Human Security Studies

The following sections are included:

• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations

Nothing will bring us a greater sense of urgency in the twenty-first century than the growing number of threats (actual, perceived, and speculated upon) to human survival and safety. There is nothing more challenging to the political, academic, and activist communities around the world today than finding innovative ways to overcome the multiplying sources of threat to humanity, many of which — both military and nonmilitary — have now become global. As will be seen throughout this book, the study of human security shifts attention away from the focus on the threat, use, and control of military force with the aim of securing states and their peoples, to the question of how to secure people's freedom from fear and want. We will examine how ending, mitigating, preempting, or preventing the existence and threat of both direct physical and indirect nonphysical violence or structural constraints can take place through the use of various means designed to ensure personal protection and development/empowerment. The end of the Cold War made this shift of focus possible. However, the questions of which humans should be secured, what type of threat to them should be dealt with, who provides for their security, and how remain highly controversial because the answers depend on the ideological position or the theory one adopts…

The concept of security is essentially contested.¹ National security remains the best-known position on the matter, but has been subject to empirical scrutiny and normative judgment. Until the end of the Cold War, the literature on national security was still expanding. As one scholar writes in a 1990 article, “Every year scores of books and hundreds of articles appear on the topic of national security.”² This does not mean that the concept of national security is now universally accepted as the policy framework guiding all national leaders. In fact, the concept is understood in different ways and has evolved in terms of space and time. Policymakers and scholars have used the concept, but their interpretations, too, are subjective. Proponents of collective security were silent between the 1930s and the 1980s (except during the Korean War), because this concept (advocated by liberal internationalists after World War I) was not resurrected until after the Cold War. Other concepts of security have also been proposed. Beginning in the early 1980s, some state leaders advocated new versions of security, most notably those of comprehensive security and common security. Neither of these concepts has been universally accepted either. Cooperative, transnational, and global security then gained momentum in the early 1990s. In the mid-1990s, the concept of human security also emerged and it has since evolved. Human security is distinct from the other concepts of security in that it places emphasis on the need to secure humanity, not just states or their national citizens, through reliance on both military and nonmilitary means used to promote freedom from fear and want. These concepts are distinct in terms of how advocates answer the questions of what is being secured, what is being secured against, who provides for security, and how.

This chapter focuses on liberalism as a theoretical tradition that helps guide both global legalists and global developmentalists, who nevertheless formulate the concept of human security in different ways. Liberals in general assume that there is a conceptual shift of focus from military security at the state level to individual security. Threats to human security, both military and nonmilitary, are multiple. States remain important, but they are not the only actors in global politics. In an increasingly globalized world, other actors are becoming as important as states, and possibly even more so. Another liberal assumption is that these actors are rational, in that they are self-interested but capable of taking collective action. With international institutional arrangements, coordination and collaborative action are possible, so that together these actors form global governance. Liberal advocates of human security can be divided into two theoretical groups: global legalists and global developmentalists. Global legalists build a framework known as global legal governance. With theoretical grounding in the liberal tradition of international law (especially international humanitarian and human rights law), they focus on threats defined as crimes; pay attention to the actors responsible for enforcing international law, treaties and conventions; and advocate various means prescribed by this tradition. Antonio Franceschet argues that “human security is made intelligible by the politics of applying law and legalism to global politics” and that “many of the human security discourses and initiatives to have emerged since the end of the Cold War are shaped, mobilized but also limited and constrained, by this wider problematic of the legal constitution of global politics.”¹ Global developmentalists, represented by the pioneering work of UNDP, are critical of liberal economism and its emphasis on economic growth that renders some social groups insecure. They draw insights from development ethics and link the security of people to human development and empowerment.²

