Student: Sofia Rodriguez

Question 1: What purposes can the concept of human security serve for particular
actors? Respond by critically examining what the divide between the ‘narrow’ and
‘broad’ interpretations of human security indicates about actors and structures in
international politics.

Introduction
For several decades, coinciding with the end of the Cold War, security was
treated more holistically from some positions. For some, it is evident that the security
of citizens does not depend strictly and exclusively on the maintenance of State
security. Just because a state is safe does not mean its people are safe. The multitude
of threats and severe global trends that have appeared in recent times have shown
that security is multidimensional.
As a consequence of the interdependence of today's world, individuals are
continually affected by global threats. Conflicts within states, mainly conflicts of an
ethnoreligious nature, failed states, environmental problems, international terrorism,
scarcity of resources and competition for them, marginalization of the majority world,
organized crime, mafias, pandemics, and global militarization. They demand another
vision of security with the individual, Humanity, and communities as their object of
reference.
In this way, the concept of human security emerged in 1994 in the Human
Development Report of the United Nations Development Program. The origin of this
concept lies in the fact that it is simply impossible to protect the freedom and well-
being of individuals from the national security paradigm. Defend that the security of
the human being has other elements such as economic, food, health, environmental,
personal, community, and political security. Defending human security is a
precondition for social, political, and economic development. It, therefore, supposes a
criticism of the state-centric conception of security and proposes that the referent of
security is the individual. The fact that it proposes the individual instead of the State as
a reference does not mean that both concepts of security are mutually exclusive;
national security and human security are reinforced since the threats are from within
and outside the states.
Therefore, the concept of human security is flexible, not finished, in constant feedback.
The paradigms and approaches that have fed it have mainly been globalism, idealism,
and critical approaches, and it has had contributions from different institutions and the
academic world. The spread of democratic values has influenced its birth, the growing
influence of NGOs, globalization processes, and the impact of the media on
humanitarian crises. Moreover, the growing proportion of individuals who have been
affected by conflicts such as pandemics and the recognition that states cannot
individually assume responsibility for protecting individuals.

The purpose of human security

Human security is a dynamic and practical normative framework for dealing
with cross-sectoral and pervasive threats facing governments and individuals. Given
that threats to human security differ widely nationally, internationally, and over time,
applying the concept of human security requires a comprehensive, people-centered,
context-specific assessment of human insecurities. and prevention-oriented. This
approach helps focus attention on existing and emerging threats to the safety and
well-being of individuals and communities.

Furthermore, by determining the specific needs of the affected populations,

human security directly and positively affects people's daily lives, threatening their
livelihoods and dignity. Consequently, promoting human security produces more
immediate and tangible results that comprehensively address the root causes of those
threats; determine the priorities based on the actual needs, vulnerability, and capacity
of governments and people; and highlight inconsistencies between national, regional,
and international policies and responses. Combining these elements helps strengthen
the actions taken by governments and other actors in support of human security.

Moreover, the application of the concept of human security is primarily the

result of a regulatory framework based on two mutually reinforcing pillars: protection
and empowerment. Applying this framework allows for a comprehensive approach
that combines top-down norms, processes, and institutions with bottom-up
instruments, in which participatory processes support the vital role that people play as
agents in defining and exercising their fundamental rights.

Then, by integrating the responses of relevant actors more coherently and effectively,
human security builds on the existing capacities of Governments and people through
integrated and comprehensive responses that harness the comparative advantages of
a wide variety of actors. This response ensures coherence in allocating resources,
objectives, and responsibilities among the agents at the local, national, regional, and
international levels, eliminating the duplication of tasks and promoting focused,
coordinated and cost-effective responses. Meaning safeguarding human security
through proactive and preventative measures in the face of current and new threats is
a must.

Human Security interpretations

The literature on human security, in general, identifies two possible sources of
insecurity: fear and need, according to which there are two conceptions of human
security, one narrow view (freedom from fear), whose leading promoter at the
international level is the State of Canada —followed by other States such as Norway
and Sweden—, and another broad view (freedom from want), usually linked to the
Japanese State.

The first reduces insecurity to the physical violence that people may suffer or to the
deaths caused in the context of armed conflicts, even if the State is not one of the
parties to the conflict, as has been shown by the Human Security Centre, financed by
the Canadian government. The second, for its part, identifies a whole set of new
dimensions from which people's safety could be affected.
In this last conception —promoted by the Japanese government— a new and
expanded catalog of sources from which the safety of human beings could be affected
is contemplated. Human security proposes a way of thinking about the security of
human beings as something complex that can be affected by different dimensions, all
interrelated: economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community, political,
and even gender.
This last dimension is still the subject of controversy since feminist analyzes affirm that
human security has not yet incorporated a gender dimension that complements the
other seven.

Since the 1990s, the discussions on security have broadened, beginning to

contemplate issues that involved something more than threats to the State and its
institutions.
The expansion of the borders - considered a security problem - and its complex
relationship with notions such as human rights and human development constitute
some aspects with which the questioned concept of human security. The desire to
extend the scope of threats and related objects makes it extremely complex to define
what is proper for security and differentiate it from human development and human
rights. However, for some defenders of the concept, human security does not promote
a permanent review of everything despite its vagueness and imprecision. However, it
prioritizes those contexts by identifying severe sources of insecurity from within. These
generally coincide with particular conflict countries, such as Afghanistan, Palestine,
Bangladesh, Estonia, Macedonia, Sierra Leone, East Timor (Gasper, 2015), or those of
the North Caucasus region (Ferreira, 2013).

