Known, documented and ignored: Confronting the international politics of inaction
As the world focuses on the immense civilian toll in the Middle East, other crises continue to unfold with far less attention.
They are often described as “forgotten crises”, but that label is misleading. Conflicts across Africa are well documented and analysed, and they affect countless lives. What they lack is sustained action to address them — and the strategic interest needed to drive that action.
Across the African continent, wars and humanitarian crises are killing civilians, displacing millions and eroding already fragile institutions. At Human Rights Watch, we work in more than two dozen African countries documenting abuses and pressing for accountability. Over time, a clear pattern emerges. Whether in active war zones, entrenched authoritarian systems or geopolitically sensitive states, the outcome is often the same: immobilisation.
In active conflict settings such as the Sahel, Ethiopia and eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the barriers are rooted in security narratives and shifting alliances. Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger are gripped by violence involving Islamist armed groups, government forces, local militias and foreign mercenaries. They routinely target, displace and kill civilians. In Burkina Faso, all parties are committing abuses that may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. Yet authorities dismiss criticism as a threat to national security, while international partners often prioritise counterterrorism and resource-driven cooperation over the protection of civilians.
In Ethiopia, hostilities persist between federal forces and armed groups in Amhara and parts of Oromia. Meanwhile, in Tigray, tensions escalate again in communities that are still reeling from the devastating 2020–2022 conflict and a resulting humanitarian crisis. In eastern Congo, Rwanda’s significant logistical and military support to the M23 armed group and the Congolese army’s funding and material assistance to the abusive Wazalendo militias intersects with entrenched regional and ethnic tensions. This layered complexity is often invoked as a convenient justification for inaction.
Then there are more consolidated authoritarian contexts, such as Burundi. Since a 2015 political crisis, the government has dismantled civic space and restricted free expression, political opposition and independent media. Elections continue, but without genuine competition. A similar pattern is emerging in Ethiopia, which is bracing for national elections in June, and in Rwanda, where journalists and opponents face detention, enforced disappearance or death. The challenge here is not the fog of war, but the normalisation of repression.
International actors often default to quiet diplomacy or disengagement, particularly when these situations no longer dominate headlines or for fear of alienating governments that could turn elsewhere for support.
Other under-scrutinised countries, such as Chad, reflect a similar trajectory, where last year’s politically motivated arrest of the former prime minister sounded the death knell of a meaningful democratic transition and was largely ignored.
Meanwhile, in Sudan and South Sudan, the scale of human suffering is staggering. Along with Congo, these crises account for at least 20 million internally displaced people. Yet global attention remains intermittent, where “atrocity fatigue” fails to sustain the will to respond. Immobilisation does not preserve the status quo; it deepens suffering. It allows abuses to persist and escalate, while emboldening perpetrators to refine their methods — from blockades of humanitarian aid in South Sudan to ethnic cleansing in Burkina Faso, northern Ethiopia and Sudan’s Darfur.
Despite their differences, these contexts converge on a single outcome: paralysis among those with the power to act. Governments deflect, allies equivocate and international institutions struggle to sustain pressure. For organisations like Human Rights Watch, the challenge is not only to document abuses, but to disrupt this inertia. Part of that inaction is a calculated choice.
Governments are often unwilling to incur political risk when it comes to Africa, aligning their strategic interests with those in power rather than human rights — leaving civilians to bear the cost. This requires adapting both research and advocacy strategies to the context. Evidence alone is rarely sufficient to spur action. Pairing documentation with the lived experiences of victims and witnesses helps cut through the indifference and reframe what is at stake.
Advocacy must also be tailored to political realities. In conflict settings, this may involve pressing international partners to condition military support on compliance with the laws of war. In authoritarian contexts, it may mean supporting targeted sanctions or amplifying the voices of local civil society. In geopolitically sensitive environments, change tends to be incremental — and persistence is essential.
Local organisations, journalists, regional bodies and international partners all play critical roles. Collaboration and humility are indispensable. Local individuals often bear the greatest risks and possess the deepest insights; their work should be supported and amplified.
Advocacy needs to evolve to counter shifting narratives. Claims of sovereignty or “Pan-Africanism” in order to dismiss criticism as external interference should not go unchallenged. Protecting human rights is not foreign to African priorities; it is central to them. Reclaiming that narrative is essential to counter efforts to delegitimise scrutiny.
These crises must also be understood within broader global dynamics. Rising authoritarianism, protracted conflicts and structural inequalities are interconnected and drive issues that command far greater international attention, from migration to regional instability. Drawing these connections can help re-engage policymakers who might otherwise look away. The forces that sustain inaction — strategic interests, political caution and fatigue — are deeply entrenched, but they are not immutable. Sustained, credible advocacy has shifted policies before, and it can do so again.
These are not “forgotten crises”. They are crises the world has repeatedly chosen not to act on. Changing that choice is the real challenge.
BY Carine Kaneza Nantulya
Carine Kaneza Nantulya is Africa deputy director and strategic planning adviser at Human Rights Watch.
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Behind the veil: When are we entitled to unmask the anonymous?
Anonymity can help people speak truth to power or remain safely out of the limelight. But it can also be used to avoid accountability. When should we have a right to know who someone really is?
Do you know the true identity of the elusive street artist, Banksy? What about the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto? Do you know the name of the person (or people) behind the notorious “Q” drops that drove the QAnon conspiracy movement?
If you are curious, the good news is that reporters have worked hard to unmask these hidden figures: a recent Reuters article claims to have definitively revealed the identity of Banksy; an exhaustive New York Times investigation purports to have pinpointed the man behind the Satoshi Nakamoto pseudonym; and a 2021 HBO documentary delves into the colourful characters that appear to have posted as Q.
But should we read these articles or watch this documentary? Are we entitled to know who they are? Or do the subjects deserve to remain anonymous?