Political realism as an established theoretical tradition is best known for its state-centric approach to national security and has often been regarded as a dominant paradigm that ignores the plight of humankind. Critics have accused political realists of a self-fulfilling prophecy about war and organized violence throughout history and make a clear distinction between realist geostrategic and human security studies. Andrew Linklater notes that “realism regards empathy and understanding as important ways of mitigating the worst effects of international anarchy, but it is disinclined to believe that they could ever provide the foundations of an alternative world order.”¹ This chapter contends that realism does not completely ignore human security. Realists are aware of human suffering, but the question they pose is of how realistic it is to secure humans beyond national borders. Realists clash with liberal globalists on the question of whose responsibility it is to protect people. Because they are sovereign and operate in a condition of anarchy, realists argue, states are the principal referent object of security, but they are not made up only of territory and material, non-human elements. The security of national citizens must be protected, and it is the primary responsibility of states to protect their own citizens, because other actors like international organizations cannot effectively fulfill this role. Force remains essential to the process of state building and maintenance, but international intervention to build state structures for humanitarian purposes has its limitations. The idea of providing security to non-citizens anywhere in the world may be desirable, but also prove unrealistic in the absence of a single world government.

While they view political realism in a negative light, critical theorists are also dissatisfied with the liberal optimistic approach to human security and have now advanced their radical perspectives on the concept. They may be grouped together as an intellectual camp belonging to the Critical Theory tradition,¹ some of whom have embraced human security, though in a way that is far more radical than liberal globalism. The intellectual roots of this tradition can be traced back to the work of anarchists, socialists, Marxists, dependency/world system theorists, the Frankfurt School and neo-Gramscians, dependency theorists, postmodernists, poststructuralists,² and even feminists (as will be discussed later, feminists are not a homogeneous group of scholars since they belong to various theoretical traditions). Critical of liberalism, they view the current form of global governance as an imperialist or oppressive system; some also point to the fact that individualism as part of Western liberalism and Christian cultural tradition is not the only road to ensuring and enhancing human security. Other religious traditions can also make contributions to the study of human security.³ Edward Newman is correct in recognizing that critical scholars are “suspicious of human security as a hegemonic discourse.”⁴ While contemporary critical theorists emphasize the security of individuals, they go far beyond the progressive need for effective liberal global governance. Their security visions are far more radical than liberal ones: they aim to transform politics by advocating a far more just world security order based on the radical conception of human emancipation.

Feminist perspectives on the security of individuals are not new. Long before the UNDP popularized the concept of human security, feminists had advocated the need to consider the plight and role of women in various fields of study. Feminists question the idea that the ‘human security paradigm’ is new. The basic issues raised by exponents of human security since the mid-1990s have been developed by feminists as well as by critical theorists who emphasize the need for human emancipation. Ryerson Christie notes: “More than any other forms of critical scholarship, feminist literatures have seemingly been the most willing to embrace the language of human security to advance particular goals.”¹ Feminists make the case that the concept of human security advocated by liberal legalists and developmentalists does not radically depart from the statist concept of national security and may even reinforce gender-blind human security.² Feminists are committed to “making the invisible visible, bring women's lives to the center, rendering the trivial important, putting the spotlight on women as competent actors, and understanding women as subjects rather than objects of men.”³ One cannot talk about human security without talking about the security of women and gender security.⁴ Going beyond the liberal framework, feminists focus their attention on mass sexual and gender-based violence as a threat not only to international and national security but, more importantly, to human security, and especially to the security of women.

We have so far discussed theories of human security and learned that scholars belonging to different intellectual traditions disagree on how to promote and achieve this type of concept. Their differences are also epistemological and methodological in nature. While theory is a useful tool to help us explain and understand social and political phenomena, methods are a set of techniques designed to help researchers collect data to build or test theories. This chapter discusses method concepts of human security and makes the case that we should focus instead on the need to ‘measure’ or assess the effectiveness of human security policy instruments designed to achieve certain concrete objectives. Methodological choices, however, also depend on the epistemological and theoretical positions that scholars adopt. Most researchers, if not all, use both qualitative and quantitative methods. Quantitative research is often regarded as scientific and associated with positivism, whereas qualitative research is critical of scientific reasoning and associated with post-positivism. Lloyd Axworthy, for instance, sees the need “to develop a science of human security where we take the incredible advances and insights of our scientists and translate them into (an) understanding of how security issues affect the human condition.”¹ Some other scholars tend to rely on qualitative methods because they do not think that the concept can ever be measured precisely. They especially seek to understand how secure people are by examining their different social, cultural, and institutional contexts as well as symbolic and social processes. There are, however, limits to each of the two methods of analysis. Combining them provides more holistic perspectives on human security, and comparative case studies appear to be analytically useful.

