Working Paper II: Moral Duties toward Refugees

The ethics of refugee protection is not an ethics of assistance to needy people, but an ethics of the prohibition of tort, namely, in particular, the violation of human rights. This is reflected in the positive refugee law only inadequately, because here is not the damage in the fore-ground, from which people flee, but the reasons why they are mistreated by persecutors. The damage-oriented approach clarifies the reasons why persons in need for protection who have already reached the territory of the country of refuge can rely on a subjective right not to be exposed to the dangers they have fled from, while refugees outside the territory can in principle only appeal to the compassion and humanity of possible helpers. However, the boundary between "inside" and "outside" shifts according to the expansion of the de facto sphere of power of the acting person or state. This may also create a legal position for persons who are rescued by a ship at sea or whose living and travel conditions are essentially determined by the power of a state outside its territory.