Amidst concerns that the decline of the LIO may precipitate the erosion of human protection norms, this panel offers a timely and critical examination of the human protection approaches adopted by great and middle powers, key international and regional organizations, including the United Nations, the African Union, and the European Union, among others, and private actors. We explore the possibility that human protection norms and practices may not be adequately understood as contingent upon the fortunes of the LIO but rather as reshaped by the evolving web of formal and informal global relations that will emerge in its wake and by a changing constellation of actors including newly influential states, international and regional organizations, civil society organizations, private donors, and transnational corporations.

The contributions in our collection adopt a distinct lens, diverging from mainstream institutionalist and normative theories. They critically examine the dynamics of cooperation and competition that unite and divide international and regional actors, including states, IOs, CSOs and business with agency in the broader field of human rights. Contributors utilize granular sociological approaches, challenging the notion of states, IOs, CSOs and business as monolithic and static (Abrahamsen and Williams 2010; Moe and Geis 2020; Pouliot 2020; Kolmasova 2022). The articles position these international and regional actors within a lattice of connections and networks spanning governmental and non-governmental stakeholders, applying theoretical frameworks like international practice theories, assemblage theory, and complexity theory to dissect normative developments and power dynamics, thereby shedding light on their global and local implications.

The manuscripts delve into the last decades’ emergence of human protection norms and practices, in order to scrutinize:

• The interplay between geopolitical shifts and the evolving relevance of human protection instruments.
• The broad spectrum of actors redefining norms and practices in human protection.
• The specific and tangible impacts of these evolving dynamics within various territories.
• The challenges to human protection politics arising from the fluid dynamics of cooperation and competition among diverse organizations, and how historical insights can inform our understanding and future strategies.

This article investigates the African Union (AU)-European Union (EU)- United Nations (UN) cooperation on the set up of a Human Rights Compliance Framework for AU peace operations as an entry point to discuss how practices of human protection are assembled in Somalia and the Sahel. Building on the literature on global security assemblages and Bourdieusian sociology, we study the compliance framework as an assemblage invested with strategic purpose. We discuss how it enables inter-IOs alignments on protection practices, and how it expresses the requisites of LIO-aligned powers to direct conduct over “urgent” problems. Building on fieldwork carried out in Brussels, Addis Ababa, New York, Nairobi, Mogadishu, and remotely since February 2016, we show how the compliance framework produces a particular rationality of rule. We find that efforts to sustain and bring coherence to the “civilian harm mitigation” operations are strenuous as they take place in the context of power struggles and under conditions of contestation of the appropriate rules and practices. These findings have important consequences on organizational understandings of protection duties and responsibilities and their life and death effects. The article contributes to the emerging field of inter-organizational studies with a novel understanding of IOs mutual engagements with fundamental norms and ethical responsibilities.

The crisis of the Liberal International Order (LIO) and ongoing geopolitical (re)ordering of international relations have put the power and role of international organizations under pressure. This paper investigates the degree to which these parallel international developments are affecting the dynamics of cooperation and competition involving the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) within the area of human protection. Theoretically, the paper expands on existing research on the concept of the duty of care and the practice theory agenda in IR, arguing that the duty of care is both a norm and a practice of human protection. Using illustrations from conflict or post-conflict areas (e.g. Ukraine, Kosovo, Somalia) or exposed areas (e.g. Baltic states), it explores how NATO and the EU have enacted their duty of care by engaging in formal and informal practices to safeguard civilians, ranging from norm promotion and financial support mechanisms, to partnerships, police support operations or military missions. Finally, the paper discusses the potential implications of a continued pressure against key international organizations and, hence, the resources allocated to their work within human protection.

The emergence and recent expansion of the BRICS raises questions related to how influential it will be in shaping the future global political order. In this article I will zero in on what is known about the position of the bloc with regard to human protection. What does its statements and actions reveal about what the bloc thinks should be done to protect human lives from harm in conflict and disaster affected countries? And what does the bloc think are the responsibility of states – both towards their own citizens and towards citizens of other states – and the responsibility of other actors, such as non-state actors and regional or international organizations? To explore these questions, I analyse the role South Africa played in 2023/2024 as President of the BRICS to try to influence human protection in Gaza and Israel through convening an extraordinary BRICS summit as well as by bringing a case of genocide against Israel to the International Court of Justice. The article will use Complexity Theory to analyse the different systems and networks (normative, legal, regional, etc.) that BRICS member states like South Africa use to try to influence the way the global system, and sub-systems like various human protection related regimes, self-organizes, adapts, and evolves in response to developments like the war in Gaza.

Cultural heritage (CH) sites have been recently targeted, i.e. weaponized, militarized and securitized in Nagorno-Karabakh and in Ukraine. A number of CH protection initiatives were also promoted as political technologies of human security. This article focuses on these two cases to contribute to an emerging literature that sees a new kind of heritage-oriented governance, diplomacy and, foreign policy taking shape. It seeks to unveil overlapping patterns of convergence and divergence among public and private, global and local sources of norms, political rationalities, practices and policies that construct and define why and how CH is in danger. In that sense, security assemblages emerge to contour spaces to be protected and possibly governed. Premising on these assumptions, the articles aims at mapping, through qualitative instruments, the actors involved in CH reconstruction and recovery and the type of actions undertaken. It also seeks to explain cross-case variations to highlight sited mechanisms for its protection. All in all, it intends to provide contextual indications about the interplay between CH and civilians in conflict and post-conflict settings, as well as the interactions between the local and the international fields when it comes to defining (political, social and spatial) practices informing protection and reconstruction.

In this concluding piece of the Special Section, I integrate insights from the featured articles, employing a framework rooted in the concepts of “resilience as self-governance” and “resilience as diversity governance.” This framework reveals that while the various actors and institutions in the human protection field, as discussed in this issue, are all responding to a common catalyst – the decline of the liberal international order – their processes of “resilience as self-governance” are likely to yield divergent outcomes. I explore how the diverse human protection ordering domains in the multi-order world reflect each order’s unique norms, practices, and power structures and their particular vision for “the good life.” The evolving discourse on human protection, I argue, is therefore not merely changing; it is undergoing a fundamental reimagining based on orders’ divergence rather than convergence around new norms for human protection. At the heart of my analysis is the conviction that the future of human protection will not emerge from a uniform approach under a singular global order. Rather, it will be moulded by the wealth of perspectives and practices offered by these multiple orders. Recognizing and navigating this diversity is crucial for developing “trading zones,” which can support sustainable human protection strategies in a world marked by growing diversity, complexity, and interconnectedness.