In this final chapter I will explore the relationship between procedural rights and security. There is a wide-ranging debate about how best to understand security. Some see it as narrowly focused on keeping States safe from external and internal assaults. There is another group, though, that sees security in a much broader light, in terms of the security of persons, both groups and individuals. Indeed, the UN Charter speaks of a broader conception of security when it links both State sovereignty and human rights to the idea of global security. In what follows I will focus on what has come to be called human security, not merely the security of States, even as I also think that State security is an important topic – one about which I have previously written a volume.

As I indicated at the beginning of Chapter 1, most of the recent literature on global justice and human security in political philosophy has focused on substantive issues, such as claims of economic distributive justice of those in poor countries, or the rights against persecution and genocide. Such rights are extremely important. But, as I have been arguing throughout this book, there is a class of issues that have been given little attention, namely procedural rights such as the right of habeas corpus or non-refoulement at the global level. These rights are arguably just as important for the security of peoples across the globe and yet there is little discussion of them and few effective global institutions that currently consider them. In this chapter I will address this issue in the context of both human and State security in an increasingly interconnected world.