The Legacy of the Relationship between Rights and Security and its Importance in World Politics

The relationship between human rights and security has left an important legacy that led to different types of regimes, like the Geneva Conventions. This legacy has evolved to benefit human rights more than it did so in the past. From a Foucauldian genealogical point of view, this paper is a progressional deconstruction of the evolution of the relationship focused on the hunt for causes, reasons and factors that gave forth change. The background of the regime has been analysed, with particular attention to the actors involved and their relationship to structural norm transformations. Through the less typical path of agentic constructivism and without losing sense of key structural changes, actors- and their circumstances, properties, constructed identities and interests- have been found to be central in the development and change of these type of norms. This paper argues that the evolution that led to the 1864 Geneva Conventions is very similar to the innovative human right security regimes seen today- like the Arms Trade Treaty. It also argues the centrality and importance of the participation of NGOs in the creation and continuation of the regimes.