Explanation of Social Justice in Allocation of Services in Rural Areas: A Case Study of Western Provinces of Iran

  This research
attempted to analyze
the situation of rural settlements, take into account social justice
in the allocation of services in rural
areas of western provinces of Iran. As a practical descriptive and analytical research, it
was conducted in
MADM methods. The required information were collected from the secondary data (statistics of 2011) for
Khuzestan, Kermanshah, Ilam,
Kurdistan and West Azerbaijan provinces,
where 31 indicators in various aspects of extraction were studied
by using fuzzy VIKOR. The study findings described the
atmosphere of regional inequality resulted from unfair distribution and allocation of resources, indicating the
infiltration of enormous
inequities within the provinces and their counties
and deprived areas in terms of rural development, so
that out of the 73 counties located
in the studied area, only the rural areas of Sarvabad, Dehgolan, Takab,
Kamyaran, Qorveh, Sanandaj, and Saghez counties were found highly developed in terms
of facilities and resource allocations; and rural
settlements of 31 counties were among the regions
with mean development and those of 35
western counties were placed in
the category of deprived areas in
terms of development opportunities. The results showed
that social justice was subject to equitable distribution and allocation of resources based on spatial justice;
in addition, increased welfare
and equal access to services needed a public
move (to reduce inequalities) and the
efforts of the authorities to
reorganize strategies consistently
and accommodate the rural settings.