Critically evaluate the concept of human security

1. Introduction The concept of human security has emerged in the recent decade to re-balance debates on security away from an exclusive and excessive focus on military security of the state and its institutions, towards the people whom the state serves. (Kofi Annan, 1999) It has great potential in the era of globalization to renew our focus on global threats and challenges to human well being and advancement. Long-established concepts of national or military security, focusing on the territorial State, are unfit to analyze many factors of risk, threat or sudden change in the daily lives of persons caused by other insecurities such as poverty, environmental hazards, global epidemic diseases, natural disasters, and gender-based violence. All these elements of menace that affect peoples rights and dignity, have usually not been considered as risks which can be related to security which the State has an obligation to prevent or improve. Such threats often become invisible in the public debate that generally centers its concerns on national security of the State, or in some cases on public security related only to combating crime or exposed violent conflict. The fragmented attention to each of these problems does not offer a holistic approach to phenomena that are actually interrelated and therefore limits the development of more structural solutions to the violation of human rights that may derive from such situations.2 My intention is to see how this concepts has evolved and its main issues nowadays. Therefore, the central aims of this essay are to: 1) Present an overview of the evolution of the human security concept and its main components 2) Critiques and challenges of the human security concept 3) To analyze how human security relates to international in general and human rights in particular

2. Evolution of Human Security Concept Many international actors, organizations and academics have been debating the meaning of security. According to Macfarlane, security itself is an issue that always has been considered a state matter, both as the subject in charge of providing it to the persons under its jurisdiction, as well as the object worthy of protection and regulation through laws and policies. The security of individual human beings, in contrast, was largely ignored. Securities studies and the security establishment had long been focused on foreign and defense policy mechanisms to avoid, prevent, and if need be win interstate military disputes. (Del Rosso, n.d.) Unfortunately, although huge amount of funds may have increased the relative security of individual nations the number of people who die as an indirect result of military conflict each year has grown. Even successful examples of territorial security do not necessarily ensure the security of citizens within a state; North Korea would be a perfect example. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the reduced threat of a major-power war started a wider debate about whether to broaden the concepts of security further. (Klare,1992). The main result of these debates was to consider security from a global perspective rather than only from the perspective of individual nations. From this moment on the focus of security started to shift from the state to the individual and include military as well as nonmilitary threats. The post-Cold war concept of human security is a much better response to threats that had been overlooked by state centered concepts of national, military and territorial security. This concept has also been very crucial as a response to new risks posed by the process of globalization and the intensification of transnational relations, such as violent conflicts within States sudden economic downturns, environmental dangers and global infectious diseases as HIV/AIDS, all of which create mutual and interlinked vulnerabilities for persons around the world. (Human Security Centre, 2005) The contemporary idea of human security was first briefly referred to in 1993 by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and then fully articulated by Mahbub ul-Haq through the 1994 UNDP Annual Report on Human Development. The Vienna Declaration and Program of Action had put an end to the historical discussion carried out during the Cold War regarding the hierarchy of civil and political rights with respect to ESC Rights or vice-versa, and clarified that all human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated,(UN General Assembly, 2005) adopting an integral understanding of human rights.

2.1.Components of Human security Human security as defined by the UNDP, has two main aspects: 1) safety from such chronic threats as hunger, disease and repression; and 2) protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the patterns of daily life -whether in homes, in jobs or in communities. Such threats can exist at all levels of national income and development. Based on this definition, according to the Human Development Report of 1994, the threats to human security can be grouped in seven categories: 1. Economic security or financial security is the condition of having stable income or other resources to support a standard of living now and in the foreseeable future. It includes probable continued solvency , predictability of the future call flow, cash flow of a person or other economic entry, such as a country , employment security or job security. Financial security more often refers to individual and family money management and savings.

2. Food security refers to the availability of food and one's access to it. A household is considered food-secure when its occupants do not live in hunger of fear of starvation. 3. Health security refers to protect the health, safety and welfare of the general public. 4. Environmental security examines the threat posed by environmental events and trends to national security and elements of national power. 5. Personal security includes the right, if one is imprisoned unlawfully, to the remedy of habeas corpus. Security of person can also be seen as an expansion of rights based on prohibitions of torture and cruel and unusual punishment. Rights to security of person can guard against less lethal conduct, and can be used in regard to prisoners rights. 6. Community security is defined by shared identities, values, and meanings, many-sided direct interactions, and reciprocal long-term interest. 7. Political security, one of the most important aspects of human security is that people should be able to live in a society that honours their basic human rights. Among these seven elements of human security are considerable links and overlaps. A threat to one element of human security is likely to affect all forms of human security.