There are some very good reasons why someone might want to remain anonymous. Anonymity can protect those who speak truth to power or express views that go against the dominant narrative. It’s a protective feature that allows journalists to uncover facts in the public interest without putting sources at risk. It enables people to voice opinions that can be judged on their merit without listeners being distracted by the messenger. It can also help people avoid the invasive limelight that inevitably surrounds anyone who draws the attention of the public eye.
However, the same shield of anonymity can also help people escape accountability for their actions.
Who says what
In a liberal society, each of us has a basic right to privacy. That means we have a right to restrict the distribution of personal information about us. That extends to a right to remain anonymous in spaces where our true identity isn’t required. But these are not inviolable rights; there will be circumstances where necessity or other factors override our right to remain anonymous.
One of those factors is that, sometimes, people need to know who is saying something in order to know whether it’s legitimate or not. There’s a big difference between some random person on the street declaring you “guilty” and a judge in a courtroom doing the same thing. Similarly, it’s important to know that the person giving you advice on drug dosage is a certified medical professional rather than someone’s unqualified uncle (a point that is often overlooked in online discourse).
This is why it was arguably justified to unmask Q, who purported to be an operative within the United States government. Their very name implied they had Q clearance, which gives access to highly classified information. If they were not who they said they were, people would likely have seen their posts in a very different light.
Had Q been making statements that were in the public interest, such as leaking evidence of serious wrongdoing by the government, then it might justify maintaining anonymity to protect their safety. However, many of Q’s posts gave demonstrably false information and fuelled destructive conspiracy theories, so there was good reason to override anonymity and seek to reveal their identity.
Public interest is a key test when deciding whether it’s justified to override someone’s wish to remain anonymous. However, public interest doesn’t just mean whatever the public is interested in, it means information that is of benefit to the public.
In the case of Satoshi Nakamoto, one of the journalists responsible for seeking his true identity stated that it was in the public interest to do so:
“One of the most significant inventors of the past century was unknown. That didn’t seem right to me. Eighteen months ago, I decided enough was enough. I needed to know who this person was, and I felt strongly that the public should too.”
But was it really necessary to know the name of the individual who invented Bitcoin? Unlike Q, it was the message that Nakamoto had that was important, not the messenger. The Bitcoin architecture could have been written by anyone and it would have still had the same impact. Just because people are intensely curious about who the inventor was doesn’t necessarily justify overriding their desire for anonymity.
Held to account
However, sometimes it’s important to know who someone is because they need to be held accountable for the influence they have. If Nakamoto were the CEO of a major technology company, we would want to have a way to question him about his intentions or to criticise bad decisions. However, once the Bitcoin paper was published, its operation is entirely out of Nakamoto’s hands. That doesn’t mean the individual behind the pseudonym might not be involved in Bitcoin businesses today. But in that case, we just hold them accountable for their actions in their current role.
There is one dimension that one could argue is in the public interest: some estimates say Nakamoto has over a million Bitcoin to his name, worth upwards of US$80 billion. Were he able to sell it all at the current market rate, that would make him one of the wealthiest people on the planet.
That power makes it more important to understand Nakamoto and his intentions when it comes to generating personal wealth and the future of Bitcoin. Although, to date, Nakamoto has not sold a single Bitcoin. Even if Nakamoto did start selling his stash of Bitcoins – which, in itself, might lead to revealing his identity – that doesn’t necessarily justify unmasking him. Any holder of great wealth is entitled to dispose of it as they please, within the bounds of the law.
On the other hand, Nakamoto’s tremendous potential wealth places a target on his back should his identity be revealed. Malicious actors could seek to extort or intimidate them into handing over some of their wealth. That gives us a good reason to be very cautious when deciding whether to reveal his true identity.
Outside the law
Public interest was also cited as a reason to unmask the street artist, Banksy. The Reuters journalists claim that “the public has a deep interest in understanding the identity and career of a figure with his profound and enduring influence on culture, the art industry and international political discourse”. However, as stated above, just because the public wants to know something doesn’t mean it has a right to know.
But Reuters also appealed to accountability.
“The people and institutions who seek to shape social and political discourse are subject to scrutiny, accountability, and, sometimes, unmasking. Banksy’s anonymity – a deliberate, public-facing, and profitable feature of his work – has enabled him to operate without such transparency.”
One of the central tenets of ethics is that individuals ought to be held accountable for their actions (with qualifiers, of course). And one of the reasons some people might seek anonymity is to avoid accountability.
But would the power of Banksy’s art to “shape social and political discourse” change if his name was known (we already know he’s an English man of middle age from previous works)? Perhaps one could level claims of cynicism or hypocrisy if his message was at odds with his lifestyle. But that might be one reason Banksy wishes to remain anonymous: so that the message isn’t distracted by the messenger.
Another factor is that Banksy’s art is – in most jurisdictions – illegal. That appears to be one of the justifications that Banksy had for concealing his identity early in his career.
Although, these days, it seems most authorities are inclined to welcome a Banksy work in a public space, due to the attention it draws and value it creates, rather than wanting to lock him up. So, it appears that even those who could hold Banksy legally accountable are already choosing not to do so, making his unmasking less justified in this regard.
Banksy has also made it clear that he is mistrustful of authority and many mainstream institutions, and anonymity is necessary for him to be able to speak truth to power. Indeed, should his identity be confirmed, then it would be significantly more difficult for him to travel and do his work in public spaces, or to avoid being arrested.
What these cases all show is that we need to carefully weigh an individual’s right to privacy and desire for anonymity against other concerns to ensure we have good reason to unmask them. If anonymity enables deception or prevents people being held to account for harming others, then there might be good reason to reveal their true identity.
But we must remember that, in the absence of good reasons to unmask someone, we ought to respect their desire for anonymity. Sometimes revealing someone’s true identity might put them at serious risk. So, just because we’re intensely curious about someone is, that doesn’t necessarily justify revealing their true identity.
Image: Dominic Robinson, Flickr
BY Tim Dean
Dr Tim Dean is a public philosopher, speaker and writer. He is Philosopher in Residence and Manos Chair in Ethics at The Ethics Centre.
