2017: The Year in Review
Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: The year in review, but which year? Let us start with 2017, and see if we can end up back here. In the course of the year, and drawing somewhat at random: ... Christiana Figueres, former United Nations climate chief, said recently: ‘Everyone gets paralysed by bad news, because they feel so helpless’.4 The political philosopher, JR Lucas, saw another perspective – those ‘unassuageable feelings of guilt’ and the dissipation of effort and effectiveness that can come from the sense that we are as much responsible for what we do not do, as for what we do.5 And that is why, each day, we need to remind ourselves of the importance of cutting through the negative, and getting to effective action by focusing on that part of the whole where we can, or perhaps we can, make a difference. ‘Getting there’, in turn, means knowing and understanding. In the words of a November 2017 Guardian headline: ‘They know the risks and still they come’.6 And that is the lesson delivered so clearly through the tragedies of the Mediterranean, themselves repeated on seas and oceans near and far. It is a lesson which too many States either do not want to hear, or are simply unable to imagine how to integrate into policies and practices. Nonetheless, it must be learned.
DOI: 10.1093/ijrl/eey005
Author: Guy S Goodwin-Gill
Language: English
Subfield: Health
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2896470561