‘The right not to live in fear’: youth, rights, and relationality in the neoliberal colonial state

Abstract

ABSTRACT Drawing on the experiences and demands of South Korean queer and climate youth activists and Maya Chuj youth organisers, this paper shows the limits and containment ideologies undergirding inter/national human rights frameworks. While positioned as a universal ideal for alleviating suffering, youth organisers’ experiences demonstrate how these frameworks are mobilised by neoliberal colonial nation-states as neoliberal colonial tools of containment for youth and marginalised bodies. Drawing on decolonial feminist theories this paper explores how South Korean queer and climate youth activists and Maya Chuj youth organisers unsettled and refused to be contained by dominant human rights frameworks and discourses.