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Illegal animal ownership and the coming ethical shift
In 2020, the world became briefly obsessed with Tiger King, a lurid portrait of exotic animal owners in the United States. Viewers were entertained by the spectacle, but beneath the chaos lay a far deeper question: why do we tolerate the private ownership of wild creatures at all?
For decades, the keeping of exotic pets, tigers, monkeys, snakes, and even endangered species has been accepted, sometimes celebrated, and often trivialised.
Today, exotic animal ownership is framed through the language of fascination and freedom. An individual posting a photo with a capuchin monkey or a tiger cub is seen as eccentric, perhaps indulgent, but rarely immoral. Social media has reinforced this perception: animals become props in displays of uniqueness, wealth, or adventure. Beneath this lies a familiar assumption, that humans may own and confine animals so long as “care” is provided. After all, dogs, cats, and horses are kept under this same logic; exotic pets are simply imagined as an extension of that tradition.
This is the widely held ethical stance of our time: ownership is permissible, provided the owner is attentive, and the animal survives. It is sometimes argued that exotic pets can be kept ethically if an owner is conscientious. Yet responsibility cannot undo captivity’s intrinsic harms. To confine a leopard to a cage, however large, is to deny it the roaming it evolved to do. The deprivation is structural, not accidental.
Still, harm is thought to arise only when neglect or cruelty is obvious.
This collapses under scrutiny. To provide food, shelter, and medical care is not to provide a life worth living. A monkey raised in isolation, or a tiger confined to a cage, cannot express the instincts and social behaviours that define their species – a phenomenon well-documented in studies of animal deprivation, such as Harry Harlow’s experiments on social isolation in rhesus monkeys.
What is portrayed as “care” often amounts to prolonged deprivation.
Beyond individual suffering, the practice generates wider consequences. The demand for exotic pets drives illegal trafficking, stripping wild populations of already vulnerable species. Animals smuggled in appalling conditions frequently die before reaching their buyers; a hidden toll rarely acknowledged. Where they survive, ecological disruption follows: Florida’s Everglades, overrun by invasive pythons once kept as pets, as reported by the National Geographic, is a cautionary tale. Tens of thousands of Burmese pythons now threaten native wildlife after being released into the wild. The exotic pet trade has also been implicated in the spread of zoonotic diseases, some with pandemic potential.
Taken together, these realities show that ownership is not an isolated act of personal freedom but an ethical entanglement with ecosystems, species survival, and human wellbeing.
A history of widening ethical concern
The idea that today’s tolerance of exotic pets will endure is contradicted by history. Societal ethics evolve, and practices once normalised are later judged harshly. Only a generation ago, elephants performing tricks in circuses were symbols of joy; today, such displays are condemned as cruelty. Dolphins in marine parks, once crowd-pleasers, are increasingly seen as victims of confinement. Whaling was defended as tradition until it was widely recognised as barbaric.
In each case, the ethical lens widened: human enjoyment and cultural prestige could no longer justify animal suffering. Exotic pet ownership is on the same trajectory. What seems acceptable today will soon be viewed as exploitative and anachronistic.
As scientific knowledge of animal sentience deepens, the ethical case against exotic pet ownership will sharpen. It is not merely a matter of legality but legitimacy. Future generations are unlikely to accept the claim that affection can justify possession. The very idea of “owning” a wild creature will be seen as incompatible with respect for its autonomy and wellbeing.
Instead, we are moving toward an ethic of stewardship. Rather than treating animals as curiosities to be acquired, there will be growing recognition of the responsibility to preserve habitats, support sanctuaries, and protect species in the wild. A monkey belongs not in a suburban home but to the forests that shape its instincts. A tiger does not need a private enclosure but a functioning ecosystem. Within this ethical framework, claim ownership of such beings will appear arrogant, an outdated relic of human entitlement.
The appeal to personal freedom carries weight, but freedoms that cause serious harm are never absolute. We regulate weapons, smoking, and pollution because individual liberty cannot override collective well-being. The same reasoning applies here: the harm to animals, ecosystems, and public health outweighs personal preference.
This ethical shift is not only about animals; it reflects how humanity conceives its place in the natural world.
The ownership of exotic animals continues with a pattern of domination: we collect, confine, and display living beings as extensions of ourselves. To reject this is to embrace humility, acknowledging that not everything can be possessed; that respect sometimes requires distance.
There is also a broader trend in the gradual expansion of who and what is deemed worthy of ethical concern. Once, children, women, and marginalised groups were excluded from full recognition. Over time, the circle widened. Now, it extends beyond humanity itself. Exotic animal ownership will be one of the practices left behind as this circle continues to grow.
In the next twenty years, the widespread view will collapse under evidence of animal suffering, ecological damage, and disease risk. More importantly, it will fall because it no longer fits with the kind of ethical society we aspire to be. Future generations will look back at our era with disbelief, asking how we ever imagined that affection could excuse possession. The shift will mark not only a victory for animals but a step towards a more responsible, less arrogant humanity, one that values stewardship above ownership, and respect above curiosity.
Illegal animal ownership and the coming ethical shift by Rhiannon Gee is one of the Highly Commended essays in our Young Writers’ 2025 Competition. Find out more about the competition here.
BY Rhiannon Gee
Rhiannon Gee is a passionate animal lover and advocate for the ethical treatment of wildlife. She writes about the evolving relationship between humans and animals, exploring how compassion and responsibility can shape a more humane future.
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Ethics Explainer: Critical thinking
In a world awash with spin, misinformation and AI slop, critical thinking has become an indispensable survival skill.
While scrolling through social media, you spot a post shared by a good friend. It’s from a popular (and attractive) influencer, who is claiming that sunscreen is toxic. The post resonates with you, especially since the last time you bought a new sunscreen, you broke out in a rash.
