Human Security

Concepts and implications

Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh, Anuradha Chenoy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134134229
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: National Security
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book, now available in paperback, traces the key evolutions in the development of the concept of human security, the various definitions and critiques, how it relates to other concepts, and what it implies for polities, politics, and policy.

Human security is an important subject for the whole world, in particular Asia, as it deals with interactions among fields of social change, such as development, conflict resolution, human rights, and humanitarian assistance. In a globalizing world, in which threats become trans-national and states lose power, security can no longer be studied in a one-dimensional fashion.

Written by authors who are experts in this field and with case studies from different regions (Afghanistan, Central Asia and South Asia) presented throughout, this book - now available in paperback - contributes to this new multidimensional conception of security, analyzes its strengths and weaknesses, and focuses on its implications for analysis and action.

Part I Concepts

It works in ethics, does it work in theory?

1 Rationale and political usage

DOI: 10.4324/9780203965955-2

Simply put, human security debunks the question of ‘security’ from its traditional conception of the safety of states from military threats to concentrate on the safety of people and communities. Once the referent object of security is changed to individuals, it then proposes to extend the notion of ‘safety’ to a condition beyond mere existence (survival) to life worth living, hence, well-being and dignity of human beings. Thus, poverty, for example, is conceptualized as a human security threat – not because it can induce violence which threatens the stability of the state, but because it is a threat to the dignity of individuals. This is human security in a nutshell.

In a case where politics precede academia, mounting interest in the concept by international organizations, regional bodies and national states has led to a number of international conferences, networks, and commissions. Numerous reports have been published, elaborating the concept and applying it to specific situations. Activists have made it a rallying cry to unite diverse hopes, ideologies, and interests. Academics and policy analysts have now joined the discussion in trying to incorporate human security into theories and developing measurements to make it useful for empirical analysis.

Yet, there is no single definition of human security today. The EU, Canadians, Japanese, UNDP and scholars have all come up with different definitions for the term, ranging from a narrow term for prevention of violence to a broad comprehensive view that proposes development, human rights and traditional security together. What has evolved in recent years is thus a hybrid of ideas, declarations, reports, analyses, and critiques that is often difficult to traverse. Despite its straightforward claim, and active engagements by institutions and scholars, human security – its concept, framework, or policy agenda – has no consensual definition. Each proponent of the concept has his or her own definition, vindicating the critics’ view that ‘the content of human security really is in the eye of the beholder’ (Paris, 2004: 36) Does this elasticity of definition detract or add to the concept and its practice?

Can human security be a useful paradigm shift – as human development was the early 1990s – for policy makers and academics, or is it simply a rallying cry: a ‘glue that holds together a jumbled coalition’ of middling powers and development agencies that want to exist on the international scene (Paris, 2001)? It is often described as a vague concept with no analytical or practical utility; so broad that it includes everything, and therefore, nothing; a new nemesis from northern countries, wrapped in an excuse to launch just wars and interventions in weak states. Does Human Security signify any conceptual added value or is it just an attempt to ‘securitize’ issues belonging to the fi elds of development, human rights, or confl ict resolution? Are the various defi nitions irreconcilable, or do they converge into a concept that can be studied and implemented?

The authors aim to establish that human security is an idea of our time, an idea worth exploring, cajoling, comparing and using as a policy tool. Before tackling the myriad of definitions and criticisms of human security in Chapter 2, this chapter concentrates on the two factors in its favour. First, it is an idea that answers many of the new questions that have been raised in the past decade. Second, whether or not it is justified, or valid as an academic concept, today human security is on the political agenda of a number of states, international organizations and the UN. For these reasons alone, human security is worthy of examination within the context of international relations in the twenty-first century.

What are we defining and how do we judge human security as a concept?

Security itself, as Smith puts it, is ‘an essentially contested concept’ (Smith, 2002). While Buzan refers to security as ultimately a political process, ‘when an issue is presented as posing an existential threat to a designated referent object’ (Buzan et et al. 1998), it is also helpful to recall, as King and Murray do, the definition from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED): ‘The condition of being protected from or not exposed to danger; safety … Freedom from care, anxiety or apprehension; a feeling of safety or freedom from an absence of danger’ (King and Murray, 2001). Thus, while Buzan explores the political nature of labelling an issue as security, the OED definition emphasizes the subjectivity inherent in security as a ‘feeling’.

The concepts of ‘security’ and ‘insecurity’ have relative connotations in different contexts. For some, insecurity comes from sudden loss of guarantee of access to jobs, health care, social welfare, education, etc. For others insecurity stems from violation of human rights, extremism, domestic violence, spread of conflicts, displacement, etc. To be meaningful, therefore, security needs to be redefined as a subjective experience at the micro level in terms of people's experience. For example, ‘security’ for a farmer in a Kashmir valley is the livelihood he gains from selling his crops, but this form of security is very different from the ‘security’ interests of Pakistan and India who are keen to become nuclear powers. For a school teacher in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, security is the possibility to educate his children and invest in the construction of his house, confident that the little he has today would not be taken away from him tomorrow – a different matter from that of the coalition troops in Paktika, fearful of a suicide attack or a renewal of insurgency by the Taliban or Al Qaeda. We therefore begin by submitting that security is, in fact, in the eye of the beholder.

