Ethics and international relations

penelope or the handmaids

Hakan Seckinelgin

pp. 185-205

in: Hakan Seckinelgin, Hideaki Shinoda (eds), Ethics and international relations, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2001

Abstract

It is generally accepted that the collapse of the post-Second World War system of international politics during the late 1980s released ethics and allowed ethical concerns to be expressed without being constrained by the bipolar ideological confrontations. Furthermore, the process of globalisation has created a concern about its impact on diverse cultural, social and political communities. Ethical questions about the processes leading to globalisation have been posed from various perspectives. Many issues have been influential: human rights, humanitarian interventions, environmental consequences of various economic processes, the condition of women in all of these combined with new kinds of risks presented by nuclear accidents and diseases like HIV/Aids; these have raised many ethical questions about the relationship between communities, between people within communities, and their larger context in transboundary relations.