But how do you know if what they say is true? On the surface, their argument seems persuasive, but does it stack up? And what are the stakes if you get it wrong? If it turns out sunscreen isn’t toxic, then you could end up with nasty burns, or worse.
The modern world is an informational minefield. Every day we slog through hundreds of claims that purport to be true, but any one of them could end up being false or misleading. Influencers have been known to peddle misinformation. Activists, advertisers and politicians all put their spin on the facts to promote their interests. Artificial intelligence is further muddying the waters with hallucinations, deepfakes and so-called “AI slop”.
The cost of falling for falsehoods can be profound, both to us and to society as a whole. We need to be equipped to handle this epistemically hostile environment. This is where critical thinking becomes a key survival skill for the 21st century.
Not uncritical
One way to define critical thinking is to consider its opposite. An uncritical thinker will accept everything on face value. They will be prone to biases, like stereotyping or being swayed by someone’s appearance rather than the strength of their argument.
They will mistake subjective statements, such as “I don’t like pineapple on pizza” for objective statements, like “pineapple on pizza is bad”. They will overgeneralise from a few anecdotes or examples, like viewing a minority with suspicion because of one unpleasant encounter.
They will employ motivated reasoning, such as seeking out information that makes them feel (or look) good, rather than what is true. And they will latch on to the first explanation for some phenomenon, whether it’s the correct one or not.
A critical thinker, on the other hand, will be mindful of how biases and other irrational forces can sway their views, and will endeavour to avoid those and settle on beliefs rationally by drawing on good reasons and evidence.
They won’t just accept things at face value, but will ask questions, like: is the source reliable? Is the argument sound? Is the supporting evidence strong? After weighing up all these factors, they will hold their beliefs with a strength proportional to the reasons and evidence they can muster in their favour.
Misconceptions
Critical thinking is more than just being critical. The latter is about finding fault in someone or something. Critical thinking, on the other hand, is more about thinking carefully about what we hear.
It’s also not the same things as philosophical scepticism, which is the thesis that we cannot know what is and is not true. This kind of scepticism sets an impossibly high bar for knowledge. But critical thinking doesn’t go as far. Instead, it sets the bar at what we can demonstrate to be true by appealing to reason and evidence.
Critical thinking is also different from cynicism, which is just assuming the worst about what we see and hear. If you immediately assume that a politician is lying, or that a corporation’s environmental efforts are greenwashing, without looking at the evidence, then you’re being cynical. If you decide they are lying or greenwashing after you’ve carefully looked at the reasons and evidence supporting those beliefs, then you’re exercising critical thinking.
Finally, critical thinking is not the same as critical theory. The latter is a philosophical and social science project that seeks to improve society by revealing sources of oppression, and is associated with thinkers such as Theodor Adorno, Michel Foucault and Jurgen Habermas.
Critical mass
So what about that social media post about sunscreen that seemed so appealing? A critical thinker would start by reflecting on any biases they might have when watching it. It was shared by a friend, and they know that they’re prone to weigh things more heavily when their friends endorse them. That’s a good reason to pause and ensure they’re not being overly credulous.
They would also know that they are more likely to assume an attractive or high-status speaker will be trustworthy – which is why coffee companies like to have handsome actors in their ads. So a critical thinker w0uld try to detach the message from the messenger, and scrutinise the former on its merits.
A critical thinker would also be mindful of the sources that the influencer cites. Are they reliable experts? Do they have any vested interests, like working for a company that sells a sunscreen alternative? Is their evidence high quality, such as the product of a double-blind clinical trial?
They would also be wary of allowing their subjective experience to flavour how they interpret the post. Just because they got a rash from the last sunscreen they bought doesn’t mean that all sunscreen is toxic. It’s possible that they just had an allergy, or something unrelated caused the rash, and it happened to coincide with them applying the sunscreen.
And they would be on the lookout for logical and argumentative fallacies, like an appeal to authority or popularity, or begging the question, which might undermine the soundness of the argument.
A critical thinker would weigh all these things, and come to a conclusion about the claims about sunscreen, acknowledging that they could always be wrong – so not allowing themselves to arrive at a point of unwarranted certainty.
Employing critical thinking takes some time and effort. However, if you care about not being duped by misinformation or falling for spin, then it’s an indispensable skill to cultivate.
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
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Ethics Explainer: Ethical non-monogamy
Ethical non-monogamy (ENM), also known as consensual non-monogamy, describes practices that involve multiple concurrent romantic and/or sexual relationships.
What it’s not
First up, it’s important to distinguish the two types of non-monogamy that are often conflated with ENM:
Polygamy, the most prominent kind of culturally institutionalised non-monogamy, is the practice of having multiple marriages. It is a historically significant practice, with hundreds of societies around the world having practiced it at some point, while many still do.
Infidelity, or non-consensual non-monogamy, is something we colloquially refer to as cheating. That is, when one or both partners in a monogamous relationship engage in various forms of intimacy outside of the relationship without the knowledge or consent of the other.
All-party consent
So, what makes ethical non-monogamy, then?
One of the defining features of ethical non-monogamy is its focus on consent.
Polygamy, while it can be consensual in theory, more often occurs alongside arranged marriages, child marriages, dowries and other practices that revoke the autonomy of women and girls. Infidelity is of course inherently non-consensual, but the reasons and ways that it happens inversely influence ENM practices.
Consent needs to be informed, voluntary and active. This means that all people involved in ENM relationships need to understand the dynamics they’re involved in, are not being emotionally or physically coerced into agreement, and are explicitly assenting to the arrangement.
Open communication
There are a multitude of ways that ENM relationships can operate, but each of them relies on a foundation of honesty and effective communication (the basis of informed consent). This often means communicating openly about things that are seen as taboo or unusual in monogamous relationships – attraction to others, romantic or sexual plans with others, feelings of jealousy, vulnerability, or inadequacy.
While all ENM relationships require this commitment to open communication and consent, there can be variation in how that looks based on the kind of relationship dynamic. They’re often broken up into broad categories of polyamory, open relationships, and relationship anarchy.
