Human rights, human needs, human development, human security: Relationships between four international ‘human’ discourses

Human rights, human development and human security form increasingly
important, partly interconnected, partly competitive and misunderstood ethical
and policy discourses. Each tries to humanize 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 co-operation are deficient, especially between human rights
and the other discourses. The paper tries to identify respective strengths,
weaknesses, and potential complementarity. It suggests that human security
discourse may offer a working alliance between humanized discourses of
rights, development and need.