Humanitarian Assistance or ‘Association With Terrorists’? How U.S Antiterrorism Financing Policy De-Limit Humanitarian Organizations: A Disciplinary Power Analysis

Sammanfattning: In this thesis, the power dynamics underpinning the relationship between USAIDfunded humanitarian organizations and U.S governmental agencies – in relation to the Global War on Terror (GWoT) - are critically investigated. To this end, a Foucauldian lens of ’disciplinary power’ is utilized to uncover U.S governmental agencies’ employment of disciplinary practices categorized as surveillance, correction and normalization. It is argued that the reported tensions between counterterrorism measures and humanitarian principles are the result of U.S promotion of a norm of non-association with terrorists. When a Foucauldian discourse analysis of the empirical material is conducted, it is found that USAID:s implementation of the Partner Vetting System; the material support-statute in U.S federal law; the inclusion of Anti-terrorism financing clauses in donor contracts; and the U.S Department of Treasury’s Anti-terrorist financing guidelines to “Voluntary Best Practices”, all interplay to discipline humanitarian organizations behavior. The result is that a strong incentive is created for organizations to selfcorrect by compromising with the humanitarian imperative and avoiding implementation of projects in areas controlled by Designated Terrorist Organizations.