Human security, development and poverty reduction
Saturday, 5 January 2008
Hasan Mahmud
THE traditional view of security refers exclusively to the national security interests of the state with the use of military to ensure the territorial integrity and sovereignty. Therefore, security studies and security establishments have been focused on foreign and defence policy mechanisms to avoid, prevent and, if needed, win interstate military disputes.
After the Cold War during early 1990s, it has become increasingly evident that security threats towards individuals originate more frequently from within the states. This is particularly true about the breakdown of the civil wars in the regions of Balkans, Africa and South-East Asia. Individuals' life is seen to be severely threatened in these regions resulting thousands of casualties, forced displacement, rape, ethnic cleansing and many other fatal crimes against individuals by the perpetrating states. As a consequence, security for individuals (civilians) has become one of the major concerns with huge import within the international community.
From National Security to Human Security: Human development report 1994 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is a seminal piece in the discourse of human security. It is the first to make the specific claim that individual should be the referent of security instead of the states since state's security has become less vulnerable while that of individuals suffers even by their own state. This claim is supported by the fact of declining instances of inter-state war and increasing intra-state wars during the 1990s. Therefore, it declares that the definition of security in terms of 'carefully constructed safeguards against the threat of a nuclear holocaust' has become redundant in the post-Cold War era. It stresses two aspects of human security: safety from such chronic threats as hunger, diseases and repression; and protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the patterns of daily life.
Consequently, the report proposes human security in terms of the safeguards against 'the threat of global poverty traveling across international borders in the form of drugs, HIV/AIDS, climate change, illegal migration and terrorism'. To ensure human security, it stresses that exclusive focus on territories must be replaced by greater attention on people and security through armaments replaced by security through human development. The concept of human security, as the UNDP develops, is built on four essential characteristics: universalism, interdependence of components, prevention rather than protection, and centred on people.
According to the UNDP formulation, human development and human security are two preconditions for peace and mutually reinforcing. Defining human development as "a process of widening the range of people's choices", it argues that human security denotes people's ability to exercise those choices safely and freely- and with the relative confidence that those choices would sustain.
Here empowerment of people is a crucial aspect in that individuals should be able, and allowed, to take responsibility and opportunities for mastering their lives. Therefore, human security is essentially a preventive as well as integrative concept that includes every individual for whom security is meant. Hence, human security can broadly be defined as having multiple components falling within two categories: freedom from fear and freedom from want.
Sources of Threat: The UNDP report identifies seven prospective sources that include most, but not necessarily all, aspects of human security: economic security, food security, health security, environmental security, personal security, communal security and political security. The report also argues that threats to human security do not only originate by conditions of deprivation, inequality, and instability within the states, but also by the globalisation of threats, for example, unchecked population growth, disparities in economic opportunities, excessive international migration, environmental degradation, drug production and trafficking and international terrorism.
The ultimate argument of the report is that the root causes of threats to human security lies in the structural context of societies that provoke conflict. Therefore, we must go beyond the understanding of physical violence as the only source of security threat and include the structural factors in our analysis of human security. The report claims that resource scarcity, low level of economic growth, inequitable development, and the impact of structural adjustment are important sources of threat. Consequently, sustainable development has become the ultimate solution to conflict resolution and, thus, to ensure human security.
Who Provides Security: To the UNDP, dealing with individual security need- especially their basic economic needs- is a central aspect of conflict resolution. Such conviction is supported by empirical data that shows strong correlations between conflict and structural factors including lack of income, food, healthcare and personal freedom. Therefore, it is argued that 'soldiers in blue beret are no substitute for socio-economic reform. Nor can short-term humanitarian assistance replace long-term development support' in order to ensure human security. Therefore, all the actors concerned with development including states are assumed to contribute to ensuring human security through sustainable development.
Evaluation: It has been recognised by the scholars that human security does not replace but seeks to complement and build upon state security, human rights and human development. It has also been observed that the new conceptualisation of human security stresses on four fundamentals in international relations: first, that security is for the individual, secondly, that human security is the apt and comprehensive term to capture the threat to the physical survival of civilians caught in civil wars, thirdly, that states and regional organisations can effectively incorporate human security in their foreign policy; and finally, that the securitized domains such as economy, environment, health, gender, etc., are also as important aspects to be given priority in the state budget along with military expenditures.
Such a conceptual revision adequately serves two purposes: on the one hand, it helps in the policy battle for resources, and on the other hand, it focuses on a blind spot of the mainstream security studies by assuming the individual as the referent and enforcing the state to accept certain universal norms concerning the protection of individuals within their boundaries.
