I learned today about the Atlas of Impunity. It's a "tool designed to track the abuse of power across five key societal dimensions — unaccountable governance, abuse of human rights, economic exploitation, conflict and violence, and environmental degradation."
Though more complex, it sounds a bit like the Gini Coefficient — a way of assessing the countries of the world to see which ones come closest to (or stray the farthest from) practices that foster human flourishing.
I heard about it on the most recent Why Is This Happening podcast, where the guest was David Milliband, head of the International Rescue Committee. At the end of the hour, he also said he's chair of the Atlas of Impunity.
The topic of the podcast was Creating Global Routes to Hope, and it focused on worldwide migration, refugees, and internally displaced people.
International laws created after World War II already have set up what should be a good system: countries around the world "just" have to uphold them, instead of making excuses to turn refugees away. Milliband makes some great points when he says that order and humane treatment go together — that countries don't get order out of supposedly closing their borders. Instead closed borders breed disorder and danger.
Of course, we already know that; Republican politicians don't really want order, they want the chaos they're causing. But it was still helpful to hear a good argument for what they should want from their supposed point of view.
Near the end of the podcast, there's a brief philosophical discussion that's essentially about the veil of ignorance as it applies to refugees' human rights to safety.
The whole podcast is worth the hour, and finding out about the Atlas of Impunity was a bonus.
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