Human security: Defining the elephant and imagining its tasks

Abstract

Like the apocryphal elephant defined by the blind men touching different parts of its anatomy, the content of the phrase "human security" varies with its users. In this sense it is rather like the phrase "self-determination", which is widely employed by and for diverse interests. The lack of uniform definition or use stems in both cases not from intrinsic incoherence but from the way in which, from their first appearance, the phrases seemed to challenge the views, values, and interests of the practitioners of traditional diplomacy, powerful actors who then had a choice: resist them absolutely as rogue concepts threatening the very structure of international relations or neuter their revolutionary potential through an interpretation rendering them compatible with, even a reinforcement of, the basic structure of the status quo. Copyright © Asian Journal of International Law 2010.