Panel details

Panel organiser(s) will be presenting	In-Person & Online
Number of paper presentations	6
Location	Istanbul

Abstract

This panel revisits the evolving relationship between human rights and humanitarianism. It examines how recent efforts to "fix" the humanitarian system— through resilience-building, nexus approaches, and localisation — risk sidelining protection and rights.

Throughout the 1990s, rights-based humanitarianism pushed the sector to place protection programming at the heart of humanitarian actions. Over the past decades however, dominant discourses have shifted the attention, increasingly framing resilience, the humanitarian-development-peace (triple) nexus and localisation as technical solutions, reshaping programming priorities and strategies, and often depoliticizing crises, resource scarcity and violations of human rights and humanitarian law.

While much scholarly debate has traditionally centered on delineating the theoretical, legal and empirical distinctions or overlaps between human rights and humanitarianism, this panel explores how current policy trends impact the actualization of rights and needs. It asks: How do these programming frameworks enable the erosion of protections and rights, and the withdrawal of political responsibility?

The panel welcomes research, policy analysis, and practitioner reflections, particularly contributions that:
• Critically examine the resilience discourse, particularly how resilience programming constructs needs, rights, and the agency of affected populations limiting resistance to exclusion, war and opression;
• Investigate the triple nexus as a humanitarianised remedy for the political failure to sustain development and peace efforts;
• Analyse the effects of localisation discourse and initiatives that lack context-specific power analysis, particularly where shrinking civic space and authoritarian governance undermine civil society.
• Offer historical perspectives on the erosion of international norms examining the role of state actors, intergovernmental organisations and donors in policy formulation;

Paper presentations