Human Security and International Law

When the United Nations (UN) declared the entitlement of all individuals to freedom from fear and want and, to this end, pledged to discuss and define the notion of human security at the 2005 World Summit, ¹ human security was firmly placed on the UN policy agenda and entered ‘our common international discourse’, ² especially in the context of international relations analysis. Yet consideration of human security is largely absent from international legal scholarship. This is somewhat surprising as incidents of human insecurity – the ongoing crisis in Darfur for example – bring into sharp relief a number of key issues currently besieging international law such as the place of non-state actors in international law and the question of humanitarian intervention. Indeed the emergence of human security on to the UN policy agenda is underpinned by fundamental questions as to the role of international law in the international landscape. It is in this sense that the chapter explores the relevance of human security to international law by way of evaluating the implications and consequences for international law of human security as a UN policy agenda. By doing so, the chapter advances the argument that human security, particularly as a UN policy agenda, offers a ‘versatile, penetrating and useful approach to the study’ of international law. ³