Polyamory refers to having multiple romantic relationships concurrently. Maintaining ethical polyamorous relationships involves ongoing communication with all partners to ensure that everyone understands the boundaries and expectations of each relationship. Polyamory can look like a throuple, or five people all in a relationship with each other, or one person in a relationship with three separate people, or any other number of configurations that work for the people involved.
Open relationships are focused more on the sexual aspects, where usually one primary couple will maintain the sole romantic relationship but agree to having sexual experiences outside of the relationship. While many still rely on continued communication, there is a subset of open relationships that operate on a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. This usually involves consenting to seeking sexual partners outside of the relationship but agreeing to keep the details private. Swinging is also a popular form of open relationship, where monoamorous (romantically exclusive) couples have sexual relations with other couples.
Relationship anarchy rejects most conventional labels and structures, including some of the ones that polyamorous relationships sometimes rely on, like hierarchy. Instead, these relationships are based on personal agreements between each individual partner.
What all of these have in common is a firm commitment to communicating needs, expectations, boundaries and emotions in a respectful way.
These are also the hallmarks of a good monogamous relationship, but the need for them in ethical non-monogamy is compounded by the extra variables that come with multiple relationship dynamics simultaneously.
There are many other aspects of ethical relationship development that are emphasised in ethical non-monogamy but equally important and applicable to monogamous ones. These includes things like understanding and managing emotions, especially jealousy, and practicing safe sex.
Outside the relationships
Unconventional relationships are unrecognised in the law in most countries. This poses ethical challenges to current laws, including things like marriage, inheritance, hospital visitation, and adoption.
If consenting adults are in a relationship that looks different to the monogamous ones most laws are set around, is it ethical to exclude them from the benefits that they would otherwise have? Given the difficultly that monogamous queer relationships have faced and continue to face under the law in many countries, non-monogamy seems to be a long way from legal recognition. But it’s worth asking, why?
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
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Ethics Explainer: Moral Courage
Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Greta Thunberg, Vincent Lingiari, Malala Yousafzai.
For most, these names, and many more, evoke a sense of inspiration. They represent decades and centuries of steadfast moral conviction in the face of overwhelming national and global pressure.
Rosa Parks, risking the limited freedom she was afforded in 1955 America, refused to acquiesce to the transit segregation of the time and sparked an unprecedented boycott led by Martin Luther King Jr.
Frederick Douglass, risking his uncommon position of freedom and power as a Black man in pre-civil rights America, used his standing and skills to advocate for women’s suffrage.
There have always been people who have acted for what they think is right regardless of the risk to themselves.
This is moral courage. The ability to stand by our values and principles, even when it’s uncomfortable or risky.
Examples of this often seem to come in the form of very public declarations of moral conviction, potentially convincing us that this is the sort of platform we need to be truly morally courageous.
But we would be mistaken.
Speaking up doesn’t always mean speaking out
Having the courage to stand by our moral convictions does sometimes mean speaking out in public ways like protesting the government, but for most people, opportunities to speak up manifest in much smaller and more common ways almost every day.
This could look like speaking up for someone in front of your boss, questioning a bully at school, challenging a teacher you think has been unfair, preventing someone on the street from being harassed or even asking someone to pick up their litter.
In each case, an everyday occurrence forces us to confront discomfort, and potentially danger or loss, to live out our values and ideals. Do we have the courage to choose loyalty over comfort? Honesty over security? Justice over personal gain?
The truth is that sometimes we don’t.
Sometimes we fail to take responsibility for our own inaction. Nothing shows this better than the bystander effect: functionally the direct opposite to moral courage, the bystander effect is a social phenomenon where individuals in group or public settings fail to act because of the presence of others. Being surrounded by people causes many of us to offload responsibility to those around us, thinking: “Someone else will handle it.”
This is where another kind of moral courage comes into play: the ability to reflect on ourselves. While it’s important to learn how and when to speak up, some internal work is often needed to get there.
Self-reflection is often underestimated. But it’s one of the hardest aspects of moral courage: the willingness to confront and interrogate our own thoughts, habits, and actions.
If someone says something that makes you uncomfortable, the first step of moral courage is acknowledging your discomfort. All too often, discomfort causes us to disengage, even when no one else is around to pass responsibility onto. Rather than reckon with a situation or person who is challenging our values or principles, we curl up into our shells and hope the moment passes.
This is because moral courage can be – it takes time and practice to build the habits and confidence to tolerate uncomfortable situations. And it takes even more time and practice to prioritise what we think is right with friends, family and colleagues instead of avoiding confrontation in relationships that are already often complicated.
It can get even more complicated once we consider all of our options because sometimes the right ways to act aren’t obvious. Sometimes, the morally courageous thing to do is actually to be silent, or to walk away, or to wait for a better opportunity to address the issue. These options can feel, in the moment, akin to giving up or letting someone else ‘win’ the interaction. But that is the true test of moral courage – being able to see the moral end goal and push through discomfort or challenge to get there.
The courage to be wrong
The flipside to self-reflection is the ability to recognise, acknowledge and reflect with grace when someone speaks up against us.
It’s hard to be told that we’re wrong. It’s even harder to avoid immediately placing walls in our own defence. Overcoming that is the stuff of moral courage too – not just being able to confront others, but being able to confront ourselves, to question our understanding of something, our actions or our beliefs when we are challenged by others.
Whether these changes are worldview-altering, or simply a swapping of word choice to reflect your respect for others, the important thing is that we learn to sit with discomfort and listen. Listen to criticism but also listen to our own thoughts and figure out why our defences are up.
Because in the end, moral courage isn’t just about bold public stands. It’s about showing up—in big moments and more mundane ones—for what’s right. And that begins with the courage to face ourselves.
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BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Thought experiment: The original position
If you were tasked with remaking society from scratch, how would you decide on the rules that should govern it?
This is the starting point of an influential thought experiment posed by the American 20th century political philosopher, John Rawls, that was intended to help us think about what a just society would look like.
