Share your dilemmas and experience in the context of humanitarian action and disaster relief
- Have you ever experienced, during your work, situations that made you feel morally uncomfortable?
- Have you been forced by the circumstances to chose between options which did not seem right to you?
- Have you felt to be confronted with a moral dilemma?
Have you ever experienced such a problematic situation in your professional life? If so, please share it with our research group and let your experience inspire our work.
Typically, ethically problematic situations in humanitarian action and disaster relief operations emerge in the following contexts or can be the result of factors relating to contexts such as:
- Allocating limited or scarce resources
- Influence of historical, political, and social factors of the environment
- Conflicting aid agency policies and agendas of other actors
- Diverse economic interests and restraints
- Differing norms and expectations with regard to the health care personnel
What we are looking for: dilemmas experienced
In order to achieve our stated goals and to orient our research to the practical needs and the real-world challenges, we would like to learn from your experience. Let us know what the real dilemmas are in the field and in what kind of situations you most often feel moral stress.
Formal Aspects
Your case summaries should have around 250-500 words. The cases should describe the context and the relevant background information on the situation. Anonymization of personal names and names of organizations should already be completed. Names of cities may also be removed or changed, but identifying the country in which the case is set might be pertinent to the context of the case.
You can either send your case and identify yourself as the author and name possible co-authors to our email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. – or, you can also send your case anonymously without giving any identities via the contact form which is available at http://disasterbioethics.eu/index.php/contact/report-cases-and-experience
Strict confidentiality about the sender will be kept if you request us to do so.
Deadline
As long as the COST action’s working group is active, this is a permanent call with no deadline given. However, early contributions are most welcome as they would allow us to adapt our research and to take them into account.
Contact & Further Questions
For any questions, feel free to contact Daniel Messelken (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) or Caroline Clarinval (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).
You may also visit our website http://www.disasterbioethics.eu/ to get more detailed information about the COST Action and its current activities and goals.