Reconstituting 'Human Security' in a New Security Environment: On Australian, Two Canadians and Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 25 Australian Year Book of International Law 2006

25 Aust. YBIL 1 (2006)
Reconstituting 'Human Security' in a New Security Environment: On Australian, Two Canadians and Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

handle is hein.journals/ayil25 and id is 11 raw text is: Reconstituting 'Human Security' in a
New Security Environment:
One Australian, Two Canadians and Article 3 of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Greg Came*
I. Introduction
This article explores a controversial claim by the Commonwealth
Attorney-General that counter-terrorism legislation is justified by reference to
the obligations of governments to ensure their citizens' human security, which,
in turn, is suggested to flow from article 3 of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights (UDHR).1 As the title suggests, the article focuses upon and
analyses the views of the Attorney-General (the one Australian) and two
Canadians influential in the field of human security, as the Attorney-General's
particular assertions regarding human security and human rights have been
articulated and advanced by citing the writings of these two Canadians,
Irwin Cotler and Louise Arbour.
The article commences with a conceptual and thematic overview of a series
of claims by the Commonwealth Attorney-General, positioning
counter-terrorism national security measures within the framework and
language of human rights. There follows an examination of the conventional
understandings of the concept of human security in an international context.
The article proceeds to a discussion of the relationship between human rights
and human security as articulated by various United Nations (UN) bodies,
including those developing counter-terrorism responses. Both of these
discussions provide necessary background material to obtain a clear
understanding of the Australianised reconstruction of human security and the
extent of departure in that reconstruction from mainstream understandings. It is
then demonstrated that the concept of human security is appropriated and re-
invented to be presented as synonymous with a framework for the realisation of
rights.
A detailed analysis is then made of article 3 of the UDHR as the claimed
source of government obligations to enact security legislation in keeping with
the Attorney-General's reconstructed concept of human security. This illustrates
that the history and circumstances of article 3 make that claim problematic and
contentious on several levels. It is also noted that the first invocation of human
* Faculty of Law, The University of Tasmania. The author would like to thank the
two anonymous referees for their comments on a draft of this article.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, GA Res 217A (1948).

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