However, the boundless stretching poses a great weakness in the new conceptualisation of human security with regard to effectiveness: everything related to human rights and human development has come under the umbrella of security and competing for priority consideration. As a result, taking effective measures to ensure human security has become impracticable, if not impossible. The case of Darfuor in Sudan is a staggering example of such impasse where lots of individuals have been suffering and yet receiving almost little attention to improve human security conditions.
Scholars critical about the broad perspective of human security identify pitfalls in three areas in this elaboration of the concept of human security:
First, the term 'security' refers to something deserving priority. In conventional security discourse, territorial integrity and political sovereignty are given most priority with the expectation that this would ensure all other security needs within the state boundary. Since protection from outside invasion is the precondition to have other securities, viz, economic, political, environmental, etc., all the states focus on that. The claim for replacing state-centric security approach by a people-centric approach, although sounds more liberal, has two weaknesses- on the one hand, the claim that less inter-states war and more casualties in intra-state wars do not necessarily prove that national security has become useless; on the other hand, public policy requires prioritising certain aspects over others; it cannot just give same attention to everything concomitantly.
Secondly, putting too many items under the umbrella of human security confuses, rather than clarifies the causes, and with ambiguous causal propositions, any policy formulation is likely to fail, and sometimes may even backfire.
Finally, including everything into human security runs the risk of securitising a range of issues that may unwittingly lead to military solutions to political and/or socio-economic problems.
Some authors also identify the conflict between the normative and practical implications of human security from the experiences of UNHCR. Particularly they spot UNHCR caught in a dilemma of serving donor states (that prefer to keep the refugees within their own home country), on which the organisation depends for its existence, and protecting and assisting the refugees (who may be persecuted in their home country), the task for which it exists. For them, this is because the all-encompassing nature of human security blurs the distinction between human rights and human security and also confuses with regard to prioritising among many goals that are often contradictory with regard to national security interests and human security.
Therefore, we need to explore the clear-cut nature of the link between security and the dignity of individuals and the national security interest of states in order to make the norm of human security more effective.
The writer is a Monbusho Scholar in the Global Studies Programme, Sophia University, Japan and may be reached at 'mahmud735@gmail.com'
THE traditional view of security refers exclusively to the national security interests of the state with the use of military to ensure the territorial integrity and sovereignty. Therefore, security studies and security establishments have been focused on foreign and defence policy mechanisms to avoid, prevent and, if needed, win interstate military disputes.
After the Cold War during early 1990s, it has become increasingly evident that security threats towards individuals originate more frequently from within the states. This is particularly true about the breakdown of the civil wars in the regions of Balkans, Africa and South-East Asia. Individuals' life is seen to be severely threatened in these regions resulting thousands of casualties, forced displacement, rape, ethnic cleansing and many other fatal crimes against individuals by the perpetrating states. As a consequence, security for individuals (civilians) has become one of the major concerns with huge import within the international community.
From National Security to Human Security: Human development report 1994 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is a seminal piece in the discourse of human security. It is the first to make the specific claim that individual should be the referent of security instead of the states since state's security has become less vulnerable while that of individuals suffers even by their own state. This claim is supported by the fact of declining instances of inter-state war and increasing intra-state wars during the 1990s. Therefore, it declares that the definition of security in terms of 'carefully constructed safeguards against the threat of a nuclear holocaust' has become redundant in the post-Cold War era. It stresses two aspects of human security: safety from such chronic threats as hunger, diseases and repression; and protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the patterns of daily life.
Consequently, the report proposes human security in terms of the safeguards against 'the threat of global poverty traveling across international borders in the form of drugs, HIV/AIDS, climate change, illegal migration and terrorism'. To ensure human security, it stresses that exclusive focus on territories must be replaced by greater attention on people and security through armaments replaced by security through human development. The concept of human security, as the UNDP develops, is built on four essential characteristics: universalism, interdependence of components, prevention rather than protection, and centred on people.
According to the UNDP formulation, human development and human security are two preconditions for peace and mutually reinforcing. Defining human development as "a process of widening the range of people's choices", it argues that human security denotes people's ability to exercise those choices safely and freely- and with the relative confidence that those choices would sustain.
Here empowerment of people is a crucial aspect in that individuals should be able, and allowed, to take responsibility and opportunities for mastering their lives. Therefore, human security is essentially a preventive as well as integrative concept that includes every individual for whom security is meant. Hence, human security can broadly be defined as having multiple components falling within two categories: freedom from fear and freedom from want.
