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.