The critical content of the concept of human security seems to have obscured
itself when powerful countries or the United Nations applied it. Also, some States —
such as Canada, Japan, and Norway— used it within their foreign policy agendas,
reflecting a transition from the heterodoxy that characterized this concept in its
beginnings when formulated by authors such as Mahbub Ul Haq or Sen himself. To a
new orthodoxy of the main currents, when powerful States use it and constitute
meanings where the criticism of the militarist discourses inherited from the times of
the Cold War no longer appears, and above all, where the tenuous links between the
concept of human security and human rights are increasing.

In this way, the actors explain the transit mentioned above in the international
scene using the concept (especially in its narrow view of freedom from fear) to
continue with visions that meant little or nothing in terms of breaking down how to
read security in the times of the Cold War. It is an issue that essentially concerns States
and their protection against external and internal threats.

Examination of human security in international politics

Although human security appears linked to the concepts of human
development and human rights, it has enabled many political uses (meanings) which
do not necessarily link to human rights and human development that inspired this way
of thinking about security (Christie, 2010). On the international stage, the promotion of
human security has received outstanding support from the governments of Canada
and Japan.
For example, when Canada was a member of the UN Security Council,
supported the bombing of Kosovo in 1999 (Rodríguez 2005), and was part of the
coalition of States that intervened militarily in Afghanistan. Within the framework of
the "International War on Terrorism" in 2001, just when the report "The Responsibility
to Protect" was published, it "reformulates and relativizes state sovereignty" (Pérez de
Armiño, 2007, p. 72) and offers justifications for such interventions.
In the case of Japan, in 1998, it adopted a foreign policy focused on promoting
the empowerment and emancipation of communities to reduce structural violence,
based on protection initiatives carried out by the States, some NGOs, and international
entities in charge (Hynek, 2012). Applying human security in Japanese foreign policy
links to initiatives such as the Japan Human Security Commission, created in 2001 to
conceptualize it, and the creation of the Human Security Unit and its Trust Fund, of
which Japan is a member besides the prominent donor.
The Japanese government has understood with the concept of human security that if
people living in particularly conflictive contexts are protected, this will allow it to
protect itself in what is an exercise consistent with its political tradition and with the
new challenges that a globalized world represents (Garcia 2007). Now, even this vision
of human security has been the object of criticism, mainly due to the universalist idea
that lies within it that there is something "human" familiar to all places and subjects.

As Duffield shows (cited by Schering & Wood, 2011), this universalism has been
crossed by the international war against terrorism, in which the contextual specificities
of the conflicts in the world are not distinguished. Instead, it is assumed that in all of
them, the threat to global security is similar and that it is associated with human rights
violations and problems of underdevelopment. Human security, in short, is a concept
linked to human development and human rights. When it was focused on broadening
the discussion on security and referring it to other threats and reference objects, it
made possible a whole plurality of meanings (uses) that do not necessarily correspond
to the emancipatory idea that initially inspired it (Christie, 2010).
From the link between security and development referred to by Duffield, it is possible
to notice that behind development programs, there is an interest in controlling
underdeveloped countries, a kind of biopolitical control, which in his words, enables
control exercises over populations from the south by international agencies. This
author understands that human security is a principle of training "humans," that is,
productive populations and managing insecurities derived from underdevelopment
(Duffield, 2005).

There is, therefore, no effective break in the control practices of some States over
others if human security is compared, for example, with the National Security
Doctrine, even though the latter alludes to internal enemies. The former does not. It is
challenging to identify substantial changes in the way in which some powerful States
continue to influence others that are not.

Conclusion
The concept of human security emerged in the post-Cold War context and
made it possible to expand the discursive field of security. According to this way of
thinking about security, the State was not the only referent object, considering people
as one such object of protection. On the other hand, the concept of human security, by
proposing that security can be affected from one of the multiple dimensions, also
expanded the type of threats from which security can be affected.

In this context of expanding the discursive field of security, the concept of human
security had different meanings. There are at least two human security discourses. In
the first, human security criticizes traditional militaristic visions of security; in the
second, when used by powerful states, it constitutes a new orthodoxy. From the
review of the two securitization processes of this last speech, the conclusion is:

In one of them, human security was used as the foundation of the doctrine of the
responsibility to protect, by which the possibility of some States intervening in others
to protect the human rights of citizens threatened by the action or omission of the
intervened State.
In the other process, human security was used in development programs led by
institutions such as the United Nations to make the underdevelopment of some
countries an international security problem. It is thought from this perspective that the
increase in the capacities of the States and their citizens. Through development
programs in countries that suffer from armed conflicts, contexts of chronic violence, or
that are threatened by natural disasters. They can be a tool to guarantee their security
and prevent outbreaks of insecurity from spreading and affecting other countries.

Nevertheless, an analysis of its political uses, such as the one carried out here,
shows how the concept of human security was simultaneously used to support other
forms of exclusion and domination of some States over others. In short, there are two
political uses of human security explored here, and both show how the sense or
meaning of a concept links to the use made of it by some actors in the political field.
Furthermore, as Williams (2008) pointed out, security is, above all, a powerful political
tool that allows one to prioritize some problems over other countries, as Duffield also
agrees and develops for further and deeper debate.