Human Right to Security in the English Legal Tradition: Myth or Reality? Legal Perspectives

Abstract Security, or the right to it, is found today in many international Human Rights Treaties and Constitutions; it is often articulated alongside peace and the right to liberty from the state. Liberty, for instance, and security may sometimes bring forth duties that are diametrically opposed: one may beg for state protection – security, while the other may focus on protection from the state – liberty [Lazarous L: ‘The Right to Security’ In: Cruft R, Liao MS and Renzo M (2015): ‘The Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights: An Overview’, In: Cruft R, Liao MS and Renzo M (ed.): The Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights. Philosophical Foundations of Law, Oxford, Oxford University Press, p.1]. It is by dint of these opposing dimensions, for instance, that different philosophical perspectives emerge, as to whether security is a right or not.The question that this paper seeks to resolve is: what is the legal certainty and enforceability of the human right to security under the English Legal tradition? To unravel this question, we carefully kempt and analysed the contents of some relevant legal instruments and some literature around the subject. The analysis led to the conclusion that legally speaking (in terms of texts), security is couched, in principle, as a human right, but it remains technically and substantively challenging to capture the essence of such a right for enforceability. It is on the basis of this conclusion that we submit, inter alia, that in furtherance of the security conversation, at present, security may be considered as a human right only to the extent of formal consecration as a matter of principle, but whose substantive contents and components still remain wanting

Keywords: Human rights, security, legal tradition, legal perspective, right to security