The contemporary humanitarian domain of peace

• Main Author: Matheus Augusto Soares
• Format: Article
• Language: Portuguese
• Published: Universidade Federal da Grande Dourados 2019-06-01
• Series: Monções
• Subjects: humanitarismo. direitos humanos. resiliência.
• Online Access: http://ojs.ufgd.edu.br/index.php/moncoes/article/view/11539

This article intends to shed light on how relations of power (the imbrication of discourses, political practices and subjects) are being configured and re-configured since the mid-20th century in relation to peace, humanitarianism, resilience and neoliberalism. The methodology applied here is the “ethnography of documents”, developed by Annelise Riles, which considers the document as an analytical category and a methodological orientation. Therefore, the article is divided by the following subsections: i) relevant background literature on humanitarianism in order to situate the article with the current debate; ii) humanitarian peace discourses emerging in the mid 20th century, focusing on documents such as the Charter of the United Nations (1945), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Human Development Report (1994); iii) humanitarian peace subjects that emerge in the humanitarian domain of peace: the neoliberal, resilient and adaptive subject and the rights holder subject, still waiting. By presenting the power dynamics of a new domain of peace, linked to humanitarianism, resilience and neoliberalism, we also engage on exploring how violence, inequality and abandonment are (re)produced in this process, so that it can help improving a work-in-progress by reflecting on the current state of human rights.