Human Rights and States of Emergency: Humanitarians and Governmentality

Abstract

This essay diagnoses how humanitarian non-governmental organisations are filling a sovereign vacuum created ironically by governments outsourcing their governing functions; this outsourcing marks a transformation of the Westphalian order of states. The proliferation of non-state actors facilitates the politicisation of human rights around how to recognise who or what is a human being endowed with natural rights, and who is a terrorist or outlaw. By tracing the connections between human rights and governmentality, I contend that human rights advocates must acknowledge that their cosy relationship with powerful militaries has resulted in humanitarian interventions using the language of rights to justify neocolonial projects that often intensify human suffering. Humanitarianism may function as a deterritorialised form of governmentality that offers a theatrical illusion of protection and security, while undermining their possibilities structurally. Indeed, I demonstrate how powerful states not only use human rights and humanitarian legitimations for their particularist geopolitical and economic ends, but also direct humanitarian NGOs strategically by proxy for their own interests.