Human Rights Beyond Humanitarianism: The Radical Challenge to the Right to Asylum in the Mediterranean Zone

This article argues for a new centrality of the right to asylum within the Mediterranean zone and the necessity to defend and implement this right beyond the ‘humanitarian regime’. The first section describes the ways in which humanitarianism’s logic has weakened the right to asylum through the implementation of specific EU migration policies since 2013. The second section focuses on the distinction between such a humanitarian regime and the human rights system, assessing the possibility of and necessity for a renewed defense of human rights, starting with the right to asylum. The third section focuses on the Charter of Lampedusa, a radical, alternative normative instrument developed through a grassroots process which involved activists and migrant rights groups and which represents a concrete illustration of how the horizon of human rights might be redefined.