The Impact of Human Security upon Theories of International Relations

Human Security was “a kind of unintended child” of the founding fathers of the United Nations. Once born, it refuses to accept the conventional position of the United Nations that how a state treats its own people is its own business. The broad human security norms will continue to find practical expression “as a global public good” in ongoing work of the United Nations System. But, until now, human security as a new concept has not reached the point of a paradigmatic shift in the theorization of international relations. The UN’s espousal of human security has taken root in the academic field of international relations. However, human Security is an overstretched concept of security like a mirage of many others of international relations, and “overstretch” is not simply dangerous for military operations. It is also dangerous for “disciplinary operations” which purport to construct so-called parsimonious theory of international relations. We may be a long way away from the unchallenged dominance of the state as the principal referent of security, but we may be also a longer way from the utopia of the universal, global community of human security.