Displaced people and the capability approach

Some people think there is a natural law guiding us with our moral behavior. I wouldn't go that far, but indeed we need some kind of basic foundation on how to treat others. If we would just let everything depend on how each individual 'feels' about the matters, we could expect that being used in advance of political wants.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by United Nations is a good start for this kind of universal ‘contract’ between sovereign states and the people of Earth. But is it enough? Or should we consider also something that is adding more humane aspects?

It’s true that even the most developed and presumably the most liberal countries have problems in sticking to the UDHR so is there any reason to rise the standards? Of course there is. It would at least raise the expectations and I would assume it had some effects at least in the countries that are more sensitive about human well-being.

One of these could be ‘the capability approach’ introduced by Amartya Sen and further developed by Martha Nussbaum amongst others. It’s basic idea according to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article is that the freedom of achieving well-being is to be taken as a primary importance in moral discussion and that the person must have real opportunities to do and to be what they value – to have capabilities (Robeyns 2016).

Why I find the capability approach an interesting one is that I have found out that when a refugee is entering a country he or she is expected to behave as an inactive, passive object for whom everything just happens. First it happens that he or she must leave the home country. Then it happens that the receiving country accepts or does not accept the application for asylum for example. If you're are active and want to participate the social life like the locals and develop the abilities of yours or use them for the good of others, the authorities don't find you acting normative, but easily can think you as a ‘difficult case’. And that will probably make things even more complicated.

This of course affects your capabilities but not in fact the human rights of yours defined by the UN. The UDHR can easily be interpreted the way that as long as you are not recognized as a refugee, the authorities do not have responsibility to make sure your capabilities as active human being can be guaranteed.

In contrast recognizing the capabilities of a human being as an important part of life, it would kind of oblige the authorities to change the asylum seeking process a little bit more flexible and recognize that people have the right to act for their own well-being also on their own.


References:

Robeyns, Ingrid: The Capability Approach. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford, 2016. (See https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/capability-approach/).

United Nations: Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Paris, 1948. (See http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/).