BSc International Disaster Management & Humanitarian Response

Humanitarians, disaster responders and medics are often faced with making critical ethical decisions without the time to consider the long-term effects of their actions. Understanding ethical decision-making in a variety of contexts will help students understand their own ethical positionality and will better equip them when making challenging decisions in their future careers. This module provides the ethical foundation for students to understand the ramifications of actions and how wider theoretical concepts surround that process. Students are provided with the theoretical and conceptual tools for analysing past case studies to understand the ethical approach and consider the long-term consequences. 

• To introduce students to key theoretical and ethical concepts that have shaped disaster management, humanitarian and medical responses. 
• To reflect on how shifts and changes in the interpretations of these concepts have had important effects on the practices of humanitarianism and disaster management. 
• To challenge individual ethical understanding and positionality in different contexts.  
• To foster students’ critical thinking regarding debates and scholarship on IDMHR and global health. 
• To develop critical analytical and research skills 

This course is taught by means of one 2 hour lecture and one 1 hour seminar per week. The module will be delivered using lectures, individual/group structured reading, discussion and preparation sessions, and seminars. The study sessions and seminars provide a structured environment for students to initiate and carry out independent and group work.   

Session material including unit handouts, assigned readings and web links will be made available via Blackboard (accessed via the student system).   

• To learn the theories and concepts related to ethical decision making in global health, humanitarian and disaster response. 
• To develop a critical understanding of the primary ethical challenges across the field. 
• To use this knowledge to develop and explore a personal ethical positionality. 
• To draw connections between key theoretical concepts and the impact on humanitarian practice.  

• Navigate complex theoretical debates and relate them to events and issues in practice. 
• Compare and contrast narratives originating from different sources. 
• Identify different methodologies and/or disciplinary orientations in academic literature. 
• Reflect upon current events and actors with reference to an ethical perspective 

• Research skills, including planning, prioritisation of tasks, identification and location of primary and secondary sources, evaluation of findings. 
• Group presentation skills related to the analysis of an ethical dilemma, construction of arguments, assessment and deployment of evidence. 
• Participation in seminar discussion and collaborative learning. 

• Develop interpretation and argumentation skills, both written and oral.  
• Gain experience of working with others and presenting to peers. 
• Develop research and project management skills throughout the course.  
• Develop skills to help them interpret current events. 

Jobe, K. (2011) “Disaster relief in post-earthquake Haiti: Unintended consequences of humanitarian volunteerism”, Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease, 9, pp. 1-5. 

Murphy, S. (2016) “Contemporary Ethical Approaches to the Practice of Assistance and Foundational Accounts of Moral Duty”, in Responsibility in an Interconnected World, Springer, pp. 35-59. 

Redfield, P. (2013) “Chapter 6: The Problem of Triage”, in Life in Crisis: The Ethical Journey of Doctors Without Borders, University of California Press. 

Robinson, F. (1997) “Globalizing Care: Ethics, Feminist Theory, and International Relations”, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 22, pp. 113-133. 

Rubenstein, J. (2015). Between Samaritans and states the political ethics of humanitarian INGOs, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Schwartz, L. et al (2010) “Ethics in Humanitarian Aid Work: Learning From the Narratives of Humanitarian Health Workers”, AJOB Primary Research, 1(3), pp. 45-54. 

Singer, P. 2004. “Outsiders: Our Obligations to those Beyond our Borders”, in Chaterjee, D. (ed) The Ethics of Assistance: Morality and the Distant Needy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Slim, H. (2015) Humanitarian Ethics: A Guide to the Morality of Aid in War and Disaster, London: Hurst & Company