Clean Trade in Natural Resources Event
- Time:
- 18:00 - 20:00
- Date:
- 23 October 2012
- Venue:
- Lecture Theatre B Building 65 Avenue Campus University of Southampton SO17 1BF
For more information regarding this event, please email Jonathan Way at j.way@soton.ac.uk .
Event details
Part of the Ethical Challenges lecture series.
The second in a series of public lectures, Ethical Challenges: Morality, Philosophy and the 21 st Century
We hear moral sirens from distant countries: civil strife in Syria, sexual violence in the Congo, repression in Zimbabwe. We have some sense that we may be connected to this injustice and suffering abroad-isn't it Middle Eastern oil that we fill our cars with? Maybe there are conflict minerals inside our smart phones? Yet the links seem so tenuous, uncertain. In fact our connections to abuses overseas are tighter than we suspected. Our own governments are putting us into business with repressive, violent and corrupt actors abroad, who sell us natural resources stolen from some of the most violated people in the world. The rules of international trade make us complicit in these wrongs, and end up hurting us as well. Feasible reforms of our own laws and policies are available to improve the situation we are in.
Leif Wenar is Chair of Ethics at King's College, London. He is the author of many articles on a wide-range of topics in moral and political philosophy, including rights, poverty, property, international trade, and liberalism.
The lecture is organised by Philosophy at Southampton in collaboration with the Royal Institute of Philosophy.
