Topic: The United Nations and the Management of Humanitarian Crisis Risks: An Analysis Based on the Contractualist Philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke

Abstract

This article is a sociology of international law analysis that aims to understand and better assess the application of the United Nations Charter regarding the management of humanitarian crisis risks, on the basis of the logic that underpins the creation, structuring and functioning of the United Nations. By confronting this logic with the Hobbesian and Lockean contractualist philosophies, this article notices its identification to these philosophies, with a Hobbesian predominance. Consequently, the results of the United Nations efforts with regard to the management of humanitarian crisis risks are considerable but are not sufficient to meet the problem of perpetual insecurity for all members of international society. The answers to the problem of insecurity theorized by Hobbes and Locke, although valuable, are limited in their conception of human nature, particularly its ontological individualism. It is from the option for an orientation of this one that result their respective models of political formations which do not make it possible to curb the insecurity under an identity basis that persists in the case of the United Nations mission regarding the management of humanitarian crisis risks. Thus, another orientation of that individualism, especially towards the sense of an ontological identification of Men could have reinforced these solutions, not only on a purely ethical basis, but also on the concrete evidence that the pursuit of security of some to the detriment of others, on a discriminatory identity basis is the main factor of insecurity for all. So for better results from the commitment of crisis risks management, the United Nations have to address this major issue.