Imagine you are at the very first gathering of people looking to create a society together. Rawls called this hypothetical gathering the “original position”. However, you also sit behind what Rawls called a “veil of ignorance”, so you have no idea who you will be in your society. This means you don’t know whether you will be rich, poor, male, female, able, disabled, religious, atheist, or even what your own idea of a good life looks like.
Rawls argued that these people in the original position, sitting behind a veil of ignorance, would be able to come up with a fair set of rules to run society because they would be truly impartial. And even though it’s impossible for anyone to actually “forget” who they are, the thought experiment has proven to be a highly influential tool for thinking about what a truly fair society might entail.
Social contract
Rawls’ thought experiment harkens back to a long philosophical tradition of thinking about how society – and the rules that govern it – emerged, and how they might be ethically justified. Centuries ago, thinkers like Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Lock speculated that in the deep past, there were no societies as we understand them today. Instead, people lived in an anarchic “state of nature,” where each individual was governed only by their self-interest.
However, as people came together to cooperate for mutual benefit, they also got into destructive conflicts as their interests inevitably clashed. Hobbes painted a bleak picture of the state of nature as a “war of all against all” that persisted until people agreed to enter into a kind of “social contract,” where each person gives up some of their freedoms – such as the freedom to harm others – as long as everyone else in the contract does the same.
Hobbes argued that this would involve everyone outsourcing the rules of society to a monarch with absolute power – an idea that many more modern thinkers found to be unacceptably authoritarian. Locke, on the other hand, saw the social contract as a way to decide if a government had legitimacy. He argued that a government only has legitimacy if the people it governs could hypothetically come together to agree on how it’s run. This helped establish the basis of modern liberal democracy.
Rawls wanted to take the idea of a social contract further. He asked what kinds of rules people might come up with if they sat down in the original position with their peers and decided on them together.
Two principles
Rawls argued that two principles would emerge from the original position. The first principle is that each person in the society would have an equal right to the most expansive system of basic freedoms that are compatible with similar freedoms for everyone else. He believed these included things like political freedom, freedom of speech and assembly, freedom of thought, the right to own property and freedom from arbitrary arrest.
The second principle, which he called the “difference principle”, referred to how power and wealth should be distributed in the society. He argued that everyone should have equal opportunity to hold positions of authority and power, and that wealth should be distributed in a way that benefits the least advantaged members of society.
This means there can be inequality, and some people can be vastly more wealthy than others, but only if that inequality benefits those with the least wealth and power. So a world where everyone has $100 is not as just as a world where some people have $10,000, but the poorest have at least $101.
Since Rawls published his idea of the original position in A Theory of Justice in 1972, it has sparked tremendous discussion and debate among philosophers and political theorists, and helped inform how we think about liberal society. To this day, Rawls’ idea of the original position is a useful tool to think about what kinds of rules ought to govern society.
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Ethics Explainer: Just Punishment
In 2001, Marcellus Williams was convicted of killing Felicia Gayle, found stabbed to death in her home in 1998.
Over two decades later, he was given the death penalty, directly against the wishes of the prosecutor, the jury and, notably, Gayle’s family.
Cases like this draw our attention to the nature of punishment and its role in delivering justice. We can think about justice, and hence what is just punishment, as a question about what we deserve. But who decides what we deserve, and on what basis?
There are many ways that people think about punishment, but generally it’s justified in some variation of the following: retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, and/or restoration. These are not all mutually exclusive ideas either, but rather different arguments about what should be the primary purpose and mode of punishment
Purposeful Punishment
Punishment is often viewed through the lens of retribution, where wrongdoers are punished in proportion to their offenses. The concept of retributive justice is grounded in the idea that punishment restores balance in society by making offenders ‘pay’ in various ways, like prison time or fines, for their transgressions.
This perspective is somewhat intuitive for most people, as it’s reflected in our moral psychology. When we feel wronged, we often become outraged. Outrage is a moral emotion that often inspires thoughts of harming the wrongdoer, so retributive punishment can feel intuitively justified for many. And while it has roots in our evolutionary psychology, it can also be a harmful disposition to have in a modern context.
The 18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant strongly defended retributive justice as a matter of principle, much like his general deontological moral convictions. Kant believed that people who commit crimes deserve to be punished simply because they have done wrong, irrespective of whether it leads to positive social outcomes. In his view, punishment must fit the crime, upholding the dignity of the law and ensuring that justice is served.
However, there are many modern critics of retributivism. Some argue that focusing solely on punishment in a retributive way overlooks the possibility of rehabilitation and societal reintegration. These criticisms often come from a consequentialist approach, focusing on how to create positive outcomes.
One of these is an ongoing ethical debate about the role of punishment as a deterrent. This is a consequentialist perspective that suggests punishment should aim to maximise social benefits by deterring future crimes. This view is often criticised because of its implications on proportionality. If punishment is used primarily as a deterrent, there is a high risk that people will be punished more harshly than their crimes warrant, merely to serve as an example. This approach can conflict with principles of fairness and proportionality that are central to most conceptions of justice. Some also consider it to be a view that misunderstands the motives and conditions that surround and cause common crime.
Other, more contemporary, consequentialist views on punishment focus on rehabilitation and restoration. Feminist philosophers, such as Martha Nussbaum, have proposed a broader, more compassionate view of justice that emphasises human dignity. Nussbaum suggests that a purely punitive system dehumanises offenders, treating them merely as vessels for punishment rather than as individuals with the capacity for moral growth and change.
They argue that this dehumanisation is a primary factor in high rates of recidivism, as it perpetuates the cycle of disadvantage that often underpins crime. Hence, an ability for change and reintegration is seen by some as crucial to developing pro-social methods of justice that decrease recidivism.
Importantly, these views are not inherently at odds with traditional punishment, like prison. However, they are critical of the way that punishment is enacted. To be in line with rehabilitative methods, prisons in most countries worldwide would need to see a significant shift towards models that respect the dignity of prisoners through higher quality amenities, vocations, education, exercise and social opportunities.
