HUMAN SECURITY: THE ‘APOCRYPHAL ELEPHANT’
Human security is a long line of
neologisms in security studies (Paris,
2001). The concept of Human Security is a
relatively new branch of security studies, and it has been shaped by both the
Copenhagen School and the Aberystwyth School (Williams
& McDonald, 2018). As opposed to the traditional
state-centric approach to security, these two schools shifted the referent
object to individuals, or humans, thus placing people at the center of security
issues. The idea of human security is expansive and difficult to pin down
precisely, which has led some critics to doubt its usefulness for policymakers (Ewan,
2007). Furthermore, since the end of the
Cold War in the 1990s, ‘development and military security’ have ‘become
intertwined’, making the situation even more complex (King
& Murray, 2001). By understanding the nuances of
human security, we can create a clearer framework for tackling security risks.
The United Nations Development
Program fostered the term "human security," to mean both
"freedom from fear and want" (King
& Murray, 2001). It was the first crucial document
that argued to broaden the concept of human security to ‘an all-encompassing
concept’ in the 1994 Human Development Report (UNDP,
1994). The United Nations Development
Program (UNDP) argued that development must be focused on people rather than
the security of their national boundaries, advancing health, education, political
freedom, and economic well-being (King
& Murray, 2001). The UNDP report defined the
concept of human security via two key components: ‘safety’ and ‘protection’.
Where safety meant safety from chronic threats such as hunger, disease, and
repression. And protection meant protection from sudden and hurtful
disruptions. The document argued for a "people-centric" concept of
security against the dichotomy of "freedom from want" and
"freedom from fear". The main four characteristics of human security
are universality, people-centeredness, interdependency, and early prevention
and the seven interconnected elements of security are: economic, food, health,
environmental, personal, community, and political.
This definition was so elaborate
that if we speculate on its application, it hardly leaves any aspect of human
life out of its ambit. There was a de facto agreement in international politics
and academia to shape the meaning of this ‘neologism’ to focus on the plights
of humans, individuals, or communities beyond the state, generating
wide-ranging and varied interpretations of the concept.
Ronald Paris has argued that a
secure society must provide its citizens with safety from both chronic threats
and unanticipated disruptions (Paris,
2001). Economist Amitav Acharya reflected
this idea in his 2001 op-ed, "Human Security: East versus West,"
emphasizing the importance of looking at security from an individual
perspective, taking into account both material and non-material components that
contribute to overall human wellbeing (Acharya,
2001). Archarya further argues that
ensuring human security requires both ‘freedom from want’ and ‘freedom from
fear’.
There has also been a ‘quixotic
quest’ to narrow down the neologism of human security by focusing on essential
elements (Paris,
2001).
Gary King and Christopher Murray (2001) also proposed a precise, rigorous,
and measurable definition of human security based on the number of years a
person is free from ‘generalized poverty’. This relationship between human
security and humanitarian intervention has been discussed in Amitav Acharya's
work on Human Security (Acharya,
2001).
All these attempts were botched
after 9/11 as states became overly obsessed with national security. In the
aftermath of 9/11, the narrative of human security was further expanded upon in
the Final Report on Human Security in 2003 to be defined as ‘protecting vital
freedoms’. This converged ‘freedom from fear’ with ‘freedom from want,’
although only rhetorically, and also added the question of individual agency to
the definition (S.
Ogata & Cels, 2003).
Although these efforts to broaden
and incorporate many aspects of human life have been successful, they have
become pragmatically elusive and ineffective to incorporate into policy (Floyd,
2008). Underlying such elusiveness was
the overemphasis on traditional securitization. On the one hand, traditional
security could no longer justify aberrations to peaceful conviction in all
spheres of statist relations. On the other hand, states faced increased
pressure from the citizenry to protect their citizens from denationalized
terrorism.
At this crossroads, it seemed that
converging the two dominant modes of foreign policy was the best course of
action to make sense of the dialogue that was put forth (Nobutomo,
2009; Paris, 2001). Specifically, a rhetoric of
economic development and the concurring statist theme of military security
post-9/11 (Boxer,
2003).
However ‘sugarcoated’ this attempt
was, many states preferred the statist paradigm of security. Many immigrants
were denationalized, stripped of their status, and, to some extent,
dehumanized. The neologism of human security existed only within the framework
of national security (Boxer,
2003). Many countries incorporated the
concept into their national legislation, and even many norm-promoting ‘middle
powers’ were also in support of this agenda.
Independent scholars defined the
discourse very differently from each other. Muhammad defined human security as
the ‘condition of the individual being in a safe state from the social and
economic side in the context of equality and justice’ (Khairiah
et al., 2021). Some scholars stressed the
‘individual/community’ framework surrounding the neologism of ‘protecting vital
freedoms, i.e., protecting people from critical and widespread threats and
situations’ (Khairiah
et al., 2021). Some only included those which are
vital for survival, stressing ‘creating systems that provide people with a
foundation for survival, dignity, and livelihood’.(Khairiah
et al., 2021) Others incorporated the contending
‘freedom from desire, freedom from fear, and freedom to take action on one's
behalf’ into a single frame, combining the academic discourse under one
umbrella to place human security, human rights, and human development as
mutually reinforcing goals.
