Using Human Security to Harness Human Rights in the Post-COVID World

Abstract

In a global pandemic, it is commonplace to look toward global solutions for global issues. But the pandemic has highlighted how states cannot unilaterally counter complex threats that cross borders unseen. One lesson from the current COVID-19 pandemic is that states must cooperate not just amongst themselves but also with a broad range of non-state actors to better realise human rights, particularly the right to health. But the state-based international system is not geared toward such relationships where the key voices in international organisations, for example, are states. Top-down decision making by the international community can fail to consider the lived experiences of individuals and reduce our humanity. How then can the international community ensure local involvement in decision-making on human rights, and “new” human rights in particular, such as the right to health, that affect peoples’ daily lives in a multitude of ways? This post looks at how the non-legal concept of ‘human security’, coined by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), can be used to encourage the empowerment of the local to inform and contribute to decision-making in relation to human rights. Human security can help reshape the international system to prioritise the empowerment of individuals and groups to have ownership of their rights and contextualise action on “new” human rights.