Moral clarity matters.
At the Center for Values in International Development (C4V) we
Elevate
Elevate the awareness, understanding, and essential role of a values-based discourse in international relief & development
Integrate
Integrate ethics pragmatically to inform all aspects of relief & development activities
Advocate
Advocate for the regular use of applied ethics to yield more just, caring, equitable, and sustainable development outcomes and processes
Our Vision
C4V envisions a global movement towards respect for universal human dignity, under which ethics holds a pragmatic and influential role.
Our Mission
Centering values in international relief & development.
C4V is redefining the current relief & development paradigm so that ethics takes a front-seat. C4V applies moral considerations and ethical analyses to achieve more just, caring, equitable, and sustainable processes and outcomes. C4V works with governments, multilateral and bilateral aid agencies, foundations, and development practitioners to incorporate ethics into all aspects of their activities to foster human flourishing and a healthy environment.
The Distant Spring: Philosophy and Social Innovation
Eight variations for thinking about social innovation and sustainability transitions during the coronavirus crisis In response to the harm done to birds by the widespread use of pesticides, Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring (1962). Her account of the “silencing of the birds” helped motivate a flock of social innovation via the emerging environmental movement. Spring 2020 has […]
Pompeo’s new Human Rights Commission is up to no good
The Human Rights Commission’s Report To our readers, The State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights is about to release its report, and the indications are not positive for anyone concerned about universal human dignity. We therefore thought it would be appropriate to post (with permission) this article by the ACLU from last January. Pompeo’s New […]
What American Cops can learn from the end of South Africa’s Apartheid Policing: From Force to Service
During South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy, I was directly involved in the transformation of the police force to a police service. Today, as the United States is confronted with the need for changes in police culture and behavior, perhaps some of the lessons learned in those tumultuous times may prove useful. After Nelson Mandela was released from […]
Authentic Development
…[A]uthentic development must be integral in at least two ways. First, authentic development must be the development of the whole person, not just the narrowly understood development of economic growth or monetary income. …The second way in which integral human development is integral is less discussed yet more radical. It is the idea that authentic […]
Madness
Long before the pandemic, I took my daughter Audrey to a Washington DC production by the Shakespeare Theatre Company of the play Man of La Mancha. It’s one of my favorite plays, and I first saw it when I was her age. It’s based on the famous novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, in which an elderly […]
Quotes
Climate change makes development a global issue and enhances the existing reality of creating a new poor in non-poor countries. Asuncion St. Clair; “Transforming Development Aid”; The Donors Dilemma: Emergence,Convergence and the Future of Foreign Aid (2014) In the last 20-30 years we have inflicted more damage on the earth than in its entire history […]
Quotes
But whereas in 1988 a million dead Africans was a figure that could still shock, today the two million southern Sudanese corpses have been submerged by a tidal wave of death that has washed over Africa in the aftermath of the cold war and the dissolution of the post-colonial states. A million dead in Somalia; […]
Quotes
…in a society in which the people have a sense of individual human rights and the state recognizes and respects those rights, a particular self-consciousness will develop; the ego will grow in a certain direction. One feels special not because one has what others lack, or has a rank higher than others, but because one […]
Quotes
Human beings are such that they cannot live and make a world without a continuous flow of evaluation, moral and otherwise. George Kateb, Human Dignity (2011)
Quotes
Money spent to meet crisis situations or short-term political objectives while helping to maintain national integrity and independence has rarely moved the recipient nation toward greater economic stability. President John F. Kennedy; from Special Message to the Congress on Foreign Aid (March 22,1961)