Human Rights

Essay by mikelrCollege, UndergraduateA, October 2014

download word file, 7 pages 0.0

In order to maintain international security, human security must be insured for the entire world's people. But what is human security, and how does an individual's security translate to international security? Human security is maintaining individual human rights. When a country can maintain human security for its people that country has national security. National security is the internal security and safety of a state. If every state had full national security then there would be international security and peace on earth good be achieved. With this argument, we can see how maintaining human security can lead to international security. International security develops out of weak, failed or collapsed states, through non-state actors. These non-state actors arise, because of poor living conditions in their country. Poor living conditions include oppression, disease, violence and other lack of basic human rights. When a country cannot maintain human security these non-state actors arise and can cause havoc in the state or in the international community like we saw on 9/11.

A new ideology, referred to as Critical Security, arose after the Word Trade Center attacks on 9/11. Before the attacks, the focus of security was through the lens of realism and liberalism. Realism is a political ideology that dictates that world politics is driven by competitive self-interest. The way states maintained security is by beefing up the military. During the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union adopted realism which prevented a violent war that would have had substantial casualties. Through liberalism international institutions, such as the UN and the EU were created in order to maintain peace among states. International institutions create trade treaties, peace treaties and international laws that members must uphold, or they will feel pressure from other, more powerful members. Unfortunately political scientist did not foresee the...