The Child as Vulnerable Victim

Humanitarianism Constructs Its Object

Datos Bibliográficos

ID15495845
AutoresJason Hart (0000-0003-0164-9293, University of Bath, autor de correspondencia)
Año2023
Volumen20
Número6
Páginas5102-5102
Fecha de publicación2023-03-14
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaInternational Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1661-7827 • E-ISSN: 1660-4601
EditorialMultidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (PUBLISHER • CH)
DOI10.3390/ijerph20065102
PMID36982010
OpenAlexW4324143365
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas13
Referencias citadas28

Over the last one hundred years, humanitarian agencies have considered children primarily through the lens of vulnerability. Advocacy for attention to children's agency and for their participation has burgeoned since the 1980s without shifting the powerful hold that assumptions of vulnerability have had over the policy and practices of humanitarians. This article seeks to denaturalise the conceptualisation of children in contexts of emergency as primarily vulnerable (would-be) victims, placing it in historical and geopolitical contexts. It offers a critical analysis of both conventional humanitarian thinking about vulnerability per se and the reasons for its continued invocation in settings of displacement and political violence. Drawing upon examples from the Mau Mau rebellion against British colonial rule in 1950s Kenya, and current humanitarian response to the situation of Palestinian children living under Israeli occupation, this article relates the continued dominance of the vulnerability paradigm to the pursuit of self-interest by elites and the survival strategies of humanitarian agencies. It pays particular attention to the uses to which mental health thinking and programming is put in what may be called the 'politics of pathologisation

Agency (philosophy · Computer security · Criminology · Dominance (genetics · Environmental ethics · Geopolitics · Invocation · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Vulnerability (computing · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · Health and Conflict Studies · Law · Migration, Health and Trauma