Mahmood Mamdani’s book Saviors and survivors deals provocatively but well IMHO with the topic(s) under discussion in this thread.
If the rights of the citizen are pointedly political, the rights of the human pertain to sheer survival; they are summed up in one word: protection. The new language refers to its subjects not as bearers of rights—and thus active agents in their own emancipation—but as passive beneficiaries of an external ‘responsibility to protect.’ (pp. 274–75)
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