3. Challenges of the human security concept Despite all the interest in the concept, human security however has not been entirely adopted and mainstreamed. Since its inception it has encountered quite a few challenges. To begin with, there is no single definition of human security. According to UNESCO there is consensus among its advocates that there should be a shift of attention from a state-centered to a people-centered approach to security, that concern with the security of state borders should give way to concern with the security of the people who live within those borders. Beyond this consensus, however, there are different definitions adopted by different organizations. A second challenge is that of trying to change the security paradigm at a time of heightened attention on national and state security. If the end of the cold war allowed an opportunity to look at non-military, internal threats emanating from under-development, the post-September 11th world has seen escalading defence expenditures. Since 2002, debates on national military spending have been focused on the need to augment defence budgets so as to meet increasing risks and dangers on the global level. According to the SIRPI Yearbook 2004, military expenditures today are twenty times larger than aid outlays. In the last decade the world military spending increased by about substantially, with high-income countries accounting for most of this spending. Ironically, while mention is made that security should be for the people by the people, solutions are often sought in the increased responsibilities of states and of the international community. Discussions around human security put too little emphasis on empowerment and on the agency approach, of the role of individuals as agents of change. An expanded notion of human security requires growing recognition of the role of people of individuals and communities in ensuring their own security. Critics also argue that a human security definition which includes many components, ranging from the physical to the psychological, without a clearly established hierarchy, presents difficulties for policy makers forced to choose between competing goals and to concentrate their resources on specific solutions to immediate problems. According to UNESCO perhaps the most salient challenge of human security is implementing a true inter-sectoral agenda. It is more important to look at the relationships, how interventions in one sphere can actually have externalities, both positive and negative, on other areas, and what causalities could be in order to better design human security interventions. Yet, a comprehensive, pluralistic approach is difficult given current compartmentalization of disciplines within academia and policy-making institutions.

4. International Law and Human Rights

Although human security has been put forward as a doctrine that downplays the importance of state-centered security interests, it is the states that have adopted it as a foreign policy tool while it has largely been ignored as a domestic policy on development and human rights. Given that despite its relevance to central questions of international law, human security has until recently received little attention from international lawyers, (Von Tigerstrom, 2007) it seems important to examine the possible relevance of the notion of human security for the understanding and practice of human rights under International Law.

4.1.

Human Security and International Law

It has been indicated that International law has been largely silent, although the concept of human security might well have considerable impact on its future development in somekey areas: 1) the understanding of security in international law; 2) the place of human security in the UN Charter; 3) the role of the Security Council, state sovereignty, and humanitarian intervention; 4) the creation of new norms; and 5) the place of non-state actors in international law. ( Estrada-Tanck, 2009). Oberleitner in his book -Human security: a challenge to international law- has also noted that although human security has left traces in these areas, the challenge to international law might well reach further and comprise both international law as an operating system (that is, its role as a "constitution" for international society) and the normative system (that is, the values and goals international law considers worth pursuing).
In exploring some of the ways in which human security has been and could be used in International Law, Barbara Von Tigerstrom has identified and studied main areas of intersection: 1) humanitarian intervention; 2) forced displacement; 3) small arms control; and 4) global public health.47 These issues are examined deeply in her work through analyzing specific legal instruments or an evolving legal framework (as in the case of small arms and light weapons), that cover the basic elements of human security the identification of risks and threats- with reference to each of these four global phenomena. According to Von Tigerstrom Human security may also be important for International Law in the determination and evaluation of the parties involved in a legal matter. Because of its people-centered view, it provides guidance as to the actors apart from the State, whose participation is relevant in relation to security and which would probably not be considered in traditional security strategies. Thus, generally speaking, if one looks at the human security agenda, many of its elements have been enclosed in one way or another by international norms and principles. The central component of human insecurity, as the existence of risk and the related situation of vulnerability, is dealt with in International Law through instruments directed to different groups of persons, for example, women victims of discrimination or violence, or more recent concerns in the international arena, such as children in armed conflict. It has been argued that a notion of human security that is wholly informed by international human rights law, international humanitarian law, international criminal law and international refugee law, and which considers the relevant international legal norms prohibiting the use of force in international relations, will probably prove more valuable to international legal theory and practice in the longer term, than a concept of human security which does not meet these conditions because these areas of law embody the objectified political will of States rather than the more subjective preconceptions of scholars. (Sunga, 2009) In this plethora of relationship I will concentrate more on the relationship between human security and human rights.

5. Human security and Human rights Human security and human rights do not mean the same thing. Nor are they overlapping concepts. They are separate ideas and have separate functions. However, an argument for strong conceptual links between human security and human rights can be made. According to Boyle and Simonsen It is clear, however, that cognate as the human rights and human security perspectives are, they have not been effectively brought together as yet. The 2003 Report of the CHS entitled Human Security Now rightly sees human security and human rights as complementary. There is historical continuity in linking security to human rights. The core idea of human security can be found in the Four Freedoms proclaimed by Franklin D.

