ABSTRACT
The text above features as the sign of a building round the corner from my workplace. It gives voice to the widespread view that children demand unconditional support. The fact that this slogan has a subtitle, `international humanitarian relief', announces this as the of®ce of an aid organisation, but it also speaks to the role of the appeal to the child as the quintessential deserving human subject, with the modal verb `must' combining with `THAT'S IT' to convey this as an absolute, incontrovertible imperative. So powerful is this that the motif of the child is sometimes mobilised in favour of aid for deserving parties generally. But are all children `innocent'? And what happens to the injunction to `care' if they are not? (Does it then become discretionary or dispensable, and what exactly constitutes `care'?) And who is it who `must' do the caring?