The history of trying to define and refute human security as a concept has been a battlefield in itself. In international relations and development studies literature, it has been referred to variously as a new theory or concept, as a starting point for analysis, a world view, a political agenda, a policy framework, and even a new paradigm. How important is it to arrive at a consensual definition? As Stoett, advances, ‘defining words is a fundamental act’ (Stoett, 1999). The necessity of understanding such keywords serves to delineate reality, framework and priorities. Definitions can simultaneously restrict or broaden concepts and solutions. More importantly, defining is an act, performed by an actor, and never something neutral or objective, at least where concepts are concerned. It is therefore paramount when attempting to answer ‘What is human security?’ to bear in mind how the definitions emerge from or against past theories, who is defining, for what purposes, and what consequences the definitions entail in terms of action. The concept of human security is anything but neutral from a political or an intellectual point of view, as it implies a renewed look at existing paradigms and responsibilities. Its definition is thus a stake of power among various actors: this would help understand both the proliferation of definitions and the numerous criticisms.

To judge the malleability and usability of a concept, we may consider various questions before attempting to analyse definitions advanced in the political and academic arena.

Is it relevant to the changes of international politics today?

The answer is in the affirmative. The human security approach responds to the need to address the major changes in international relations and, above all, to the increased inter-dependency of nations and individuals. The end of the Cold War did not result in the expected peace dividend. While conflicts continued unabated, new insecurities confronted states and individuals. Security, in this sense the sustainability of development, in itself is questioned because of the persistence of pervasive poverty, lack of entitlement and gender oppression to which societies and individuals are subject. As Kofi Annan notes, the world has changed profoundly since 1945, when the United Nations was created.

Geopolitical patterns, economic trends, technological change and other developments are severely straining the system of collective security that has been in place for the past 60 years. Today's threats – familiar ones with added potency, and some entirely new dangers – are borderless, highly connected, and capable of crippling, and even destroying societies everywhere.

(Annan, 2005b)

The genesis of human security was thus conditioned by the new possibilities and new threats emerging with the end of the bi-polar power blocks. If during the Cold War, security, in the tradition of national security, was the prerogative of the state through military defence, and peace was the absence of war, the end of bipolar competition precipitated powerful transnational actors – private companies, international organizations, NGOs and non-state entities – and enabled them to become relevant actors in international relations. Democratization and globalization heralded ‘power to the people’ through increased activism of global civil society that sought debt relief and fairer international institutions. The flip-side was the rise of networks of discontent, as witnessed in the rise of Al Qaeda (post-September 11) and organized terrorism penetrating borders and making unprecedented use of the Internet. The end of bi-polar competition changed the very nature of threats and their conception. While on the one hand, the risks of a global confrontation and major inter-state conflicts decreased, the shift from a polarized to a globalized environment meant increased awareness of intra-state conflicts, ethnic confrontations, terrorism, migration and forced displacements, extreme poverty, marginalization and exclusion of groups and communities, HIV/AIDs and new diseases, etc. Beyond the opportunities and challenges of the end of the Cold War, the process of globalization enabled the unfettered movement of capital and technology as national barriers were removed for rapid financial movement. This unrestricted movement led to financial meltdowns and economic downturns as seen in the Asian (1997) and Russian (1999) crises, as well as increased trafficking of drugs, people and arms – all with devastating human impacts. Within the various definitions of human security are acknowledgements of these threats as well as the urgent need to address new insecurities that affect millions of people, and which the dominant realist conception of security has failed to explain.

In the post-Cold War period, while conflicts seemed to settle down, the score card on post-conflict rehabilitation and long-term peace-building has yet to prove sustainable gains in international interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq, especially because of continued inattention to inequality between groups and denial of justice – the very reasons for conflict or regime repression in the first place. In the post-September 11 world, the traditional state-based security interests are challenging individual liberties as a global ‘war against terrorism’ is launched to the detriment of war against socio-economic injustices such as poverty. Interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq propagate the use of force for regime change with an increasingly violent backlash of insurgencies and terrorism, while preventive measures such as understanding the root causes of grievances are bypassed in favour of national security concerns. While the decline in the authority of United Nations and its struggle for legitimacy continues, the return of military expenditures and conditionalities as well as the continued tradeoff of guns over butter bear witness to the sustained militarizing of the international political system.

Liberal values such as open societies and open markets, although intended to lift millions out of poverty while setting them on paths towards ‘freedom and liberty’, are also marred by increasing gaps between the haves and the have-nots, with the silent majorities becoming more distant and marginal. Liberal-based interventions may also have exacerbated disillusionment with structural adjustments, shrinking responsibilities and capacities for the states in transition countries, along with fragmentation and localization based on ethnicity, religion and geography in much of the Third World. The uneven pace of economic growth, both in the world and within countries and regions, has resulted in major economic disparities that have increased over time and caused economic insecurities.

It is obvious that innovative international approaches are needed to address the sources of insecurity, remedy the symptoms and prevent the recurrence of threats. Technological innovations, increased wealth, disappearing borders and the end of bi-polar competition have not alleviated our insecurities. These issues and phenomena defy state regulation – in fact, many of them actually result from the states’ failure to provide for people's security. The traditional lexicon of sovereignty and statehood is inadequate when it comes to security in the twenty-first century. These changes have prompted policy makers and scholars to think about more than military defence of state interests and territory, to include ‘welfare beyond warfare’.

Does it pose new questions?

We argue that the added value of the concept of human security lies in the new questions it poses as regards the problem of ‘security’. The shift from state-based to individual-based security introduces three new answers to the questions: ‘security of whom’, ‘security from what’ and ‘security by what means’.

Security of whom?

Human security's contribution to security studies is to designate the individual(s) rather than the state as the ‘referent object’ of security, although this does not abrogate the security of a state, which, in turn, can protect its individuals. Thus, the community, the nation, and other groups are referents of security as long as the security ‘trickles down’ to people. Human security promises a focus on individuals and peoples, but more widely, on values and goals such as dignity, equity and solidarity. But this new paradigm involves more than just setting the individual up as the centre of a const...