One unintuitive and hence potentially difficult aspect of these consequentialist perspectives is that in some cases punishment will be deemed altogether unnecessary. For example, if a wrongdoer is found to be impaired significantly by mental illness (e.g. dementia) to the extent that they have no memory or awareness of their wrongdoing, some would claim that any type of retributive punishment is wrong, as it serves no purpose aside from satisfying outrage. This can be a difficult outcome to accept for those who see punishment as needing to “even the scales”.
Justice and Punishment
The ethical implications of punishment become even more complex when considering factors like bias and the reality of disproportionate sentencing. For example, marginalised groups face more scrutiny and harsher sentences for similar crimes, both in Australia and globally. This disparity is often unconscious, resulting in a denial of responsibility at many steps in the system and a resistance to progress.
If punishment is disproportionately applied to disadvantaged groups, then it is not just. The ethical demand of justice is for equal treatment, where punishment reflects the crime, not the social status or identity of the offender.
Whether our idea of punishment involves revenge or benevolence, it’s important to understand the motivations behind our convictions. All the sides of the punishment spectrum speak to different intuitions we hold, but whether we are steadfast in our right to get even, or we believe an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, we must be prepared to find the nuance for the betterment of us all.
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Ethics explainer: The principle of charity
The principle of charity suggests we should assume good intentions about others and their ideas, and give them the benefit of the doubt before criticising them.
British philosopher and mathematician, Bertrand Russell, was one of the sharpest minds of his generation. Anyone deigning to offer a lecture in his presence at Cambridge University was sure to have every iota of their reasoning scrutinised and picked apart in excruciating detail.
Yet, it’s said that before criticising arguments, Russell would thank them warmly for sharing their views, then he might ask a question or two of clarification, then he’d summarise their position succinctly – often in more concise and persuasive terms than they themselves had used – and only then would he expose its flaws.
What Russell was demonstrating was the principle of charity in action. This is not a principle about giving money to the poor, it’s about assuming good intentions and giving others the benefit of the doubt when we interpret what they’re saying.
The reason we need charity when listening to others is that they rarely have the opportunity to say everything they need to say to support their view. We only have so many minutes in the day, so when we want to make an assertion or offer an argument, it’s simply not possible to account for every assumption, outline every implication and cover off all possible counterarguments.
That means there will inevitably be things left unsaid. Given our natural propensity to experience disagreement as a form of conflict, and thus shift into a defensive posture to protect our ideas (and, sometimes, our identity), it’s all too easy for us to fill in the gaps with less than charitable interpretations. We might assume the person speaking is ignorant, foolish, misled, mean spirited or riddled with vice, and fill the gaps with absurd assertions or weak arguments that we can easily dismantle.
We also have to decide whether they are speaking in good faith, or whether they’re just engaging in a bit of virtue signalling and didn’t really mean to offer their views up for scrutiny, or whether they’re trying to troll us. Again, it’s all too easy to allow our suspicions or defensiveness to take over and assume someone is speaking with ill intent.
However, doing so does them – and us – a disservice. It prevents us from understanding what they’re actually trying to say, and it blocks us from either being persuaded by a good point or offering a valid criticism where one is due. Failing to offer charity is also a sign of disrespect. And it’s well known that when people feel disrespected, they’re even more likely to double down on their defensiveness and fight to the bitter end, even if they might otherwise have been open to persuasion.
It’s probably no surprise to hear that the internet is a hotbed of uncharitable listening. Many people have been criticised, dismissed, attacked or cancelled because they have said or done something ambiguous – something that could be interpreted in either a benign or a negative light. Some commentators on social media are all too ready to uncharitably interpret these actions as revealing some hidden malice or vice, and they leap to condemnation before taking the time to unpack what the speaker really meant.
Charity requires more from us, but the rewards can be great. Charity starts by assuming that the person speaking is just as informed, intelligent and virtuous as we are – or perhaps even more so. It encourages us to assume that they are speaking in good faith and with the best of intentions.
It requires us to withhold judgement as we listen to what’s being said. If there are things that don’t make sense, or gaps that need filling, charity encourages us to ask clarificatory questions in good faith, and really listen to the answers. The final step is to repeat back what we’ve heard and frame it in the strongest possible argument, not the weakest “straw man” version. This is sometime referred to as a “steel man”.
Doing this achieves two things. First, the speaker will feel heard and respected. That immediately puts the relationship on a positive stance, where everyone feels less need to defend themselves at all costs, and it can make people open to listening to alternative viewpoints without feeling threatened.
Secondly, it gives you a fighting chance of actually understanding what the other person really believes. So many conversations end up with us talking past each other, getting more frustrated by the minute. Arriving at a point of mutual understanding can be a powerful way to connect with someone and have an actually fruitful discussion.
It is important to point out that exercising charity doesn’t mean agreeing with whatever other people say. Nor does it mean excusing statements that are false or harmful.
Charity is about how we hear what is being said, and ensuring that we give the things we hear every possibility to convince us before we seek to rebut them.
However, if we have good reason to believe that what they’re saying, after we’ve fully understood it in its strongest possible form, is false or harmful, then we need not agree with them. Indeed, we ought to speak out against falsehood and harm whenever possible. And this is where exercising charity, and building up respect, might make others more receptive to our criticisms, as were many of the people who gave a lecture in the presence of Bertrand Russell.
The principle of charity doesn’t come naturally. We often rail against views that we find ridiculous or offensive. But by practising charity, we can have a better chance of understanding what people are saying and of convincing them of the flaws in their views. And, sometimes, by filling in the gaps in what others say with the strongest possible version of their argument, we might even change our own mind from time to time.
This article has been updated since its original publication on 10 March 2017.
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Ethics Explainer: Cancel Culture
When mass outrage is weaponised and encouraged, it can become more of a threat to the powerless than to those it’s intended to hold to account.
