Ethical Challenges In Conducting Research Among Vulnerable Groups: Refugees And Trauma Survivors

Harshita Yadav, LLM (Corporate and Securities Law), Tamil Nadu National Law University, Tiruchirappalli

ABSTRACT

Research on human and animal subjects requires a deeper understanding and considerations by researchers of the subject matter of research on them. This paper focuses on human research on vulnerable groups of refugees such as the low socioeconomic, racial and ethnic minorities, asylum seekers, immigrants, who have been displaced due to a variety of reasons and, trauma victims such as abuse and assault and ones with life threatening health conditions. This is a non-exhaustive list. Human subjects can have multiple vulnerabilities too. Whenever there is research conducted on vulnerable groups i.e. the refugees and assault victims, the prevailing politics, current ethical standards, awareness of researchers, etc come into play.

I have focussed on the abovementioned Vulnerable Groups because In today’s time, there is an ongoing refugee crisis in the world. People are being displaced from their countries, places which were their safe space their homes, and going to unknown countries and places to start afresh because of religious genocides, atrocities on women, war on terrorism, and something which is going to increase even more in the climate crisis. Along with all of the above, the personal impediments one goes through as a refugee, need to be understood by the researcher prior to collecting data.

When we collect data on trauma victims, mainly the assault and abuse victims, the mental capacities and what their journey of trauma had been needed to be pre- evaluated and be considered before approaching them. In recent years, many women who have been victims of sexual assault and physical and mental abuse have been coming forward with help of the right support for healing. Revisiting the incidents can again bring trauma back so an ethical and moral approach by researchers towards them is very important to bring out the correct data.

There are multiple institutional guidelines, government guidelines, etc. but there is a need for a consolidated approach which I know can be difficult because even a single subject can have multiple vulnerabilities like a person can be both a refugee and an assault victim so having a single code of ethics is difficult but certain ethical considerations can be compiled to specifically deal with such vulnerable groups.