Understanding Human Security

Introduction

Human security could be termed as being deliberately protective as it recognizes communities and people as being fatally threatened by event that they are not capable of controlling. Such include; violent conflicts, financial crisis`, shortages of water and food, terrorist attacks, pollution in distant lands among others. Majority of the threats are increasingly destructive if they come about as a surprise. Earthquakes could bring about deaths and damages that could possibly minimized through the construction of buildings that are earthquake resistant. A financial crisis` impoverishing effects could be mitigated by advance putting in place of counter-measures. The effects of famine could also be reduced by early warning systems. It is worth noting that majority of these preparations require the acknowledgement of threats before their coming to pass. Institutions are urged by the human security approach to offer institutionalized protection and not reactive, preventative, rigid and episodic responses. For students who are willing to delve into the realm of politics dissertation help, understand the intricacies of human security. It is going to provide insights into contemporary global challenges and the measures that are required to address them effectively.

This essay will first briefly trace the conceptual origin of human security and explore its potentials regarding the hope it kindled at inception. It will then examine if it has delivered on this potential and, finally, it will review its utility in the future. The essay concludes that human security remains work in progress and retains the utility of rallying both academic and policymakers to shared threats to the individual. However, the extent to which it ultimately represents a reconceptualization of security is minimal because it has not yet overcome its fundamental inadequacies.

Conceptual Origin

The importance of tracing the conceptual origin of human security is to underscore its credibility and legitimacy rooted in popular macro-strategic documents, the intellectual appeal which enabled the hope it inspired, and it's potential.

The UNDP Report of 1994 catalyzed Human security, the intellectual roots of which go back to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 speech of “freedom from fear” and “freedom from

want.” Its genealogy is also traceable to two strands of thinking. The first being the uneven pattern of economic development and the inadequate state-centric security paradigm of the Cold War era, the resultant global advocacy for action manifested in the reports of multinational independent commissions. Notable among these reports was that of the Club of Rome Group, the Willy Brandt Independent Commission on International Development Issues, as well as the UN Commission on Global Governance of 1995. The second strand is rooted in the nexus established between security and human rights, enabled by the Helsinki agreement of 1975, the ensuing East-West détente, and the resultant three components of the agreement- security, economic and social cooperation, and human rights. The ideas espoused in these documents, the debates it instigated, all reinforced the need for a reconceptualization of security, leading to the emergence of the human security concept.

Human Security: potential and utility

Human security`s emergence was aimed at facilitating a focus shift from state security and its corollary-power politics, territoriality, and military defense to the concerns of individuals. By so doing, the political objective of also mobilizing financial and human resources away from traditional security agenda to the development agenda for the benefit of vulnerable people around the world would be met.

By refocusing the security agenda, by “prioritizing the security of people rather than states” and by creating conditions for people to exist in “freedom from fear” and “freedom from want,” human security showed normative attractiveness, leading to a critical turn in theory and practice of international security. Its potential to generate interest in academic debates and the policy community became manifest, thus kindling optimism and expectation from the outset. For example, in the academia, human

security was embraced by some scholars who saw it as being “ultimately about justice and dignity.”

As a departure from neo-realism and the liberal approach to the study of International Relations, human security sought to challenge the dominance of these approaches by opening up and expanding the intellectual and political space necessary for alternative ideas to incubate and flourish. These efforts helped to underscore the indivisibility of physical and material security espoused by the human security concept, which remained disaggregated with unequal attention in state security discourse. It also enabled the blurring of public and private threat domains as well as that of local and global threats to people around the world.

Consequently, ‘Human security’ could be contrasted with ‘national security,’ enabling the directing of global attention to an emerging and broader range of security issues. According to Peterson, human security provided the normative power of “challenging the real threats to human security-ideology and asymmetries of power.”

Human security: Living the promise

Arguably, in academia, human security has mostly lived up to its promise even if there is yet a resolution of its weaknesses. Its appeal enabled think-tanks to embrace the concept and further its debate. For example, prestigious institutions like the UK-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, a pro-establishment body, announced a striking change in its area of concern and took on board discourse on human security. Also, academic faculties of many universities commenced studies on the concept at the graduate level, and many articles and books have been written debating human security.

On the policy side, human security has also made considerable progress. According to Edward Newman:

“A defining characteristic of human security scholarship is its policy relevance, its engagement with policy, and its desire to change security policy in 'progressive' ways. The popularity of the concept since the 1990s - at least in the policy world - is partly attributable to the work of the UN Development Programme and other UN agencies,

including UNESCO and the UN University. The commission on human security, the International Commission on Human Security, the Human Security Trust Fund have led several human security initiatives. The concept has also been adopted as an embryonic foreign policy framework.”

To buttress Newman’s point, for example, the government of Canada led a “middle powers” initiative that was aimed at achieving the goals of human security. Although critics see Canada’s “middle power project” as using the guise of human security agenda to impose its values, multiply its global affairs` influence and power, which it couldn’t through military means, however, this argument does not detract from Canada`s significant achievements in the human security project. Also, in the international arena, the governments of Norway and Japan have done much to advance human security concept narrative, just as their foreign and security policies have endorsed in part the goals of human security. The ‘middle power’ initiative has equally made landmark achievements in bringing about the implementation of the 1999 Ottawa Convention that banned the use of land mines, and, also the 1998 establishment of the International Criminal Court `s (ICC).

