Human Security and Human Rights under International Law

The Protections Offered to Persons Confronting Structural Vulnerability

Dorothy Estrada-Tanck

• Publisher: Hart Publishing
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781509902385
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Derecho
• Subtopic: Derecho internacional

Human security provides one of the most important protections; a person-centred axis of freedom from fear, from want and to live with dignity. It is surprising given its centrality to the human experience, that its connection with human rights has not yet been explored in a truly systematic way. This important new book addresses that gap in the literature by analysing whether human security might provide the tools for an expansive and integrated interpretation of international human rights. The examination takes a two-part approach. Firstly, it evaluates convergences between human security and all human rights – civil, political, economic, social and cultural – and constructs an investigative framework focused on the human security-human rights synergy. It then goes on to explore its practical application in the thematic cores of violence against women and undocumented migrants in the law and case-law of UN, European, Inter-American and African human rights bodies. It takes both a legal and interdisciplinary approach, recognising that human security and its relationship with human rights cuts across disciplinary boundaries. Innovative and rigorous, this is an important contribution to human rights scholarship.

Part I

Conceptual Outlines

1

Human Security: An Overview

I. HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF HUMAN SECURITY

AS ALREADY SIGNALLED in the introduction, traditionally security had been considered a State matter, both as the subject in charge of providing it to the persons under its jurisdiction, as well as the object worthy of protection and regulation through laws and policies. The security of individual human beings, in contrast, was largely ignored.¹ While some authors trace the origins of human security to eighteenth century enlightened liberalism,² and one may also find explicit references to ‘human security’ in newspaper narratives of nineteenth century London,³ it was not until the decades after World War II that the concept gained articulation on the international scene. The 1945 UN Charter, referring in its preamble to the Parties’ commitment ‘to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom’, served as inspiration for the subsequent understanding of security as linked to freedom from fear and from want, proposed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in 1994. Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, though, changes in the traditional views of security were already being encouraged at the UN level.

The report of the Brandt Commission in 1980 had pushed for a non-military concept of security to be ‘enlarged to include hunger, disease, poverty, environmental stress, repression, and terrorism, all of which endanger human security as much as any military provocation’. It emphasised that to meet that aim ‘the international community has the responsibility to eliminate any social conditions that pose threats to the protection and dignity of people, before they erupt into armed conflict’.⁴ Similarly, in 1982 the Palme Commission Report on Disarmament and Security and in 1987, the Brundtland Commission report, Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future, noted that a

comprehensive approach to international and national security must transcend the traditional emphasis on military power and armed competition. The real sources of insecurity also encompass unsustainable development, and its effects can become intertwined with traditional forms of conflict in a manner that can extend and deepen the latter.⁵

Such views were intended to impact on the traditional view of ‘national security’ stemming primarily from US political discourse in the mid-1940s after World War II. This concept considered the State as the referent and the acting unit of security, deriving from the balance of power consequent upon State behaviour and reaffirming its autarky. National security was thus defined in terms of ‘national interest’ and mostly guaranteed through military means, thus understanding ‘military security’ as a sub-type of national security.⁶ The historical evolution of the conceptualisation of security in the UN advanced in parallel to shifts in theorising security by scholars from different disciplines within the growing field of security studies in the 1980s and 1990s.⁷

It was only after the Cold War that a political space was opened for a stronger institutional development of the notion of human security within the UN, alongside the trans-border phenomena deriving from a more interconnected world. Generally, the origin of the contemporary coining of the human security idea is traced back to the work done within UNDP in 1993 and 1994. True, the full articulation of human security at the international level finds its genesis in the UNDP. However, after the Cold War, the first mentions of human security within the UN institutional structure were actually suggested by the Security Council itself. Indeed, in 1992, ‘at a time of momentous change’, the UNSC expressed a strong commitment towards a human security agenda,⁸ and then, in the first explicit mention of human security by one of the main UN bodies, it was addressed in the Secretary General’s Report of that same year, An Agenda for Peace. Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peace-Keeping.⁹ In recognising the changing global context and the new dimension of insecurity, the Report stressed the necessity ‘to address the deepest causes of conflict: economic despair, social injustice and political oppression’ as each had ‘a special and indispensable role to play in an integrated approach to human security’. The Report forwarded the view that the UN had to assess its own potential in maintaining international security ‘not only in its traditional sense, but in the new dimensions presented by the era ahead’.¹⁰ For this to be rendered possible, the Report details a set of early warning systems that should work as preventive tools, much in the spirit of the ‘common understanding’ of human security proposed by the UN Secretary General and endorsed by the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in 2012. The 1992 Report stressed the importance of such systems to be based on adequate fact-finding mechanisms and reports, including those of a socio-economic nature.¹¹

