Introduction to Human Security

1. The coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic is the
defining global health crisis of our time and
the greatest challenge we have faced since
World War Two. Since its emergence in Asia
late last year, the virus has spread to every
continent except Antarctica. Cases are rising
daily in Africa, the Americas,
and Europe.

2. Human Security
Human Security — the Contemporary Paradigm? Author(s): ŠÁRKA WAISOVÁ Source: Perspectives, No. 20 (Summer 2003), pp. 58-72
Published by: Institute of International Relations, NGO Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23615865
• What is that?
• When and why this concept emerged and evolved?
• What are the dimensions?
• What are the approaches?
• What other scholars say?
• Why now?
What is that?
Human security means to protect the vital core of all human lives in ways that enhance
human freedoms and human fulfillment
- Commission on Human Security (CHS)

3. When and why this concept emerged ?
By the end of the Cold War the international environment and basic conditions of
international relations had changed. The new international environment created
debates about many topics. Security one among them.
The military sense of security dominated from the Revolutionary and Napoleonic
Wars to bipolar superpower rivalry. However, in the 1990s in the debate about
security a new term appeared - 'human security’
Human security has become something of a catchword, used by UN agencies,
national development aid agencies and international as well as national NGOs,
and last but not least by international relations scholars (but general
ly not by states!) mostly in relation to policy towards underdeveloped countries.
The United Nations has been at the forefront of this debate.

4. 1970s - Oil shocks economic issues entered the national security debate -
Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye: That military security does not consistently
dominate
1980s, - The work of the Copenhagen school: (scholars from Copenhagen
Peace Research Institute, such as B. Buzan, O. Waever, J. de Wilde, P.
Lemaitre, M. Kelstrup) rejected the traditionalist, restricted approach to
political-military security
1990s by the Third World school (Acharya, Ayoob) and by critics of ethno
centrism: Criticized the Euro-American framework for security analysis
The idea of rights for the individual or groups (mankind, the family) which
should exist independently of the state led to the emergence of the human
security concept
When and why this concept evolved?
National security to Human security

5. Dimensions of human security :
Food security (expressed in terms of the quantitative and qualitative availability of
food),
Health security (diseases, new viruses),
Environmental security (air, water, soil and forest degradation),
Personal security (conflict, poverty, terrorism),
Community security (ethnic and cultural conflict)
Economic security (unemployment, job insecurity, disparities in income and
resources, poverty and homelessness),
and Political security (violation of human rights)

6. Two main approaches to human security in
international relations;
the first is the United Nations approach,
the other is the Canadian or the so-called
middle-power states approach

7. United Nations approach more exhibited in UNDP (United Nations Development
Program) and UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) security
discourse
Here the PRIORITY IS INDIVIDUAL over the state, and emphasises the role of
INDIRECT THREATS like underdevelopment, environmental degradation,
population displacement etc
There are PROBLEMS WITH THE UN'S HUMAN SECURITY DISCOURSE.
For example
There are different aspects of individual security that can be
contradictory: by promoting the rights of an ethnic minority, for
example, one may simultaneously weaken the coherence of the state
or nation.
The Commission on Human Security (CHS), which was established in January 2001
at the initiative of UNHCR and the Japanese government. The CHS tries to
develop sustainable concept of human security applicable to the UN humanitarian
network.

8. United Nations approach
There is…one new aspect of the relationship
between the state and the individual - there
exist today global threats…which the state is
not able to manage. This is why the
international community should be able to
protect individuals more or less independently
of the state (the state can not be an answer)…

9. THE CANADIAN PERSPECTIVE
The Canadian government established in the mid-1990s a human
security programme
The Canadian definition of human security focuses on the SECURITY
OF PEOPLE complementing the TRADITIONAL EMPHASIS on the
security of states
The Canadian conception pledged openly for HUMANITARIAN
INTERVENTION- THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT

10. HUMAN SECURITY - THE NEXT STEPS IN THE ACADEMIC DEBATE
Besides the UN and Canadian approaches mentioned above, an academic
approach is being discussed and formed … in the second half of the 1990s
Engaged in this are academics such as Keith Krause, Michael Williams (critical security
studies), George Sorensen, Roland Paris, Kanti Bajpai, P. H. Liotta and Gary King and
Christopher
HUMAN SECURITY MEASURABLE…?
SECURITY AS AN INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC GOOD
CONNECTION BETWEEN FORMS OF STATEHOOD AND SOURCES OF THREATS-George
Sorensen distinguishes between the modern, postcolonial and post-modern state
P. H. Liotta talks about the security 'BOOMERANG EFFECT' and the convergence of national
and human security