Human Security and International Law: The Potential Scope for Legal Development within the Analytical Framework of Security

Abstract

Human security is a human or people-centred and multi-sectoral approach to security, emphasising the empowerment of people to enhance their potential through concerted efforts to develop norms, processes and institutions that systematically address insecurities. Although the idea itself arguably precedes the formation of the Westphalian system, it was the UN Development Programme that captured it into policy discourse in 1994. Since then, the idea has facilitated, for example, the adoption of new treaties concerning the protection of civilians during and in the aftermath of armed violence, and has informed debates as to how certain rules of international law should be interpreted or applied. After locating human security within the analytical framework of security, this paper considers legal or structural obstacles to the notion of human security being harnessed more widely across all fields of international law. This chapter finds that the notion of human security challenges international law not only in respect of its sovereignty-based legal framework but more significantly in relation to the very notion of security shared by policymakers and jurists in legal contexts.