Despite a heavy philosophical focus on issues pertaining to immigration, little discussion is taken up that examines the duties we owe to migrant children. This article works to bridge the gap between global justice literature and work on children’s autonomy and well-being. To capture what migrant children experience in the context of immigration and detention, the article examines the conditions on the island country of Nauru, where at least 222 migrant children experienced detention between the years of 2013 and 2019. Using this lived experience as an example, the article argues that we owe children specific positive duties, which are further supported by the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Throughout this article, the aim is to indicate how migrant children occupy a particularly vulnerable and nonautonomous status in the context of detention. Because of this, children are owed especially weighty positive duties that are not discussed in the current global justice literature.

This review essay critically examines three recent books on the digitalization and datafication of humanitarian action: #Help, Humanitarian Extractivism, and Technocolonialism. Each monograph offers a compelling analysis of the myriad ways that humanitarians’ use of digital technologies has reshaped governance and the international order, created new risks, and exacerbated power imbalances. Fundamentally, each book concludes that the various transformations technology has wrought in humanitarianism are, at best, unintended, inconsistent, or unfulfilled in their impact and, at worst, deeply problematic. Setting aside the books’ contributions, each leaves out two important elements. First, in selecting examples, the authors leave mostly unanswered the question of what, if any, positive impacts data and technology have had on or for humanitarian response and those whom it is intended to help. Second, each is mostly silent with regard to practical steps that can be taken to address its critiques, with only Technocolonialism offering three broad avenues for reform. In the context of the current crisis in the humanitarian sector, with the closure of USAID and dramatic declines in funding, there is a need for pragmatic options for the future that, by necessity, involve a creative reimagining of the digital infrastructures underpinning the humanitarian response.

The openness of decision-makers to be influenced by and invest in proposals for policy reform is not constant. Timing is key, as are the diversity and depth of interests, levels of knowledge, and nature of the policy challenge itself; these can all affect how governments absorb information that might fall beyond the usual cost-benefit assessments of day-to-day policymaking. This essay explores how and when the policy environment provides opportunities to introduce a more nuanced discussion of competing moral values in migration governance and, critically, the new policy directions to which they might give rise. In doing so, it will utilize a range of examples from national, EU, and global debates of the past decade, to highlight moments when a dilemmas approach has been—or could have been—useful to effect policy change. Stressing ethical dilemmas can influence migration policymakers when the conditions are right.

This essay reveals the institutional dynamics of hard times in the issue area of human rights. I show that the human rights regime has developed innovative-yet-informal institutions like individuals-based coalitions for the international protection and progressive development of human rights. Yet, as these informal institutions function very much based on, first, the interpersonal relations among their members, and, second, legal instruments that require no further consent by states, the advocacy success of liberal human rights defenders has, in turn, provided a playbook for advocates and governments from the illiberal end of the ideology spectrum. In addition, new human rights advocates in the form of certain private law firms have entered the UN through their pro bono work. They promise valuable resources for a crisis-ridden system but often represent corporate clients with conflicts of interest. Given the imminent risk of ideological capture and illiberal interests in human rights paralyzing the system, I reemphasize the need for regulating access to the human rights global governance institutions.

Organizations often face moral dilemmas. For example, in 2004 the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) needed to decide whether to help refugees in enclosed camps in Pakistan repatriate to Afghanistan. On the one hand, helping with repatriation might have made UNHCR complicit in forced returns, as refugees sought to repatriate just to avoid life without freedom in Pakistan. On the other hand, refusing to help with repatriation would leave refugees stranded in camps: perhaps repatriation was the best option if this was what refugees wanted. When organizations face this and other dilemmas, it is not clear how they should proceed. In other words, it is unclear which policy they should pursue when all feasible policies seem wrong. Some might think that, at least for hard dilemmas, every choice is just wrong, and so no choice is right. But that is not quite true. Even difficult dilemmas can be resolved using certain methods. One method is to ask those affected by potential policies what they think the most justifiable policy is. A second method is to choose what to do randomly. Randomly selecting a course of action can sometimes be the fairest way of determining what to do when every option seems wrong.

Transnational corporations pose a dilemma for scholars of normative political economy. On the one hand, many think that such entities must be tamed by instruments of legal accountability and political control, lest they be allowed to act relatively untamed by legal and moral concerns. On the other hand, the very concern about regulating transnational corporations lends itself to suspicion of such efforts. Just as corporate power often reflects the interests of some class or national interest, efforts to extend normative standards can be seen as a vehicle for powerful nations and actors to extend their influence in the guise of moral or legal accountability. Reviewing three books that touch on different aspects of corporate accountability, this essay considers the way business ethics, human rights due diligence, and extraterritorial legal enforcement attempt to find the balance between these concerns. It concludes that meso-level institutions, which play an important role in all three books, may provide unique spaces for the mediation of normative accountability and power politics.

The secrecy of intelligence institutions might give the impression that intelligence is an ethics-free zone, but this is not the case. In The Ethics of National Security Intelligence Institutions, Adam Henschke, Seumas Miller, Andrew Alexandra, Patrick Walsh, and Roger Bradbury examine the ways that liberal democracies have come to rely on intelligence institutions for effective decision-making and look at the best ways to limit these institutions’ power and constrain the abuses they have the potential to cause. In contrast, the value of Amy Zegart’s and Miah Hammond-Errey’s research, in their respective books, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence and Big Data, Emerging Technologies and Intelligence: National Security Disrupted, is the access each of them provides to the thoughts and opinions of the intelligence practitioners working in these secretive institutions. What emerges is a consensus that the fundamental moral purpose of intelligence institutions should be truth telling. In other words, intelligence should be a rigorous epistemic activity that seeks to improve decision-makers’ understanding of a rapidly changing world. Moreover, a key ethical challenge for intelligence practitioners in liberal democracies is how to do their jobs effectively in a way that does not undermine public trust. Measures recommended include better oversight and accountability mechanisms, adoption of a ‘risk of transparency’ principle, and greater understanding of and respect for privacy rights.