Precarious Lives and International Violence: The Death of Iranian and Lebanese Children and the Framing of Contemporary War

Flávia Abud Luz

Contemporary wars expose a contradiction that stubbornly persists in the world: even with a set of treaties and conventions designed to protect people in times of war — such as the Geneva Conventions and the Convention on the Rights of the Child — the killing of civilians still occurs frequently in military actions. In other words, the strengthening of international humanitarian law rules has not succeeded in preventing human rights from being constantly violated.

In this regard, contemporary wars reveal a gap between what conventions and treaties state and what states and armies actually do in practice. On the one hand, there is a considerable number of treaties and agreements that prioritize the protection of civilians, establishing rules such as the distinction between combatants and non-combatants, proportionality, and military necessity. On the other hand, the constant attacks that kill people who are not fighting reveal the limitations of these laws, especially when confronted with states’ objectives, power asymmetries, and the security logic that guides many invasions.

Among civilian deaths, the killing of children is particularly serious, as it shows that international law is not effectively protecting people and also reveals how fragile the justifications used to defend contemporary military actions are — such as claims of “surgical warfare,” “precision strikes,” or “inevitable collateral damage.”

In this sense, Judith Butler’s reflections on precariousness and the framing of lives offer an important analytical key to understanding how certain bodies — particularly those of peripheral or racialized populations — become more susceptible to violence and less recognized as lives fully worthy of mourning and protection.

The aim of this text is to analyze the deaths of Iranian and Lebanese children in military attacks carried out respectively by the United States and Israel since March 2026, through the lens of the theory of precarious life. It is argued here that these deaths reveal the existence of global hierarchies in the value of human life, in which certain bodies are discursively constructed as less grievable and therefore more vulnerable to military violence. By exploring this dynamic, I seek to contribute to a critical reflection on the relationships between war, power, and human recognition in contemporary International Relations.

Changes in the way war is conducted, the recurrence of violence, and debates in International Relations

Contemporary conflicts are generally portrayed as technologically more advanced, precise, and controlled compared to past wars, which were in turn characterized by extensive reliance on human troops on the ground. Advances in guided weapons, unmanned aerial vehicles, and cutting-edge surveillance systems have reinforced the idea that current military actions can significantly reduce non-combatant fatalities. However, this expectation coexists with the ongoing violence against civilians, revealing a gap between rhetoric and reality.

In this sense, the most prominent tension in the field of International Relations is not necessarily about state sovereignty — a classical element in discussions of power distribution and balance within the international system — but rather about how population management, a core aspect of state power, is being carried out in unusual ways. Population management is a key function of the modern state, embedded in dimensions of autonomy, sovereignty, and legitimacy. Yet in contemporary international conflicts, this function has been undermined due to external interferences that significantly shape governance dynamics, making it necessary to revisit Michel Foucault’s (2008) contributions on biopolitics.

Foucault (2008) argued that biopolitics refers to the forms of power exercised in the West and, in conjunction with the concept of governmentality (the “art of governing” through institutions, techniques, knowledge, and strategies aimed at populations), explains how human behavior is organized and standardized by the state. Biopolitics concerns the tactics, knowledge, and rationalities used to guide behavior; it does not replace other forms of power but complements them, especially disciplinary power. It operates through so-called security devices, which are central to this framework. Unlike discipline (which isolates and normalizes) or sovereignty (which prohibits), security devices work through probabilities and risks; they regulate processes rather than suppress them entirely; and they tolerate certain levels of phenomena (such as crime or disease) within what is considered “normal” thresholds.

In contemporary conflicts, this logic of population management intersects with practices that expose certain groups to higher levels of vulnerability. Here, the vague notion of “collateral damage” becomes central in public discourse that seeks to morally justify what should not be justified — namely, civilian deaths.

When civilian deaths are described as normal consequences of war, this helps depoliticize violence, presenting it as if it were detached from political responsibility. For example, military incursions into a state may be framed as preventive actions against an imminent threat. In this sense, morality returns as part of a discourse of “legitimate” force, leading to the normalization of such deaths.

Critically reflecting on war, its effects, and the social construction of mourning, philosopher Judith Butler (2015) emphasizes that how war is framed is crucial in determining which lives are considered worth remembering and mourning, and which are not — thereby establishing a hierarchy of grievability. Butler’s argument resonates with Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe, who, reflecting on the Palestinian condition, coined the concept of necropolitics — or the politics of death — to describe how some deaths generate intense political mobilization while others remain invisible or are quickly absorbed into strategic narratives.

Drawing on Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961) and Foucault’s biopolitics, Mbembe highlights how necropolitics shapes the valuation of human life in the international system, showing how power is configured in such a way that contemporary states exercise “the power and capacity to dictate who may live and who must die” (Mbembe, 2018, p. 5).

The violence observed in recent conflicts cannot be understood merely as an instrument of foreign policy, but rather as part of a broader regime producing inequalities in the distribution of life and death. Thus, population management — once a core state function — is increasingly shaped by external forces that redefine its logic, reinforcing differential governance. In the current conflict between the United States and Iran, one can observe a lack of concern in U.S. conduct regarding the suffering and death of Iranian civilians as a whole, and particularly those most in need of protection by the Iranian state: children.

