Human Security and the Construction of Security.

Research addressing the concept of security in international relations or a specific approach to security, almost always begins with a reflection on the extent to which security has become an essentially contested concept and that the end of the Cold War has created an opportunity or expectation that security will be broadened, redefined or reconstituted. This paper focuses on the Human Security discourse of security, a discourse that has received a significant amount of recent attention at both the academic and political level. An implicit assumption of Human Security is that the elevation of issues of human rights, economic inequality and environmental change, to the realm of security will allow greater priority to these issues. The focus in this paper will be on discussions of security in a prescriptive rather than descriptive sense. This paper will briefly summarise the Human Security discourse, then address criticisms of Human Security as a policy agenda and discourse. Criticism of Human Security is concerned with its universalism and its foundation on Western values.