Transcript WHAT IS HUMAN SECURITY?

WHAT IS HUMAN
SECURITY?
1)‘I was young and travelled alone, not knowing the
road:
I felt rich when I found a comrade.
Man is man’s delight.’
2) ‘Homo homini lupus’
HUMAN SECURITY…
• Is not state-based or purely military
• Makes the human being the measure of
problems and goal of solutions
• Automatically multiplies dimensions
• Brings in non-state actors on all sides
• Should also empower the individual (but
can be ‘top-down’)
H.S. AS THEME OF CURRENT
STUDY AND POLICY
• Used mainly by the North about the South
(What is our own equivalent??)
• Argument for intervention - qualifying
sovereignty (‘responsibility to protect’,UN
2005)
• Can include protecting life and quality of life
(human and political rights)
• An approach to analysing life risks and
resource priorities (eg E Sköns)
SOME ISSUES
• Which norms? Variable factors of life and
death, subjective differences
• Focus on violence (many types) or other
causes of suffering + death?
• Include arms issues (which?) + laws of war?
• ‘Humanitarian ops’ with h.content and
methods, or h. goals?
• Risk of forgetting ‘human’ issues of traditional
war and defence
SOME PRACTICAL DETAILS
• Is the human security rationale the
strongest for intervening - but why are
so few operations guided by it?
• Should an h. op. just ‘heal’, or reform?
• Other tools and methods? What is the
North’s overall aim and impact?
• How much individual self-help??
AFTER THE BREAK
• We are focussing on different ways that
independent experts can define and
document human security - to illustrate
the breadth, the intellectual interest, but
also the ambiguity and possible
confusion surrounding the concept
THE CANADIAN ‘HUMAN
SECURITY REPORT’
• Brainchild of Andy Mack, originally at
Univ of British Columbia in Vancouver
• Used very reputable conflict data (from
Uppsala, cf www.ucdp.uu.se) +
stressed decline in conflicts + deaths
• Criticism of conclusions; inspired
Brzoska and Sköns bits in SIPRI YB07
NOW COMPARE MACK AND
SKÖNS APPROACHES
• First, any similarities???
CHOICE OF STATISTICS
• Which ones do they base their analysis
on? Taken from where?
• Compare/contrast the treatment and
priority each of them gives to
- armed conflict
- terrorism
- problems of development
Lessons/Recommendations
• What audience are these reports
addressing? What actions or policy
changes would each of them logically
point to?
Your Assessment
• Which of the two treatments do you find
personally more sympathetic and
convincing?
• Which is more useful as a guide for
governments + institutions?
• And which for ordinary people?
• Do you find something missing in both?