Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights at the UN Security Council: Blurring Boundaries in a Social Space

Abstract

How do we study the UN Security Council, a bastion of sovereign nation-state politics, from the perspective of “outsiders” such as UN special rapporteurs? This article reimagines the relationship between security and human rights at the UN through a social space approach. By challenging institutional and geographical boundaries between the Security Council in New York and the Human Rights Council in Geneva, I follow actors in a social space in which transversal lines connecting security and human rights become visible. I uncover a social space that is animated by actors, their relations and social positions relative to each other as well as connections between institutions, geographical locations, practical competencies, and material infrastructures. On this basis, I theorize four distinct boundary-blurring practices of UN special rapporteurs: between the issue areas of human rights and security, between the geographical locations of New York and Geneva, between institutions such as the Security Council, Human Rights Council and the OHCHR, and between the domains of politics and law. While these practices help them enter into the social space of the Security Council in New York, special rapporteurs need to pay “entry costs” by accepting the basic premises of the counter-terrorism architecture in return for recognition as valid actors in this architecture. Taking this viewpoint from the outside, I argue, illuminates the extension of the Security Council beyond its institutional confines and uncovers “the human-rightisation” of global security policy.