This chapter presents four different theoretical perspectives on armed intervention for the protection of people under threat, especially the threat of the most serious crimes, namely war crimes, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. The ICISS sets the bar of intervention very high by limiting criteria for humanitarian intervention to large-scale loss of life and ethnic cleansing, either current or anticipated. Scholars disagree on whether to support this form of intervention. Different perspectives offer different views about calls for military action to stop the crimes being committed. States have reached some consensus on this issue, but have not been able to translate this into consistent and effective action. Global legalists remain optimistic about the R2P norm's potential to be implemented on the ground, but realists continue to see its various limitations, including the lack of political will among states. Critical theorists also point to the limitations of armed intervention, viewing it as superficial and disregarding structural challenges. Feminists are critical of liberal thinking on the issue of armed intervention, arguing that more needs to be done before human security in general and the security of women in particular can be ensured. This chapter concludes that armed humanitarian intervention can help protect people if its proponents take into account some of the criticisms leveled against it, but that expectation should be limited by the existing reality that the international role in protecting people against the most serious crimes everywhere remains ad hoc and inadequate.

The academic and policy literature on disarmament, demobilization, reintegration, and more recently, demining, continues to grow as attention is paid to the need to reduce or eliminate direct physical violence against civilians.¹ Global efforts to reduce or eliminate the threat of small arms and light weapons (SALW) and to ban landmines as well as to remove them have garnered global attention since the 1990s. The question is whether enough progress has been made, and whether the promotion of human security through these efforts has now made realism less relevant, leaving less room for criticism from critical theorists and feminists alike. This chapter introduces the perspectives on these human security strategies advanced by liberals, realists, critical theorists and feminists. The chapter concludes that liberals have contributed to the improvement of human security, but that the level of improvement remains limited. The progress made so far is not enough to convince realists that their worldview is out of date. Critical perspectives show the limitations of liberal efforts to reduce armed violence that are focused on state-building and global economic integration while the arms trade continues unabated. Feminists accuse liberals of gender insensitivity that leaves women and girls insecure. Despite the progress made, the threats of small arms, light weapons, and landmines are likely to continue unless more states become institutionally democratic and unless democratic states take effective action to ban small arms and light weapons.

The effectiveness of sanctions (which include diplomatic isolation, restrictions on international travel, trade and financial transactions, and arms embargoes as part of a coercive method for international peace and security) has generated much controversy. Disagreement on whether international sanctions work persists. On one hand, some proponents of sanctions argue that this method can be more effective than the use of military force and is more humane and this new sense of optimism gained momentum in the 1990s.¹ On the other hand, other scholars argue that they do not work.² The reasons given for their failure include pervasive nationalism within target states, their modern administrative capabilities and their ruling elites' capacity to shift the burden of sanctions onto their opponents or onto disenfranchised groups. According to pessimists, sanctions are not as humane as they are often thought.³ More recent efforts have been made to reduce or avoid undesirable effects. Sanctions have been imposed and peace negotiations have been made in the interests of protecting and promoting human rights. ‘Smart’ sanctions have now been put into practice; these selectively target those who commit crimes but seek to protect innocent civilians. Realists, critical theorists, and feminists view sanctions with varying degrees of pessimism, and evidence appears to support the proposition that this policy often does more harm to people than to target elements. Overall, economic sanctions appear to have become smarter; however, this instrument remains ‘dumb,’ in that it often fails to prevent its negative consequences.

