Human Security and the Human Rights of Undocumented Migrants: Systemic Vulnerabilities and Obligations of Protection
| Author | Dorothy Estrada-Tanck |
| DOI | 10.1177/138826271301500203 |
| Published date | 01 June 2013 |
| Date | 01 June 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
European Jour nal of Social Sec urity, Volume 15 (2013), No. 2 151
HUMAN SECURITY AND THE HUMAN
RIGHTS OF UNDOCUMENTED MIGRANTS:
SYSTEMIC VULNERABILITIES AND
OBLIGATIONS OF PROTECTION
D E-T*
Abstract
Human security emerged as a post-Cold War discourse out of the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP) in the 1990s, and provides the focus of the 2003
Commission on Human Security Report and the 2012 UN Secretary General’s
Second Report on Human Security. e concept of human security attempts to
confront threats that had been overlo oked by conventional state-centred conceptions
of national security, addressing risks faced by individuals and communities, such
as poverty, HIV/AIDS, and violence against women. It places human rights as one
of its core pillars and advocates a person-centred approach to dangers that create
interlinked vulnerabilities for person s worldwide.
e focus of human rights on the individual o en provides a fragmented picture
of phenomena that are, in fact, interconnected. In response to this, the paper asks
whether the introduction of the concept of human se curity has the potential to enrich
International Human Rights Law by enabling it to adapt to the challenges faced by
undocumented migrants. It examines legal irregularity as a source of risk through
the lens of human security. In review ing illustrative judicial cases from the European
and Inter-American human rights’ systems, it analyses whether a human security-
sensitive approach, with its view of widespread threats, o ers a more integrated
approach towards the rights of undocumented migrants, as well as examining the
consequences that unfold when it i s overlooked.
Keywords: human rights; human security; irregular migration; undocumented
migrants; v ulnerability
* Dorothy Estrad a-Tanck is a PhD candidate i n Law at the European University I nstitute. Address:
Via Boccaccio 121, I-50133 San Domenico d i Fiesole (FI), Italy; tel : +39 347 0682041; email: Dorot hy.
Estrada-Tanck@eui.eu.
Dorothy Estrad a-Tanck
152 Intersentia
1. INTRODUCTION
Human security emerged as a post-Cold War discourse out of the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP 1993 and 1994) and later in the Commission on
Human Security Report of 2003 (CHS 2003). Its purpose was to confront threats
that had been overlooked by conventional State-centred conceptions of national,
military and territorial security. It sought to address risks faced by individuals and
commu nities suc h as envi ronmenta l hazard s, povert y, global infecti ous dise ases such
as HIV/AIDS, violent con icts within States (rather than just between States as have
usually been addressed), food and water scarcity, violence against women and girls,
and transnational organised crime. It placed human rights as one of its core pillars
and advocated a person-centred approach to dangers and harms that create mutual
and interlinked vulnerabilities for persons around the world (Fukuda-Parr 2003:
1–13).
In 1994, building on the original 1945 objectives of the United Nations (UN)
that people should live free from fear and free from want, and taking into account
the di erent types of threats people confront, t he UNDP proposed seven main forms
of human security: health security, economic security, environmental security,
community security, political security, personal security and food security (UNDP
1994: 23–25, emphasis added). Indeed, the post-Cold War context provided a more
favourable setting for tu rning attention to persons instead of States a nd for recognising
the interrelated conditions a ecting them, as this approach was in line with the 1993
Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action of one year before, which rea rmed,
in Article5, the universality, indivisibility and interdependence of all human rights,
thus surpassing a long discussion on the division (and hierarchy) between civil and
political/economic, social and cultural rights (ESC Rights). Recent work by Ruti G.
Teitel recognises the post-Cold War shi from a state perspective to a human secu rity
perspective, through a study of the points of intersection of international norms in
human rights, human itarian and crimina l law, termed humanity’s law more generally,
and has consequently identi ed jurisprudenti al and normative expressions of a human
security framework at work (Teitel 2011: 35–69 and 105–138; and the analysis of the
‘human secu rity turn’ to global justice at 139–164).
Some years a er the end of the Cold War and the production of the 1994
UNDP report, at the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000, UN Secretary-
General Ko Annan called upon the world community to advance the twin goals
of ‘freedom from want’ and ‘freedom from fear’. As a contribution to this e ort,
an independent Commission on Human Security (CHS) was established in 2001,
consisting of a group of experts co-chaired by academic Amartya Sen, Nobel
Laureate in Economics 1998, and Sadako Ogata, former UN High Commissioner
for Refugees. A er two years of deliberation, the Commission submitted its nal
report, Human Security Now, to the UN Secretary-General in May 2003. e 2003
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