Human Rights and Humanitarian Relief: The Organizational Mediation Of Ideas In The Global Arena

In talk of the “international community”, many commentators assume that human rights work and humanitarian relief are pulling in the same direction. Others see human rights work and humanitarian relief as two fundamentally different modes of engagement. What both of these approaches share is a focus on the content of ideas. This paper examines the relationship between human rights and humanitarian relief in the international arena from the perspective of the sociology of practice and the sociology of organizational fields. Since the 1970s two separate fields of practice have emerged – one centred around human rights and one centred around human rights. Based on interview reserach and document analysis, I examine how professionals in humanitarian relief organizations use the concept of human rights. In the past 15 years, they have used the language of human rights more and more, but the mpact this language has had in humanitarian work has been mediated by the practical constraints and incentives of the humanitarian field.