Childhood Iconography in Humanitarian Aid: A comparative analysis to understand the academic discourse generated by visual representations of suffering children : The Use of Childhood Iconography in Humanitarian Aid

Abstract: This thesis aims at providing a literature review of the academic debate regarding the use of childhood iconography in the humanitarian sector. This topic is not new and has been broadly discussed by academics since decades. Therefore, by using the alreadyexisting literature on the subject, this paper provides an in-depth understanding of the main arguments and controversies that have been made regarding the use of such images in the humanitarian field. In order to do so, it analyzes two famous pictures which produced considerable discussion in the research field: “The Struggling Girl” taken by Kevin Carter in South Sudan, in 1993 and “Alan Kurdi” photographed on a Turkish beach by Nilüfer Demir, in 2015. Overall, the study of the discourses generated by these two photographs exemplifies the diverging opinions of scholars on the topic and sheds light on the power relations and stigmas that persist within the humanitarian sector.