Furthermore, intergovernmental organizations have embraced the concept of human security. For example, the European Union (EU), has endorsed the idea stating that “the EU will foster human security through an integrated approach,” underscoring the necessity to alleviate poverty, deprivation and reducing inequalities as a component of its foreign policy issues - including peacekeeping, mediation, peacebuilding, and humanitarian functions. Without explicitly calling it human security, other bodies like the African Union (AU) have adopted the concept.

Expectedly, since introduction, human security has encountered sustained critique due to some of its inadequacies. These include but not limited to, absence of a clear theoretical foundation and consensual definition; lack of agreement on prioritization of

threats to the human, as prioritizing all means prioritizing nothing; lack of acceptable tangible parameters with which risks can be measured; the contradictions of complementarity of state and human security, often used for proxy neo-liberal state intervention.

Its most prominent criticism is particularly related to its lack of a precise definition and ambiguity conceptually. Human safety is likened to the concept of sustainable development which is equally vague. While almost everyone advocates for sustainable development, very few people have a sound understanding of what it really is. Lakhdar Brahimi, a former chair of the UN Panel on Peacekeeping, was once quoted saying that he never used the term human security because he never knew what it meant exactly. The broadening of the concept of security to cover almost everything, ranging from unemployment, to homelessness to pollution and environmental degradation ends up prioritizing everything. When everything is prioritized, then nothing really is.

There are also critics who hold the view that the narrative of human security has been co-opted by states selfishly for the sole purposes of furthering their needs. That goes a long way in augmenting hegemonic narratives and interests instead of challenging and subsequently transforming them. The promulgation of the human security agenda has been used by non-military middle powers like Canada and Norway to cement their international state system positions. That denies the previously marginalized their rightful voices.

Nonetheless, the debate and resolution of these issues is what makes human security a work in progress, gives it value as a platform, and, thus, potential for future engagements.

The future utility of human security

Undoubtedly, the prospects of the human security concept in security studies are assured. First, the concept has immense contribution to our understanding of security by challenging the ideas advanced by other schools of thought. For example, the

challenges it poses to the state-centricity of security analysis is likely to continue. Second, its departure from international liberal order and its offering of an emancipatory appeal with potentials for conflict transformation in contrast to traditional conflict mitigation and conflict resolution will remain an issue of debate in the foreseeable future. Implicitly, these strands of debate would continue to flourish in academia and the policy community. Third, other contested areas like the unresolved debate between the narrow and broad approaches of human security, cross-disciplinary relationship between security, governance, and development, would be further investigated and would engage those in the study of human security in the future. Lastly, further conceptual development of the idea of human security is necessary is on-going, including exploring the critical roles of non-state actors in providing security and influencing the policies of states and international institutions. Therefore, there are more ideas to be developed, more articles, and textbooks to be written concerning human security.

It is argued, academic pursuit in human security research often follows from policy initiatives. As the interest of the policy world continues to grow, especially with the implementation of human security projects, policy and academic inquiry on the operational challenges in the field would also develop.

Conclusion

The human security project in terms of scholarship and policy operationalization is full of promise just as it is fraught with challenges. The objective of human security, which is to improve the lives of insecure individuals will not depend on conceptual clarity, analytical coherence, and measurement tools only. However, in the academic and policy worlds the shortcomings that seem to undermine the growth of the concept of human security would need to be resolved. The debates these would continue to generate in

themselves would open up the space for considering competing visions of security and international politics. They are not, and would not be conflicting but a creative process.

In concluding the arguments, this essay reveals that human security remains work in progress. Its advocates hold the view that it represents a new lens that is emancipatory and broad for viewing security that focuses attention where it is required most. Its proponents are however, of the idea that the adoption of human security has not achieved too much in changing the behaviors of states and in alleviating those pressures that pose threats to the everyday lives of the vulnerable people. It is as such necessary to view the concept of human security with skepticism: as work in progress.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Gjørv, Gunhild Hoogensen, Human Security in Security Studies: An Introduction, (eds). ProQuest Ebook Central, Routledge, 2018.

Kaldor, Mary, Human Security in The Handbook of Global Security Policy, (eds) First Edition. (London: John Wiley & Sons 2014).

Kerr, Pauline, Human Security in

Journal Articles

Duffield, Mark and Waddell, Nicholas, Securing Humans in a Dangerous World, International Politics, 43, (1–23), 2006.

Newman, Edward, Critical Human Security Studies, Review of International Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1), pp. 77-94, January 2010.

Thomas, Nicholas & Tow, William T, The Utility of Human Security: Sovereignty and Humanitarian Intervention, Security Dialogue, Vol. 33(2): 177–192, 2002.

Inglehart, Ronald F. and Norris, Pippa, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Understanding Human Security, Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 35 – No.1, 2012.

Gary King & Christopher J.L. Murray, Rethinking Human Security, Political Science Quarterly, Volume116 Number 4, 2001– 02.

Jenny H. Peterson, Creating Space for Emancipatory Human Security: Liberal Obstructions and the Potential of Agonism, International Studies Quarterly, 57, 318–328, 2013.

Henk, Dan, Col (Retd), Human Security: Relevance and Implications, Parameters, Summer, 2005.

Websites

"50 Years Of Occupation: Lakhdar Brahimi Addresses UN Security Council". 2017. The Elder.

"Disarmament Diplomacy". 1998. THE ACRONYM INSTITUTE.

Johns, Luke. 2014. "A Critical Evaluation Of The Concept Of Human Security". E-INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS STUDENTS.

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