ABSTRACT
This chapter starts from the position that security is an essentially contested concept, and explores why human security can be best utilized as a discourse. It explains the transformative potential of human security with a view to the influence it might exert on international law if properly harnessed. The only transhistorical and permanent fixture in human society is the individual physical being, and so this must naturally be the ultimate referent in the security problematique. According to the Commission on Human Security (CHS) definition, human security protects 'the vital core of all human lives', or put in other words, it protects 'the fundamental freedoms – freedoms that are the essence of life'. The ultimate goal of human security discourse is a transformative project intended not only to deconstruct the traditional state-centric security paradigm, but to challenge some of the commonly held assumptions that are embedded in international relations scholarship.
