HUMAN RIGHTS, HUMAN NEEDS, HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, HUMAN SECURITY Relationships between four international ‘human’ discourses Des Gasper 1 Institute of Social Studies, The Hague gasper@iss.nl Pre-final version of 2007 paper in Forum for Development Studies, 34(1), 9-43. Biographical statement: Des Gasper (1953) works in the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, a graduate school of international development studies. Main areas of interest: policy discourse, human development and development ethics. Recent publications include: ‘Human Well-Being: Concepts and Conceptualizations’, in Human Well-Being: Concept and Measurement, edited by M. McGillivray, Palgrave, 2007; ‘Living In Common And Deliberating In Common - Foundational issues in sustainable human development and human security’, co-edited special issue of International Journal of Social Economics, 2007, 34 (1/2); ‘Cosmopolitanisms and the Frontiers of Justice’, edited section in Development and Change, 2006, 37(6). Abstract: Human rights, human development and human security form increasingly important, partly interconnected, partly competitive and misunderstood ethical and policy discourses. Each tries to humanize a pre-existing and unavoidable major discourse of everyday life, policy and politics; each has emerged within the United Nations world; each relies implicitly on a conceptualisation of human need; each has specific strengths. Yet mutual communication, understanding and co- operation are deficient, especially between human rights and the other discourses. The paper tries to identify respective strengths, weaknesses, and potential complementarity. It suggests that human security discourse may offer a working alliance between humanized discourses of rights, development and need. Keywords: human rights, human development, human needs, human security 1 My thanks for their comments go to participants at the NFU 2006 conference in Oslo and in two GARNET meetings and other presentations in The Hague and Leiden.