The paper discusses the contemporary crisis of the institutionalization of human rights' discourse, linked to the reproduction of global insecurities and to the limits of the connection between States, territory, and citizenship. It conveys the argument that the impossibility or incapacity of attaining human rights, in the context of a world divided by territorial states, resides precisely in the constitutive junction between the notions of humanity and citizenship. The dilemmas therefore produced are analyzed in light of the recent protests among resettled Palestinian refugees in Brazil and their disagreements over the international humanitarian regime. Thus, the paper advances the idea that the international human rights regime acts, within this critical perspective, as a reinforcement of the current political order, rather than as a means of subverting it, as some enthusiast of a human rights agenda as emancipatory politics would argue.
Refugees; Human rights; Citizenship; Humanitarianism; Mobility