Theoretical Logic of the Right to Security

HE Zhipeng

Abstract: The growing significance of security issues has expanded the necessity and possibility of recognizing and achieving the goal of security from the perspective of human rights. Combined with socio-cultural and historical dynamics, human rights can be construed as the needs of people to which social authorities should and can respond, and their mechanism depends on "the alignment between people's intrinsic needs and the social resources available.” Security, as a significant part of people’s intrinsic needs, should be supported by social resources; social authorities at all levels have the duty and potential to support people’s security needs. Thus, security has the socio-cultural basis to be considered as a branch of human rights. Once the human rights attribution of security has been established, further consideration is required for its place in the human rights spectrum. When analyzing the existing set of human rights, we can classify them based on the subject, the object, or the goal. The right to security is more appropriately classified within the dimension of goals, thereby being placed alongside the right to subsistence and the right to development. Integrating security into human rights can resolve the relationship between the right to security and other human rights using the theoretical framework of rights conflict, rights hierarchy, and rights system ranking, thereby avoiding the tendency to curb the security needs of countries and individuals by ideologizing human rights.

Keywords: human rights · security · the right to security · human rights spectrum · human rights classification · targeted human rights