Roosevelt in his State of the Union Address on 6 January 1941.10 Roosevelts vision of a world founded upon four essential freedoms freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fearwas to become one of the cornerstones of the new United Nations. In order to secure those freedoms the United Nations was given the purposes of maintaining international peace and security, promoting economic and social development along with human rights, goals to be achieved through international cooperation. (United Nations Charter, Article 1) That generation recognized that war and hostilities, economic and social deprivation and gross human rights violations represented a breeding ground for insecurity, repression, want and fear. Human security therefore may be thought of as present day re-discovery of the essential linkages between the different purposes of the United Nations, and of the duty on Member States to cooperate in advancing those purposes coherently. (Simonsen, 2004) The mainstreaming of human rights into all UN activities, following the Secretary-Generals reform proposals in 1997, Kofi Anan, reflected similar thinking. The key concepts that the CHS Report suggests as the added value of the human security idea are protection and empowerment. Human rights goals have come to be articulated in similar terms in the process of establishing the human rights contribution to development, conflict resolution, peacekeeping and peace building for example. A further and perhaps more long-term agenda for interaction between the human security and human rights approaches is the relationship between respect for human rights, arms control and disarmament. Operationalizing and popularizing the idea of human security can help to clarify and to strengthen a human rights perspective on disarmament. (Ramcharan, 2002) Peace and international security and the promotion and protection of human rights are allied purposes of the United Nations. Human security has the potential to be the accessible idea that may bring out their linkage and thereby add popular engagement to the seemingly dormant ideal of global disarmament, in particular in respect of weapons of mass destruction. The Human Rights Committee, which was established to monitor the implementation of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Protocols to the Covenant, in an early General Comment concluded that: The development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction not only threaten human life but also absorb resources that could otherwise be used for vital economic and social purposes, particularly for the benefit of developing countries, and thereby for promoting and securing the enjoyment of human rights for all.

6. Conclusion There have been several questions and criticisms drawn in relation to the notion of human security as being conceptually inaccurate, too broad and vague to be useful in practice,27 or even as an idea susceptible to be abused in detriment of some of the most vulnerable persons, such as refugees (specially in the light of post-9/11 security issue). However it should be underlined that the contribution of human security resides in having successfully moved away the focus, at least in some aspects, from State-centered conceptions of national security to people-centered considerations of security. The thinking on human security can be of great value from a human rights perspective. The two concepts are not the same but can reinforce each other both at theoretical and practical levels. However a considerable distance remains between the two approaches. According to Boyle and Simonsen a practical way forward to explore theoretical and practical dimensions of the relationship would be to have an expert of the UN SubCommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights nominated to undertake more detailed consultations and thinking on how the two fields may offer support and strength to each other.

7. Bibliography Article 5, Vienna Declaration and Program of Action, UN General Assembly, World Conference on Human Rights, A/CONF.157/23, 12 July 1993 Human Security Report 2005. War and Peace in the 21st Century, Human Security Centre, University of British Columbia, Canada, Oxford University Press, 2005 MacFarlane, Neil S. and Yuen Foong Khong, Human Security and the UN. A Critical History, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, United Nations Intellectual History Project, 2006, p. 19. Michael T.Klare, ed., World Security: Challenges for a New Century ( New York: St. Martins Press,1992). Oberleitner, Gerd, op. cit., available in http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-132847591/human-security-challenge-international.html Palme Commission on Peace and Disarmament: Project on World Security-Series of Papers, (http://www.rbf.org/pws/public.html ). Roosevelt, ibid.; Townsend Hoopes and Douglas Brinkley, 1997, FDR and the Creation of the UN, Yale University Press. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, 1997, Renewing the United Nations: A Programme for Reform, United Nations document A/51/950. States are now widely understood to be servants of their peoples, and not vice versa. United Nations Secretary- General Kofi Annan, 1999, Message for the New Millennium, in Imagining Tomorrow, United Nations, p. 3. Stephen J.Del Rosso. The Insecure State: Reflections on The State and Security in a changing World, Daedalus 124(2):175-207;David A. Baldwin, Security Studies and the End of the Cold War, World Politics 48(1):117-41 Sunga, Lyal S., "The Concept of Human Security: Does it Add Anything of Value to International Legal Theory or Practice?" in Frick, Marie-Luisa and Oberprantacher, Andreas (editors), Power and Justice in International Relations. Interdisciplinary Approaches to Global Challenges, Ashgate Publishers, December 2009, pp. 131-148. UNDP, Human Development Reports, 1993 and 1994, in http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/ Von Tigerstrom, Barbara, Human Security and International Law. Prospects and Problems, Hart Publishing, Oxford and Portland Oregon, 2007, Introduction page.