Even though we may say that the establishment of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees by the General Assembly Resolution of 14 December 1950 was a political step taken in the midst of the gathering clouds of cold war, as we re-read the resolution, we cannot deny today, even while acknowledging the political character of the step, the strong ethical roots of the humanitarian step that was being envisaged. Calling upon the States to cooperate with the United Nations in the work of refugee protection, execution of measures towards the improvement of the situation of the refugees, in admitting refugees, promoting their assimilation, especially facilitating their naturalisation, permitting the refugees to transfer their assets for their resettlement, etc. was a humanitarian call, whose roots lay in the ethical obligations of hospitality, care, and protection. The way in which the political task of ensuring the rights of the forcibly displaced and the ethical task of providing hospitality have combined through years has much to offer us as lesson.

Rights too have ethical roots. Protecting the displaced has widened in scope and significance, it now includes protecting the internally displaced persons also – uprooted due to violence, fear of attack and torture, and environmental disasters often because of wrong development policies. This task of protection has three sources or components – the human rights dimension, that is, protection is based on the acknowledgement of the rights of the displaced to get protection, asylum, relief, and rehabilitation; the humanitarian dimension, that is, the United Nations and the States have the duty to protect and extend cover to all those who flee persecution, torture, discrimination, and are ousted to seek shelter whether in another place within the country, out outside across the border; and finally the ethical dimension, that tells us “what we owe to each other”. These three components do not always sit happily together, yet they are the eternal associates in the task of protecting the shelter-seeker. The gender dimension reinforces the combination and the tension inherent in this task.

Set against this perspective, the aim of this module is to bring to light (a) the different components of the humanitarian task of protection, particularly the ethical component; (b) the moral basis of international human rights laws; (c) the contradictions within the international humanitarian system and structure; (d) the relations between rights, law, and ethics; (e) and the practical moral issues involved in the task of protection, settlement, and compensating the victims of forced displacement.

This is a critical module. Reading the relevant material under this module will mean taking things not in their usual profile or state, but critically, upside down, in relations with many other things that we hitherto take for granted, and interrogating the relation between politics and morality.