The following year, human security was briefly referred to by the UNDP in its Human Development Report of 1993, People’s Participation, and then fully constructed by Mahbub ul-Haq through the 1994 UNDP Human Development Report, called precisely New Dimensions of Human Security.¹² Thus, human security was initially envisioned as a parallel road and an indispensable companion for human development. Actually, the 1994 Human Development Report included a six-item agenda that reflected its concern with socio-economic equality and global justice as a means of ensuring what the document considered ‘the peace dividend’ of that time. Specifically underlining that ‘the search for human security lies in development, not in arms’, the Report included, amongst other items, the creation of a global human security fund to address the common threats to global human security, and the formation of a UN Economic Security Council.¹³ (emphasis in original) In a contemporary analysis, it would seem that over time the item to have reached a most successful outcome is that of a global fund for human security, through the existence of the UN Trust Fund for Human Security (UNTFHS), which in the last few years has dedicated an average of one million and a half USD for each regional project per year, adding up to a total of 22 million USD in the main ongoing national/regional projects (at different times between 2011–2015), plus many national projects with a specific budget for each one.¹⁴ These are figures which seem to contrast starkly with the annual budget of approximately 186 million USD received annually by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) for the whole of its activities worldwide.¹⁵

The proposal to create an Economic Security Council is quite interesting, especially in light of the points raised by some human security detractors who fear that the concept will be utilised to justify some form of military intervention. In studying the actual official documents, it becomes clear that at least the intention of the first drafters, and a spirit that prevails today according to the 2012 UNGA ‘common understanding’ that will be reviewed, is clearly that of human security as a set of development features, notably socio-economic elements, as a pre-condition for peace and a strategic tool for its maintenance. In a deeper sense, it originally stemmed as a concern with global justice and the creation of a new global ethic based on the universalism of all human rights.¹⁶

Indeed, for the UNDP, following the original wording of the UN Charter, there are two conditions that can foster human security: freedom from fear and freedom from want.¹⁷ Therefore, human security as defined by the UNDP includes two main aspects: 1) safety from such chronic threats as hunger, disease and repression; and 2) protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the patterns of daily life—whether in homes, in jobs or in communities. Such threats can exist at all levels of national income and development. Based on this definition, according to the Human Development Report of 1994, the threats to human security can be grouped into seven categories: economic security, food security, health security, environmental security, personal security, community security, and political security.¹⁸ Of course, each one of these forms of human security is a world in itself. Specific types of human (in)security, the threats related to them and the affected human rights have been addressed on their own footing, such as the scholarly work and instruments on environmental security¹⁹ and food security,²⁰ for example. However, the scope of this book will rather focus on understanding and demarcating human security, more in line with the 2003 and 2012 UN definitions.

After the release of the 1994 definition, different initiatives and institutional arrangements were put in place surrounding human security. The Human Security Network, a diplomacy-level lobbying initiative, was set up in 1998, mainly under the leadership of Canada. Its proposals supported goals more in line with the ‘narrow’ proponents of human security; that is, concentrating more on efforts related to address violent armed conflict.²¹

To consider further definitions of human security, let us review the 2003 Report which stemmed from an independent Commission on Human Security (CHS) established in 2001 by United Nations Secretary General (UNSG) Kofi Annan and integrated by a group of experts co-chaired by academic Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate in Economics 1998, and Sadako Ogata, former UN High Commissioner for Refugees. After two years of deliberation, the Commission submitted its final report, Human Security Now, to the UNSG in May 2003. The Report, building from the freedom from fear and freedom from want ideals,²² defines human security as protecting

the vital core of all human lives in ways that enhance human freedoms and human fulfilment. Human security means protecting fundamental freedoms—freedoms that are the essence of life. It means protecting people from critical (severe) and pervasive (widespread) threats and situations. It means using processes that build on people’s strengths and aspirations. It means creating political, social, environmental, economic, military and cultural systems that together give people the building blocks of survival, livelihood and dignity.²³ (emphasis added)

To do this, the 2003 CHS report proposed joint strategies of: 1) of protection, by crafting norms, institutions and processes that protect and advance human security, including the establishment of early-warning mechanisms, good governance and social protection instruments (top-down strategy); and 2) of empowerment, by building on people’s perceptions of the risks they face and ensuring participatory processes that allow for individuals’ roles in defining and implementing their essential rights, freedoms and responsibilities (bottom-up strategy).²⁴ As Sadako Ogata has put it, ‘People protected can exercise choices. And people empowered can make better choices’.²⁵

The CHS Report affirms that ‘human rights and the attributes stemming from human dignity constitute a normative framework and a conceptual reference point which must necessarily be applied to the construction and putting into practice of the notion of human security’,²⁶ (emphasis added) although it doesn’t provide deeper details on how exactly this could be achieved. The Report also stresses that State security and human security are complementary, given that the latter addresses insecurities that have not been considered as State security threats.²⁷ This of course may be considered as wishful thinking in cases where the State itself is directly the source of danger for people, or when State policy or practice, the bilateral or regional arrangements among States, or the global setting as a whole, construct vulnerability towards certain persons or groups, such as undocumented migrants or asylum seekers, and particularly undocumented female migrants, as will be analysed in Chapters 5 and 6 below.

Two years after the CHS Report, in 2005, former UNSG Kofi Annan issued the report In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for all, as a guideline for global reforms regarding interrelated threats. The report included a third pillar, in addition to freedom from fear and from want, that of freedom to live in dignity, under which it deals with the rule of law, human rights and democracy.²⁸ (emphasis added) Notably, in the same year in the conte...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Acronyms and Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I: Conceptual Outlines
• Part II: Practical Applications of the Human Security–Human Rights Synergy in Legal Analysis
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright Page