BLUE Fellowship Application 2018
Keiko Ivinson, Kia Kouyoumjian, Max Musing

"Boss, we finally got him. The freak who claims to have planted explosives somewhere in the city. They're set to go off in the next hour unless we can get info off him to find them. We need to question him now."

You walk into the room with your colleague to find a middle-aged man slumped over the desk. You take a seat.

The man looks up at you with crazed eyes and starts laughing.

"Hah, you think I'm gonna tell you just like that? What's in it for me? I need assurances - give me legal protection and I'll tell you."

The man looks up at you.

"So? What's it gonna be?"

"Boss, are you sure we should do this? We can't let him get away with this. Plus, how do we know he won't try to pull something like this off again?"

You write up a legal document and sign it off. The man tells you the location of the explosives and you manage to disable them before they go off.

The man ends up going free.

The man recoils, wincing in pain.

"What the hell! You can't do this to me - I have rights."

"Okay, okay! I'll tell you whatever you want. Just don't hit me again."

The man tells you the location of the explosives and you manage to disable them before they go off.

The man is found guilty, but you end up fired for misconduct.

End of simulation.

These binary choice dilemmas of course oversimplify the complex moral decisions humanitarian organizations, policy advisors, and governments face under International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and International Human Rights Law (IHRL). However, they fulfill their basic purpose - to engender critical thought about ethics and human rights. Though most everyone can acknowledge the importance of humanitarianism, questions of how we create a sense of obligation to promote humanitarian efforts, why it is important, and what is the right way to do so, are less easily answered.

The answer to these inquiries depends on how we define ethics as it relates to human rights, a topic that is difficult because of its subjectivity. We need to allow individuals to arrive at their own conclusions by avoiding normative judgements when classifying actions and presenting scenarios concerning human rights. Otherwise, we elude our first goal - to engage individuals in critical thought and discussion about the scope and limitations of IHL and IHRL.

To accomplish this, we propose an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the ethics and applications of IHL and IHRL that combines videogames with IHL and IHRL theory. While games might seem like an unusual ally for helping individuals engage with the difficult topics IHL and IHRL encompass, their use is not without precedent. Military historians and theorists Phillip Sabin and Peter Perla have written extensively on the subject of "wargaming": the intersection of games and military and political theory that places humanitarian workers, policymakers, and military personnel in challenging "what-if" scenarios to prepare them for whatever they may encounter in their day-to-day operations. Adapted for civilians, the videogames we propose can be as simple as a series of binary choice dilemmas (such as the one played earlier), or as complex as incorporating the principles of IHL and IHRL into existing franchises.

Already, organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) are harnessing the power of videogames to sensitize civilians to humanitarian situations using VR technology. We intend to investigate the extent to which videogames may be used as a tool to present information, expose individuals to the moral philosophy behind IHL and IHRL, and sensitize them to the ethical and humanitarian issues that arise from armed conflict. Additionally, we intend to put together a guide for the design of such games, which may be used to assist humanitarian organizations in collaboration with game companies in line with the work the ICRC has done. Our hope is that this approach, via the generation of rational thought and discussion, will help individuals move beyond private support for humanitarian causes by priming empathy and collective altruism.