In 2017, comedian Louis C.K. was accused of several instances of sexual misconduct, to which he later admitted in full. This was followed by a few cancelled movies, shows and appearances before he stepped away from public life for a few years.
In 2022, lecturer Ilya Shapiro was put on leave following a tweet he posted a few days before he was employed. Shapiro contended that the university failed in its commitment to free expression by investigating his actions for four months, before reinstating him under the reason that he was not accountable to the university for actions taken before his employment started.
These are both instances of what some people would call “cancel culture”, yet they involve very different issues. To unpack them, we first need to define what we mean by cancel culture.
From around 2015 onwards, the term started gaining mainstream traction, eventually being named Word of the Year by Macquarie Dictionary in 2019:
“The attitudes within a community which call for or bring about the withdrawal of support from a public figure, such as cancellation of an acting role, a ban on playing an artist’s music, removal from social media, etc., usually in response to an accusation of a socially unacceptable action or comment by the figure.”
The quintessential examples of cancel culture are calls from groups of people online for various public figures to be stripped of support, their work boycotted, or their positions removed following perceived moral transgressions. These transgressions can be anything from a rogue tweet to sexual assault allegations, but the common theme is that they are deemed to be harmful and warrant some kind of reaction.
A notoriously contentious concept, cancel culture is defined, or at least perceived, differently based on the social, cultural and political influences of whom you ask. Though its roots are in social justice, some believe that it lacks the nuance needed to meet the ends it claims to serve, and it has been politicised to such an extent that it has become almost meaningless.
Defenders of accountability
The ethical dimensions of this phenomenon become clear when we look at the various ways that cancel culture is understood and perceived by different groups of people. Where some people see accountability, others see punishment.
Defenders of cancel culture, or even those who argue that it doesn’t exist, say that what this culture really promotes is accountability. While there are examples of celebrities being shamed for what might be conceived as a simple faux pas, they say that the intent of most people who engage in this action is for powerful to be held accountable for words and actions that are deemed seriously harmful.
This usually involves calls to boycott, like the ongoing attempts to boycott J.K. Rowling’s books, movies and derivative games and shows because of her vocal criticism of transgender politics since 2019, or like the many attempts to discourage people from supporting various comedians because of issues ranging from discriminatory sets to sexual misconduct and harassment.
Those who view cancel culture practices as modes of justice feel that these are legitimate responses to wrongdoings that help to hold people with power accountable and discourage further abuses of power.
In the case of Louis C.K., it was widely viewed that his sexual misconduct warranted his shunning and removal from upcoming media productions.
Public figures are not owed unconditional support.
While it’s not clear that this kind of boycotting does anything significant to remove any power from these people (they all usually go on to profit even further from the controversy), it’s difficult to argue that this sort of action is unethical. Public figures are in their positions because of the support of the public and it could be considered a violation of the autonomy we expect as human beings to say that people should not be allowed to withdraw that support when they choose.
Where this gets sticky, even for supporters of cancel culture, is when people with relatively little power become the targets of mass social pressure. This can lead to employers distancing themselves from the person, sometimes ending in job loss, to protect the organisation’s reputation. This is disproportionately harmful for disadvantaged people who don’t have the power or resources to ignore, fight, or capitalise on the attention.
This is an even further problem when we consider how it can cause a sense of fear to creep into our everyday relationships. While people in power might be able to shrug off or shield themselves from mass criticism, it’s more difficult for the average person to ignore the effects of closed or uncharitable social climates.
When people perceive a threat of being ostracised by friends, family or strangers because of one wrong step they begin to censor themselves, which leads to insular bubbles of thoughts and ideas and resistance to learning through discussion.
Whether this is a significant active concern is still unclear, though there is some evidence that it is an increasing phenomenon.
Defenders of free speech
Given this, it’s no surprise that the prevailing opposition to cancel culture is framed as a free speech and censorship issue, viewed by detractors as an affront to liberty, constructive debate, social and even scientific progress
Combined with this is a contention that cancelling someone is often a disproportionate punishment and therefore unjust – with people sometimes arguing that punishment wasn’t warranted at all. As we saw earlier, this is particularly a problem when the punishments are directed at disadvantaged, non-public figures, though this position often overstates the effect the punishments have on celebrities and others in significant power.
A problem with the claim that cancel culture is inherently anti-free speech is that, especially when applied to celebrities, it relies on a misconception that a right to free speech entails a right to speak uncontested or entitlement to be platformed.
In fact, similar to boycotting people we disagree with, publicly voicing concerns with the intention of putting pressure on public figures is an exercise in free speech itself.
Accountable free speech
An important way forward for both sides of issue is the recognition that while free speech is important, the limits of it are equally so.
One way we can do this is by emphasising the difference between bad faith and good faith discussion. As philosopher Dr Tim Dean has said, not all speech can or should be treated equally. Sometimes it is logical and ethical to be intolerant of intolerance, especially the types of intolerance that use obfuscating and bad faith rhetoric, to ensure that free speech maintains the power to seek truth.
Focusing on whether a discussion is being had in bad faith or good faith can differentiate public and private discourse in a way that protects the much-needed charitability of conversations between friends and acquaintances.
While this raises questions, like whether public figures should be held to a higher standard, it does seem intuitive and ethical to at least assume the best of our friends and family when having a discussion. We are in the best place to be charitable with our interpretations of their opinions by virtue of our relationships with them, so if we can’t hold space for understanding, respectful disagreement and learning, then who can?
Another method for easing the pressures that public censures can have on private discourse is by providing and practicing clear ways to publicly forgive. This provides a blueprint for people to understand that while there will be consequences for consistent or shameless moral transgressions, there is also room for mistakes and learning.
For a deeper dive on Cancel Culture, David Baddiel, Roxane Gay, Andy Mills, Megan Phelps-Roper and Tim Dean present Uncancelled Culture as part of Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2024. Tickets on sale now.
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
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