The Ransom Dilemma
The advanced world is divided about whether to pay ransoms to rescue citizens kidnapped by terrorists. Author and ethicist Peter Singer suggests that the Islamic State so far has beheaded hostages from the United States and United Kingdom, as well as many Syrian, Lebanese, and Kurdish soldiers, too. Hostages from European countries, whose governments are said to have secretly negotiated ransoms, were released. The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution opposing payment of such ransoms. Still, governments and their citizens are tempted to rescue identifiable victims with story lines. “We are far less willing to invest in saving lives when the victims cannot be identified in advance, even when the number of lives saved would be higher – for example, by providing better road safety or education in preventive health measures,” Singer writes. Paying ransoms puts others at risk, and he concludes, “The refusal to pay ransoms to terrorists can seem callous, but in truth it is the only ethical policy.” – YaleGlobal
The Ransom Dilemma
Singer: Europe and the US are divided about whether to pay ransoms for hostages, but refusal to pay is the only ethical policy
Friday, December 12, 2014
Peter Singer is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. His books include Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, One World, The Ethics of What We Eat (with Jim Mason), Rethinking Life and Death, and, most recently, The Point of View of the Universe, co-authored with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek. In 2013, he was named the world’s third “most influential contemporary thinker” by the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute.
http://www.project-syndicate.org/columnist/peter-singer
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