But it is my assertion that it would
be remiss to frame Human Security as a neologism. Adopting from Gasper(2005) I contend that it is a ‘container’
that holds many concepts and frames them argumentatively to make more appealing
and relevant that the expansive pockets of the ‘container’ can fit its description.
Its appeal was once so widespread that it
served as the main policy reference point to fill the Cold War's void.
Therefore, an appropriate label for the concept would be ‘discourse’ (Bellamy
& McDonald, 2002). Above all, a discourse would be
able to grasp its deep pockets and imperative in policy choice and the previous
vagueness due to being so broad.
I adopt the definition as the
concept is like an ‘apocryphal elephant’ defined by the blind men touching different
parts of an elephant (Farer,
2011). As we have stated, the concept is
so broad that self-determination, empowerment, and development are effectively
contained within the discourse of Human Security and pushed to the forefront of
global issues. Such that like any other concept at its inception, the
practitioners and the powerful actors were faced with the choice whether to
push the concept to its limit or to neutralize its revolutionary power (Sakiko
& Carol, 2012).
Tom Farer (2011) says the concept was labeled down
so that it would have no such revolutionary fervor as ‘self-determination, but,
nonetheless, it was able to augur enough power to be able to put human-centeredness
on the global agenda, rather than ‘state’ from the dim peripheries of world
policy.
Its revolutionary fervor that was to
challenge the paradigm central to states persuasion of national security and
diplomacy, ‘the principles instruments of social power’ that structured the
competition among ‘politically organized communities’ (Farer,
2011). In contrast to national security,
which demanded ‘parochial allegiance’ of its citizens and protection of the
nation, “human security is readily construed to imply cosmopolitan values, a concern for the wellbeing of people, not
states, and of people irrespective of their citizenship” (Farer,
2011).
One question arises: if human
security is to concern itself with cosmopolitan and humanistic values, how is it different from Human Rights? Retrospectively,
human Rights have existed for quite some time, and indeed, if it is to invoke
the same cosmopolitan values, then why reframe a working definition?
The assertion that entwining human
security with human rights makes it salient, requiring immediacy and urgency
for human rights, is not sufficiently justified for the inception of a whole
discourse. Because human rights have been there to protect ‘the other’ against
the consensus of the majority ‘us’ and protect them from the majority forcing conformist
lives upon ‘them’. Argumentative but in this respect, human rights have been
significantly successful.
Our search for an answer lies in the statement previously made that Human
security is a container and a broad concept.
The Human Development Report (1994) supports the view that human
security is infused with Development rather than Human Rights. The report
particularly stresses the protection of all people, especially those who are
forced to live conformist lives. Although this development paradigm was more
involved with ‘macro indicia of material growth’ of World Bank's approach (Farer,
2011). Consequently, Amartya Sen was the
first to call for a broad-based development of human capabilities as opposed to
growth in per capita statistics (Gasper,
2005). But it did not have the favor or
grace of neither the diplomats nor the academics. Led by Amartya Sen, the Human
Security Commission was appointed with the responsibility to clear the
ambiguities of the definition and focus upon an operational definition that would
have a distinct operational content to focus on grassroots development of
extreme poor (Gasper,
2005).
This human security approach
connects the economic assistance agenda with the human rights agenda in a novel
manner. A common argument was that deadly viruses kill more people each year
than any tyrant ever did in a year. Therefore, it is the responsibility of a
state to ensure the right to relief for such persons in need of medical
assistance, as well as the responsibility of the international system to
respond to the violation of the political rights of others in another state. But
there is a lack of positive legal duty
for any state to assist other states in protecting the welfare of their people.
This is where human security went beyond creating legal obligations to improve
human welfare by protecting people from acute threats that did not originate
from individuals or institutions.
This vision of human security is not
only viewed with suspicion by developing countries because of the militaristic
dimension but also by developed countries, or, more specifically, conservative
factions in developed countries. This vision of HS implied a conception of
human that states that adopt it have a corresponding duty to protect the rights
of people who are not being protected. It also exposes the state to criticism
and condemnation by other states for failing to do so. This is because an
expanded discourse of human security “entails the obligation to treat the needs
of non-nationals as having normative value that is equal to the needs of its
own nationals” (Farer, 2011).
On the other extreme, the effort to
narrow down the concept took on a very limited view of HS, that was deeply
embedded with the norms of war (Owen,
2004). Here, HS intersected with
humanitarian means of conducting war. It imposed a complex set of norms on the
states involved in conflict to protect, primarily, the non-combatants. However,
these preemptive actions were justified only when the collateral damage was
reasonably proportionately minimal, considering alternative military
strategies.
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