Livestreamed War and the Enforcement Gap: Global Justice in an Age of Spectacle, Platforms, and Border Hardening

The contemporary crisis of global justice is not only a crisis of norms, but a crisis of enforcement, legitimacy, and political will. Atrocity and war are increasingly “visible” in real time (circulated through digital platforms, instant commentary, and algorithmic amplification) yet this visibility frequently coexists with impunity, selective condemnation, and weak institutional follow-through. At the same time, many liberal democracies respond to insecurity by tightening borders and externalising responsibility, producing practices that strain or openly violate the ethical foundations of refugee protection and human rights. Against this background, this paper asks: What does global justice require in a world where a) war is spectacularised and mediated b) international law is normatively rich but politically under-enforced, and c) migration governance is increasingly securitised? The paper develops a normative argument in three steps. First, it diagnoses a structural disjuncture between global justice as moral claim and global justice as institutional practice: the existence of international humanitarian law and human rights standards does not translate into consistent accountability where enforcement depends on politically interested states and geopolitically selective institutions. Second, it argues that the “platformisation” of conflict reshapes the moral and political conditions of justice. Digital witnessing can generate solidarity and mobilisation, but it also produces fatigue, polarisation, and strategic manipulation, weakening sustained pressure for impartial enforcement and enabling leaders to substitute symbolic gestures for costly action. Third, it connects these dynamics to the “end of asylum” trend: when public attention and fear are mediated and intensified through securitised narratives, states normalise exceptional measures (deterrence, externalisation, and punitive containment) that undermine the core commitments of refugee protection. The paper’s contribution is twofold. Conceptually, it clarifies how spectacle and mediation interact with the enforcement gap to erode the credibility of global justice. Normatively, it proposes a minimal but demanding standard for a “realistic” global justice under conflict: 1) stronger duties of accountability for grave violations 2) principled limits on securitised border practices, and 3) shared responsibilities across states, institutions, and platform intermediaries to prevent the replacement of justice with performative politics. The approach is grounded in international political theory, drawing on normative theory and critical theory to reconnect law, legitimacy, and responsibility under conditions of crisis.