Sources of Threat: The UNDP report identifies seven prospective sources that include most, but not necessarily all, aspects of human security: economic security, food security, health security, environmental security, personal security, communal security and political security. The report also argues that threats to human security do not only originate by conditions of deprivation, inequality, and instability within the states, but also by the globalisation of threats, for example, unchecked population growth, disparities in economic opportunities, excessive international migration, environmental degradation, drug production and trafficking and international terrorism.
The ultimate argument of the report is that the root causes of threats to human security lies in the structural context of societies that provoke conflict. Therefore, we must go beyond the understanding of physical violence as the only source of security threat and include the structural factors in our analysis of human security. The report claims that resource scarcity, low level of economic growth, inequitable development, and the impact of structural adjustment are important sources of threat. Consequently, sustainable development has become the ultimate solution to conflict resolution and, thus, to ensure human security.
Who Provides Security: To the UNDP, dealing with individual security need- especially their basic economic needs- is a central aspect of conflict resolution. Such conviction is supported by empirical data that shows strong correlations between conflict and structural factors including lack of income, food, healthcare and personal freedom. Therefore, it is argued that 'soldiers in blue beret are no substitute for socio-economic reform. Nor can short-term humanitarian assistance replace long-term development support' in order to ensure human security. Therefore, all the actors concerned with development including states are assumed to contribute to ensuring human security through sustainable development.
Evaluation: It has been recognised by the scholars that human security does not replace but seeks to complement and build upon state security, human rights and human development. It has also been observed that the new conceptualisation of human security stresses on four fundamentals in international relations: first, that security is for the individual, secondly, that human security is the apt and comprehensive term to capture the threat to the physical survival of civilians caught in civil wars, thirdly, that states and regional organisations can effectively incorporate human security in their foreign policy; and finally, that the securitized domains such as economy, environment, health, gender, etc., are also as important aspects to be given priority in the state budget along with military expenditures.
Such a conceptual revision adequately serves two purposes: on the one hand, it helps in the policy battle for resources, and on the other hand, it focuses on a blind spot of the mainstream security studies by assuming the individual as the referent and enforcing the state to accept certain universal norms concerning the protection of individuals within their boundaries.
However, the boundless stretching poses a great weakness in the new conceptualisation of human security with regard to effectiveness: everything related to human rights and human development has come under the umbrella of security and competing for priority consideration. As a result, taking effective measures to ensure human security has become impracticable, if not impossible. The case of Darfuor in Sudan is a staggering example of such impasse where lots of individuals have been suffering and yet receiving almost little attention to improve human security conditions.
Scholars critical about the broad perspective of human security identify pitfalls in three areas in this elaboration of the concept of human security:
First, the term 'security' refers to something deserving priority. In conventional security discourse, territorial integrity and political sovereignty are given most priority with the expectation that this would ensure all other security needs within the state boundary. Since protection from outside invasion is the precondition to have other securities, viz, economic, political, environmental, etc., all the states focus on that. The claim for replacing state-centric security approach by a people-centric approach, although sounds more liberal, has two weaknesses- on the one hand, the claim that less inter-states war and more casualties in intra-state wars do not necessarily prove that national security has become useless; on the other hand, public policy requires prioritising certain aspects over others; it cannot just give same attention to everything concomitantly.
Secondly, putting too many items under the umbrella of human security confuses, rather than clarifies the causes, and with ambiguous causal propositions, any policy formulation is likely to fail, and sometimes may even backfire.
Finally, including everything into human security runs the risk of securitising a range of issues that may unwittingly lead to military solutions to political and/or socio-economic problems.
Some authors also identify the conflict between the normative and practical implications of human security from the experiences of UNHCR. Particularly they spot UNHCR caught in a dilemma of serving donor states (that prefer to keep the refugees within their own home country), on which the organisation depends for its existence, and protecting and assisting the refugees (who may be persecuted in their home country), the task for which it exists. For them, this is because the all-encompassing nature of human security blurs the distinction between human rights and human security and also confuses with regard to prioritising among many goals that are often contradictory with regard to national security interests and human security.
Therefore, we need to explore the clear-cut nature of the link between security and the dignity of individuals and the national security interest of states in order to make the norm of human security more effective.
The writer is a Monbusho Scholar in the Global Studies Programme, Sophia University, Japan and may be reached at 'mahmud735@gmail.com'