4.3: Human Rights and Human Security

There are conflicting perspectives on the relationship between human rights and human security. They can essentially be classified into the following three groups:

1. “Human rights define human security” (Ramcharan 2002, p. 9)
2. Human security builds on human rights
3. The fundamental tension between human rights and human security.

From a human security perspective, the first of these positions is the most modest. If human rights define human security, then human security can be evaluated according to whether or not human rights are respected in practice. There is little if any need to define human security differently from human rights, and international human rights instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN, 2015) provide the legal framework for evaluating human security.

Wolfgang Benedek argues not only that “human rights can help define the concept of human security,” but also that “human rights lie at the core of human security” (2008, p. 13) by providing a “sound conceptual and normative foundation” for human security that ensures it is an “operational concept firmly rooted in international law” (Benedek et al., 2002, p. 16). More programmatically, “the best way to achieve human security is through the full and holistic realisation of all human rights” (2008, p. 13). The difference between the legal concept of human rights and the political concept of human security is recognized, but Benedek states that “human security concerns are increasingly translated into legal obligations through international conventions and protocols” (2008, p. 14).

Many will worry that Benedek’s concept of “the interrelationship of human security and human rights” (2008, p. 14) subsumes human security under the human rights tradition. It is unlikely this will find much favour among advocates of a human security perspective, because it makes the perspective superfluous if not redundant. But there is more to human security than respect for human rights law.

While many who hold human rights to be an extension of natural law, an essential property of all human beings by virtue of their being human, an empirical fact is that human rights are defined in legal terms. If someone claims x as a human right, it is not good enough to assert a vague feeling that x should be a human right. It is necessary to point to legal documentation, domestic and/or international. But if someone claims that the lack of x constitutes a lack of human security, recourse to legal argument is unnecessary.

In other words, the second position, that human security builds on human rights, not only gives the field of human security a raison d’être, but also recognises the importance of work undertaken within the legal human rights tradition, and the reality of subjective and more inclusive notions of security that are less legalistic. So Tadjbakhsh and Chenoy (2007, p. 10) are being realistic when they say that “security needs to be redefined as a subjective experience at the micro level in terms of people’s experience.” This is not a recipe for chaotic relativism, but a recognition that building human security on human rights is building a subjective concept onto an objective, criterion-based, legal one. This extends the first perspective – that human rights define human security, but does not negate it. Hampson et al. (2002, p. 15) argue that “the denial of fundamental human rights” is “the main reason for human insecurity,” but this is within the context of the “fundamental liberal assumption that individuals have a basic right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” that the international community has an obligation to protect and promote” (2002, p. 5). This perspective also conceptualizes human security as built on three ‘pillars,’ which Tadjbakhsh and Chenoy summarise as “the natural rights/rule of law approach,” which includes human rights, “the safety of people/humanitarianism approach” and “the sustainable development approach” (2007, pp. 49-50).

The third perspective – that there is a fundamental tension between human security and human rights – can be found in the work of Caroline Thomas. The problem she identifies is the centrality of property rights to legal human rights frameworks, and this introduces a neoliberal competitive and possessive individualism into notions of human security. For Thomas, this focus on the “security of the individual,” based on an “extension of private power and activity, based around property rights and choice in the market place,” undermines a more substantive human security, which “describes a condition of existence in which basic material needs are met, and in which human dignity, including meaningful participation in the life of the community, can be realised” (2001, p. 161). This material concept of human security “elucidates the poverty, inequality and security link clearly” (Thomas, 2001, p. 163). That is: “When a privileged elite defends its too large share of too few resources, the link is created between poverty, inequality and the abuse of human rights” (Smith, 1997, p. 15). In other words, the defence of the property rights embedded in international human rights instruments causes inequality, and this creates human insecurity.^[1]

Ultimately, this adds up to the insight that “human security is indivisible; it cannot be pursued by or for one group at the expense of another” (Thomas, 2001, p. 161). Outside of a neo-realist International Relations framework, it is hard to argue that human security can be pursued by one group at the expense of another and still be a meaningful concept. However, Thomas’s materialist argument seems more questionable. Property rights are a part of human rights as they are defined in international law. However, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN, 2015) – which, although not enforceable in international law is still the closest thing we have to an international benchmark – also includes the right to social security (Article 22), the right to work (Article 23.1) and to “just and favourable remuneration” (Article 23.3), the right to a standard of living adequate to ensure one’s health and well-being (Article 25.1), and the right to education (Article 26). The problem of some human rights conflicting with human security will be discussed further in Chapter 15.