Human Rights, Human Needs, Human Development, Human Security: elations ships between Four International ‘Human’ Discourses

Abstract

Human rights, human development and human security form increasingly important, partly interconnected, partly competitive and misunderstood ethical and policy discourses. Each tries to humanise a pre-existing and unavoidable major discourse of everyday life, policy and politics; each has emerged within the United Nations world; each relies implicitly on a conceptualisation of human need; each has specific strengths. Yet mutual communication, understanding and cooperation are deficient, especially between human rights and the other discourses. The article tries to identify respective strengths, weaknesses, and potential complementarity. It suggests that human security discourse may offer a working alliance between humanised discourses of rights, development and need.