Children

Images of suffering children capture the moral imperative of humanitarian action. As a quintessential embodiment o victimhood, decontextualized images of childhood vulnerability articulate specific aesthetics, emotions, and politics that trigger feelings of compassion, mobilize donors’ solidarity, and persuade public opinion of the need for immediate lifesaving actions, including those of a military nature. However, this image of children is deeply entangled in the civilizational trajectories of Western modernity and sets out a Eurocentric standard of childhood that at times contrasts with local cultural notions of “childhood” and children’s material conditions in contexts outside Europe and North America. This dictionary entry discusses critically humanitarian representations of children in light of Southeast Asian, African and Latin-American de-centered constructions of childhood