The Power of Victimhood: A Relational Analysis of the Diplomatic Negotiations on a UN Loss and Damage Fund
Jakob Dreyer
What the paper says
At Conference of the Partis (COP)27, all 198 parties agreed to establish a Loss and Damage Fund after decades of resistance from donor countries. This article examines why the fund was established and what the decision reveals about power dynamics in international diplomacy. Using a relational approach, the analysis highlights the Association of Small Island States’ (AOSIS) strategic use of authentic victimhood – grounded in the combination of lived experiences, scientific legitimacy and diplomatic competence – as a key factor. When G77+China backed climate-vulnerable states led by AOSIS and threatened to leave the negotiations, the EU, driven by its moral identity as a just actor, shifted to support the fund. Notably, this shift occurred without significant new commitments on mitigation – the EU’s primary goal. The article offers two main contributions: first, it demonstrates how authentic victimhood can be strategically leveraged to reshape power hierarchies in diplomacy; second, it shows how the EU’s moral identity can sometimes override immediate political interests. Finally, the article critically reflects on the challenges of translating this decision into large-scale action for climate-vulnerable states
4 citations
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.37 × 0.4 = 0.15 |
| M · momentum | 0.60 × 0.15 = 0.09 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.