On the Moral Wrongness of a Male-Only Ban on Leaving One's Homeland

Philosophy of Law and General Theory of Law 2023 (1):101-120 (2024)
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Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine whether it is morally wrong to ban only male citizens from leaving a country in wartime, and if it is, why it is the case. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky declared martial law and ordered general mobilization, at the same time prohibiting male citizens aged 18 to 60 from crossing the border. The justifiability of the ban is in dispute, and opponents have made a case in both legal and moral dimensions. In the moral dimension, there are arguments based on consequentialism, individual freedom, and fairness or non-discrimination. In this paper, I focus on the third argument and argue that the ban unfairly and morally wrongfully discriminates against male Ukraine citizens on the basis of their gender. First, I define discrimination and apply it to our case. Second, moving from the descriptive definition of discrimination to its moral wrongness, I argue that the male-only ban is unfair and morally unjustified. Third, I argue that the ban can also be deemed morally wrong from one of the prominent views in the field of the ethics of discrimination, namely the deliberative freedom view.

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Yuichiro Mori
Hokkaido University

Citations of this work

Defending the Universal Right to Flee Against the Duty to Fight for One’s Nation.Yuichiro Mori - 2025 - Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie 111 (1):7-25.

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References found in this work

Discrimination.Andrew Altman - 2020 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Discrimination and Disrespect.Benjamin Eidelson - 2015 - Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press UK.
V*—Fairness.John Broome - 1991 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 91 (1):87-102.

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