The European Union’s Human Security Discourse: Conceptualization and Justification

Abstract

Human security has been central to “normative power” Europe, hence it is worth asking whether its conceptualization in EU foreign policy and foreign policy discourse is normatively defensible. Important challenges for human security lie in determining how compelling principles can be conceptualized, justified, and practiced for particular missions, and in how these norms relate to the broader legitimacy of missions. After reviewing the human security discourse in the EU and the somewhat sparse normative critiques of it, this article focuses on two principles articulated in the relevant policy discourse: “legitimate political authority” and a “bottom-up” approach. The first requires local consent and support for human security missions, whilst the second requires that missions address the actual insecurities and needs important to beneficiaries. The argument is that this human security approach suffers two problems regarding norm justification and legitimacy. First, there is a tendency to conceptualize human security as an objective norm, whereas the concept only makes sense when understood subjectively through a discursive process between security providers and beneficiaries. These conceptual characteristics are elucidated by considering the debts of human security thinking to the “capabilities approach” to welfare and development. Second legitimizing human security intervention by consent is unhelpful, since what is actually needed is emerging and ongoing discursive political interaction and co-agency with local communities. Since the appropriate procedures for conceptualizing and for legitimizing human missions are procedurally related, adopting an interpretive and discursive approach to human security is recommended for EU security policy.