The Center for Values panel on Empowerment with Dr. Christine Koggel & Saji Prelis

Overview 

Given that the essence of moral thought is to address and ameliorate human suffering, and to expand human freedoms, how can we afford not to attend to moral clarity when it comes to international relief and development? 

The Center for Values in International Development seeks to apply the insights, analytical frameworks, knowledge, and experience that already exist within the field of international development ethics, to guide relief and development practice. 

We continue the dialogue with our third of five conversations with today’s focus on Empowerment as part of The Center’s ethical development series building an effective bridge between the practitioners’ community and the ethicists’ community, to the mutual benefit of both, and to the significant improvement in the effectiveness of international relief and development. 

To learn more about The Center for Values in International Development, visit: https://www.centerforvalues.international

Panelist Biographies 

Saji Prelis is Co-Chair of the Global Coalition on Youth, Peace and Security and Director of Children & Youth Programs for Search for Common Ground. Saji has over twenty years’ experience working with youth movements and youth focused organizations in conflict and transition environments in over 35 countries throughout the world. In 2010 he co-founded and has been co-chairing the first UN-Civil Society-Donor working group (Global Coalition on Youth, Peace and Security) that helped successfully advocate for the historic UN Security Council Resolution 2250 (in 2015) on Youth, Peace and Security. As a result of the Global Coalition’s advocacy, two additional Security Council Resolutions, Resolution 2419 in June 2018 and Resolution 2535 in July 2020, were unanimously adopted. 

Christine Koggel is Professor of Philosophy at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Her main research and teaching interests are in the broad areas of moral theory, practical ethics, feminism, social and political theory and development ethics. She is the author of Perspectives on Equality: Constructing a Relational Theory (1998), a book that brings together her interests in moral, political, and feminist theory. She has published 45 journal articles and chapters in edited collections, the most recent of which explore topics in development ethics (capabilities approach, agency, empowerment, work/labour), feminist theory (gender, oppression, care ethics, feminist relational theory), settler-colonialism; Indigenous issues; and their intersections. She is the former President of the Canadian Society for Women in Philosophy (CSWIP), Board member of the International Development Ethics Association (IDEA) and is a Lead Co- Editor for the Journal of Global Ethics.