Precarity at the center of war framings

The first key element in Judith Butler’s framework that is useful for critically analyzing violence and the value attributed to life in conflict contexts is the notion of precarity.

In Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (2019), Butler argues that the relationship between precarity, violence, and war is not accidental, but rather the result of an interaction between ontological precarity and politically induced precarity. Ontologically, precarity refers to the idea that human life is inherently vulnerable and requires social and political support to sustain itself. However, this vulnerability is not evenly distributed across populations, as certain individuals become more exposed due to economic, sociopolitical, and geopolitical inequalities.

Induced precarity, in turn, refers to the uneven distribution of vulnerability, where certain groups face harsher conditions due to political, economic, and social decisions not necessarily made by them. As a result, depending on the context, certain populations (often those already vulnerable, such as migrants, women, and children) receive less state protection, suffer various forms of violence (physical, psychological, and even sexual), and their lives are partially recognized as less significant.

It is through the concept of “frames” that Butler (2015) explains how the way we speak about, report on, or analyze contemporary conflicts shapes public perception. Society participates in constructing and maintaining discursive frameworks that determine which lives are seen as fully human and therefore grievable — in other words, who can be recognized as “victims” or “villains.”

Here, the distinction between “grievable” and “ungrievable” lives becomes central. Grievable lives are those whose loss is recognized as significant, generating strong public mourning and mobilization. Ungrievable lives, by contrast, are those whose deaths do not produce moral disruption, and are often naturalized or rendered invisible.

Iranian and Lebanese children and the politics of invisibility

Among civilian deaths in recent conflicts, the deaths of children stand out, as their persistence demonstrates that international law is not effectively protecting people and also reveals the fragility of the justifications used for contemporary military actions — such as “surgical war,” “precision strikes,” or “inevitable collateral damage.”

Although children are normatively associated with innocence and vulnerability and are formally prioritized in international law, in practice this universal protection is not always reflected in concrete political action.

When children are killed in military attacks, their deaths are often forgotten amid debates about security and regional or international stability. This occurs because the focus shifts: instead of mourning human loss, attention turns to the reasons why the attacks were deemed necessary.

Analyzing the massacre at Minab school (Iran) and the ongoing bombardment of civilians in southern Lebanon, Butler’s (2019) notion of induced precarity ceases to be an abstract concept and becomes a state policy reinforced by the silence of international institutions. The way Iran and Lebanon are framed as threats produces a general perception that allows civilian deaths, including those of children, to be seen as less significant.

International community omission operates as a selective filter: it acknowledges suffering (with various media outlets using images to represent the daily reality of conflict) but denies these children the status of “protected life.” When the deaths of hundreds of schoolgirls are treated as an intelligence failure rather than a war crime requiring accountability, Butler (2019) and Mbembe (2018) are reaffirmed: certain populations have their lives managed in such a way that their existence or death becomes part of the process, leaving no trace in the official mourning of the West.

In this context, a more troubling point emerges: omission is — and must be understood as — a political decision, not a vacuum of action, but a choice embedded in a social ontology of the international system that predetermines who deserves protection.

Although in both cases discussed (the deaths of children in Iran and Lebanon) state management of vulnerable populations shows weaknesses, it is external action that ultimately determines life and death. This is made possible by the fragilities of state sovereignty and the normalization of death and precarity as part of the broader political landscape of the Middle East, reinforcing Mbembe’s (2018) critique of “zones of exception” where life and death coexist under deeply unequal logics.

As Butler (2015) argues, on one hand collective indifference is structured and expands over time according to political and economic interests; on the other, certain populations are progressively relegated to oblivion.

Bibliography

BUTLER, Judith. Quadros de Guerra: quando a vida é passível de luto?. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2015.

BUTLER, Judith. Vida precária: os poderes do luto e da violência. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2019.

FOUCALT, Michel. Segurança, território e população: curso dado no Collège de France (1977-1978). São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2008.

MBEMBE, Achille. Necropolítica. 3ªed. São Paulo: N-1 Edições, 2018.

Flávia Abud Luz

Professor of International Relations. Holds a PhD in Human and Social Sciences from UFABC. Master’s degree in Religious Studies from Mackenzie Presbyterian University. Specialization in Politics and International Relations from FESPSP, and a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from FAAP.

Research interests: Postcolonial theories, gender social relations, human rights and women’s movements, international conflicts, politics and religion, especially topics related to the Middle East (Levant and Persian Gulf subregions), and Lebanese domestic politics.

Author of the books “Islamic Feminism, Social Movements and the Reconstruction of Women’s Rights in Morocco” (Appris Publishing, 2025) and “The appropriation of the concepts of martyrdom and jihad by Hezbollah and the issue of violence as resistance” (Appris Publishing, 2020). Currently conducting research on the relationship between gender, religion, and International Relations.

Member of the research groups Ylê-Educare: Education and Ethno-Racial Issues (PPGE/Uninove); Gina – Research Group on Gender, Race and Intersectionality; Right to Education, Human Rights and Public Policies (UNIAN/SP); and the Study and Research Group on Movements, Intersectionality and Educational Policies in Latin America – GEMINAL (Univas/MG).

Member of the Brazilian International Relations Association (ABRI).