugees. Refugees are shown not to be a group of people damaging society; not helping refugees in any way damages the human development of a refugee and the inherent moral duties of the person/state/community not providing assistance; all religious doctrines and political ideologies push for...