09 – Humanitarianism in a post-liberal age

Now the world has moved out of a liberal international order, where does that leave humanitarianism? In this episode, Michael Barnett, University Professor at George Washington University, delivers the keynote address titled ‘Humanitarianism in a post-liberal age’ to open the Norwegian Centre for Humanitarian Studies Annual Conference, held in Bergen on 4 November 2022. In his address, Barnett argues that humanitarianism was already exiting the liberal international order starting at the turn of this century, as the forces of destruction shifted from a liberal peace to securitisation; the forces of production from development to marketisation; and the forces of compassion from human rights to bounded cosmopolitanism. Where does humanitarianism go from here?