Since the 1990s, transitional justice in general and criminal or retributive justice in particular has received growing attention from academics, policy makers, and practitioners, especially from those who advocate human security. Some scholars have assessed the impact of domestic or national trials on human rights practices within states,¹ while others have done so at both national and international levels by focusing on the role of national courts, international criminal tribunals and the International Criminal Court (ICC).² Proponents of retributive justice remain optimistic about the positive impact of criminal trials on peace and the promotion of human security, ever confident that this judicial process helps protect against mass murder.³ As Mark Freeman notes, “the importance of criminal trials remains unrivaled. No other mechanism is perceived to have a greater impact on deterrence, public confidence in the state's ability and willingness to enforce the law, and a victim's sense of justice.”⁴ As will be discussed, this legalistic approach to human security has received criticism from academic cynics and skeptics subscribing to realist, critical, and feminist theoretical traditions. Overall the pursuit of retributive justice against those in war-torn countries has made some institutional progress, but the extent of its success remains far from satisfactory; the negative consequences of this policy have been recognized by advocates and their critics.

The debate on whether to include the need to build democratic institutions and promote human rights in the R2P framework continues, with those in favor of its inclusion relying on insights from the academic literature on the relationship between democracy and peace or human security that has been expanding since the mid-1990s. Some scholars believe that democratic societies have better records than authoritarian ones when it comes to their ability to promote peace among and within states and their capacity to reduce threats to human rights. In the context of human security, they contend that democratic regimes are less likely to collapse into civil wars.¹ Democratic regimes are also more likely to protect and promote human rights.² The extent to which the promotion of human rights and democracy has enhanced human security is difficult to assess, and scholars continue to disagree. While liberals remain optimistic about a secure world based on democratic states promoting human security, realists maintain skepticism about democratic peacefulness. Critical theorists, however, see the limitations and dangers of liberal democracy as a political system promoting liberal values, and feminists identify security challenges that women face even when they live in democracies. The latter two positions advocate a more radical form of democracy — one that is more inclusive of the marginalized, of minority groups and of women. Each of these theoretical perspectives contributes useful insights to the debate on how realistic it is to promote human rights and democracy in a world still divided by democratic and authoritarian states.

Global developmentalists maintain optimism about their approach to human security because of its emphasis on human development. States and international organizations, especially multilateral donors, have taken more and more interest in the idea of empowering individuals. Realists, however, remain skeptical about this liberal optimism, thinking that development is a matter of what the state does to ensure the economic security of its citizens, which may include such things as food security. They caution against any dependence on the role of multinational corporations and international organizations like the United Nations for the security of citizens. Critical theorists are generally anti-market and critical of globalization, seeing the world capitalist economy as a global structural source of threat to human development. Unlike global developmentalists who regard a liberal international economic order as a positive force for development, critical theorists see a relationship between globalization and war or armed conflict, or structural violence against humans. Feminist thinking on human security through human development also tends to expose the gender-neutral policies of global developmentalism that are thought to have negative effects on poor countries and particularly on the wellbeing of women and children. Non-liberal scholars remain critical of the promises made by proponents of global developmentalism. In empirical terms, the liberal vision for human security through human development remains far from fulfilled. There are limits to what international organizations and other foreign actors can do to meet all expectations, particularly those raised by critical scholars and feminists.

The study of human security is a relatively young field, but the idea behind the concept can be traced back to the restless search for human survival and safety from time immemorial or at least to the early dawn of human history. The search evolved from the religious promise of divine protection and spiritual salvation, to that of the secular movement aimed to rescue humans from the perils of anarchy in the state of nature with the assurance that only the Leviathan or the state could secure individuals within the national borders, and most recently to the idea that only world government or global governance can accomplish the mission. Human Security Studies as an academic field is thus likely to endure; it is not about the threat, use and control of military force with the aim of securing states and their peoples alone, but primarily about how to secure people's freedom from fear and want. This can be achieved by ending or mitigating and preempting or preventing the existence and threat of both direct physical and indirect nonphysical/structural violence through the use of various means designed to ensure personal protection and development/empowerment. The human security framework has chipped away at the conceptual foundation of national and international security, but it is far from clear that humans have now emerged as the principal referent object of security in practice. This book argues that the key to understanding human security is intervention on behalf of humanity and that this lies at the heart of the controversy among scholars in contemporary security studies. A world order for humanity remains possible, if built upon a realistic foundation…

The following sections are included:

• Bibliography
• Index