The Asia-Pacific Security Lexicon (Upated 2nd Edition)

HUMAN SECURITY

135 HUMAN SECURITY Since the end of the Cold W ar, there have been numerous attempts to redefine and re-focus the concept of security. Perhaps the most controversial and complex is the idea of human security. Though operating at the margins of security discourse and practice it has produced an intense debate on a global basis but also within and across regions including Asia and the Asia-Pacific.1 The phrase “human security” surfaced occasionally in the first nine decades of the twentieth century but only after its formulation in the UNDP’s Human Development Report in 1994 did it begin to penetrate academic and policy discourse. Portrayed alternatively as a new theory , concept, paradigm, analytic starting point, world view, political agenda, normative benchmark, and policy framework, it has inspired a shelf of books, scor es of journal articles, several governmental reports, and dozens of new seminars and teaching programmes. Human security is based on three fundamental assumptions. First, that the individual (or the individual in a gr oup or community, say ethnic Serbs in Bosnia) isone of the referent points (or in some formulationsthe referent point) of security . Traditionally, the nation-state has been the primary r eferent object of security. Security has been concerned with pr otecting territory, or advancing the national interests or core values of states.Advocates of human 02 A_Pac Security Lexicon 9/28/07, 2:49 PM 135 136 security suggest that this emphasis on securing states has been at the expense of the security of people. “For gotten [are] the legitimate concerns of ordinary people who sought security in their daily lives. For many of them security symbolize[s] protection from the threat of disease, hunger , unemployment, crime, social conflict, political repression, and environmental hazards.”2 Second, the concept assumes that the security of the individual or the group is subject to a variety of thr eats of which military threats from outside the state ar e only one and usually not the most significant. The 1994 UNDP Human Development r eport identifies seven main categories: economic security, food security, health security, environmental security, personal security , community security, and political security. Third, human security recognizes there is a possible tension between the security of the individual and that of the nation, the state and the r egime. Some writers make the ar gument that historically the enhancement of a state’s security has often come at the direct expense of the security and well-being of its citizens.3 One governmental report claims that “[s]ince the end of the Cold War, security for the majority of states has incr eased, while security for many of the world’s people has declined.” 4 Some advocates describe the concept as having two goals: freeing people fr om perceived fears, and fr om material want. Ramesh Thakur makes a similar claim using the language of positive and negative freedoms. Negatively, [human security] refers to freedom from: from want, hunger, attack, tortur e, imprisonment without a free and fair trial, discrimination on spurious gr ounds, and so on. Positively, it means fr eedom to: the capacity and opportunity that allows each human being to enjoy life to the fullest without imposing constraints upon others engaged in the same pursuit. While the first may suggest a restrictive role for a limited state, the second calls for a permissive role for an active state.5 Others suggest human security has thr ee components: “human survival, human well-being, and human fr eedom”.6 The most developed variant of this br oad, holistic or comprehensive approach can be found in the findings of the Commission on Human Security , supported by the Japanese HUMAN SECURITY 02 A_Pac Security Lexicon 9/28/07, 2:49 PM 136 137 government and co-chaired by Sadako Ogata and Amartya Sen. Its final report states that: The aim of human security is to pr otect the vital core of all human lives in ways that enhance human fr eedoms and human fulfilment. Human security means pr otecting fundamental freedoms — freedoms that are the essence of life. It means pr otecting people from critical (severe) and pervasive (widespr ead) threats and situations. It means using processes that build on people’s str engths and aspirations. It means cr eating political, social, environmental, economic, military and cultural systems that give people the building blocks of survival, livelihood and dignity.7 The substantive chapters...