What Does A State Secure Make? Interpreting National Security in the Light of International Human Rights Law

This chapter aims at outlining trends and challenges relating to the somewhat elusive notion of national security and its troubled relationship with human rights, arguing that, instead of being necessarily seen as “inherently opposed” in the interests they pursue, the two should be looked at from a different perspective and reconciled. The chapter first illustrates the reasons behind the need to revisit the very notion of national security itself and to reinterpret the State’s role and the corresponding limitations to its powers. The subsequent section makes the case for the necessity to depart from a merely State-centred interpretation of security, flagging-through the analysis of specific cases-that the assumption that the State is always a benign entity, whose interests are worth protection no matter what, may be tragically wrong. The State can actually be the “villain of the piece”, often in the very (abused) name of national security and thus it should not be given carte blanche. Along these lines, the chapter then recounts instances where the “national security card” has been played by governments, unravelling the dangers entrenched therein and reaffirming the need to remain vigilant in order to avoid creating loopholes in the protection of human rights, which would ultimately endanger security, rather than protecting it. Section 5 of the chapter emphasises the importance of detecting and firmly rejecting recurrent attempts at relativizing-often in the name of national security-the absolute prohibition of torture. Finally, some conclusions are offered to answer the question underlying the entire chapter, which remains both a recurrent trend and a challenge in international law: “what does a State truly secure make”?.