FACULTY OF COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA STUDIES (MC701)

MASTER OF ARTS IN MEDIA AND INFORMATION WARFARE

LITERATURE REVIEW

DEFINITION OF HUMAN SECURITY

Prepared for:

DR. NOOR NIRWANDY MAT NORDIN

Prepared by:

AHMAD NAQIUDDIN MOHAMAD

Date of submission:

24th SEPTEMBER 2018

HUMAN SECURITY DEFINITION

1) The Latvian Platform for Development Cooperation – LAPAS

Human security has been defined as „freedom from fear and freedom from want”. It is a
prerequisite for human development, which is the goal of development cooperation. The aim
of development is to ensure that people have the opportunity to live a long and healthy life
(health), continually acquire knowledge (education) and have access to resources so that they
can have a decent standard of living (material well-being). If human development works
toward expansion of opportunities – then human security looks at ways of dealing with
avoiding, mitigating and coping with threats.

Human security addresses two types of threats:

  chronic embedded threats to security – like hunger, disease, violence against women;

  sudden and painful changes - such as consequences of conflict, natural disasters, sudden
economic downturn.

It is underpinned by the belief in basic rights for all.

2) United Nations Development Programme

Human security relates to much more than security from violence and crime. A report team
wanting to look at the security of people’s livelihoods (economic, food, environment or
health security) might apply a human security approach. Human security can also be used to
look into personal, community and political security. Indeed, human development reports
from around the world have applied the approach in other innovative ways. But on each
occasion, these reports have analysed a threat, or groups of threats, and how they affect
particular groups of people.

3) E-International Students Relations

Although the definition of human security is subject to much debate,[3] its first, most-
commonly cited usage came in the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP)
1994 Human Development Report. In this report, a whole chapter was devoted to the ‘New
Dimensions of Human Security’, characterising the term as “a child who did not die, a
disease that did not spread, a job that was not cut, an ethnic tension that did not explode in
violence, a dissident who was not silenced,” as well as stating that human security
was universal; its components interdependent; based upon preventative, rather than
reactionary measures; and intrinsically people-centred (UN, 1994: 22-23). Defining human
security as “safety from such chronic threats as hunger, disease and repression” and
“protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the patterns of daily life,” the UNDP
broadened the conceptualisation of security. This moved it away from state-centric approach
that had prevailed to encompass seven key individual centric components: economic security,
food security, health security, environmental security, personal security, community security,
and political security (Ibid., 24-25). At its core, it returned to the two equally open-ended
foundational freedoms as outlined in the 1945 adoption of the UN Charter: “freedom from
want” and “freedom from fear”. Thus, the concept itself was designed with the ideas of
inclusiveness and the desire for ambiguity in-built. “Like other fundamental concepts,” the
report states, “…human security is more easily identified through its absence than its
presence. And most people instinctively understand what security means” (Ibid., 23).

Further to the Human Development Report, the 2001 establishment of the Commission on

Human Security (CHS) was seen as a significant development in the concept’s relatively
short history. Chaired by former United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Sadaka
Ogata and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, the CHS was established to:

“(i) mobilize support and promote greater understanding of human security,

(ii) develop further the concept as an operational tool, and

(iii) outline a concrete action plan for its implementation.”[4]

Chapter 1 of its final report – entitled Human Security Now – reaffirmed the goal of human
security:

“to protect the vital core of all human lives in ways that enhance human freedoms and human
fulfilment… protecting fundamental freedoms… protecting people from critical (severe) and
pervasive (widespread) threats and situations” (CHS, 2003).

Although conceptual ambiguity is a key point of academic debate in the human security field,
proponents of the human security paradigm argue that its inclusive, broad, and holistic nature
represent its greatest strengths. As human security has prompted an intersection between
development and security, King and Murray (2001: 589) have described the birth of the
concept as a “unifying event” – it works as an “organizing concept” that enables the
development of broad coalitions around specific ‘security’ issues without the traditional
strains of narrowed, state-centric definitions of security that have previously hindered multi-
party cooperation. In a similar vein, both Jolly and Ray (2006: 13-14) and Tadjbakhsh and
Chenoy (2007: 10) advocate a holistic approach to human security definition, arguing that the
post-Cold War world presents such a plethora of security problems, where the sources of
threats vary widely both within and across states, that a flexible, broad definition of human
security is the only viable option. “Not only does a holistic approach draw different
specialisms together in the quest to understand better the interconnections between diverse
aspects of human insecurity,” writes Ewan, “it may also bolster co-operation between
international agencies in the fields of security, development and human rights.” (Ewan, 2007:
184; see also Uvin, 2004)

One of the theories that underlies the advocacy of a holistic approach to human security is
that broadness facilitates coalitions, which, in turn, allow previously neglected issues to gain
greater saliency in the international sphere. This can either be through increased funding or
the elevation of particular issues to the realm of “high politics” (Franceschet, 2006: 33;
Shinoda, 2004).[5] For example, the adoption of a human security narrative is often cited as a
key driver behind the campaign to ban landmines in the 1990s. Culminating in the Ottawa
Treaty (or Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of
Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction),[6] the ban was ultimately attributed to the
endeavors of “middle powers”, particularly Canada, unifying around an issue previously “off
the table” under the ‘traditional’ bounds of security.[7] Similarly, both Franceschet (2006)
and Bruggeman (2008: 59-66), amongst others, attribute the creation of the International
Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002 to the prevailing human security agenda. Again praising the
Canadian promulgation of the human security narrative, Robinson (2001: 174) describes the
ICC Statute as “a weaving together of idealism and pragmatism, demonstrating that human
security and national security are not mutually exclusive,” attesting to human security’s
conceptual malleability.

Finally, as MacFarlane and Khong (2006; 229) have noted:

“construing the threat faced by innocent civilians caught in civil wars or those targeted for
genocide by their ethnic enemies as “security” issues increases, in theory, the possibility of
action by the UN.”

Through the development of the interconnected principle of ‘the responsibility to protect’ –

similarly individual-centric in its mandate – and blurring the lines between domestic and
international, the human security discourse is able to challenge the previously unquestioned
nature of state sovereignty and the norm of non-intervention that had prevailed (Ibid.). As the
International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) concluded in its
2001 report entitled The Responsibility to Protect:

“Human security is indeed indivisible. There is no longer such a thing as a humanitarian

catastrophe occurring ‘in a faraway country of which we know little’… In an interdependent
world, in which security depends on a framework of stable sovereign entities, the existence of
fragile states, failing states, states who through weakness or ill-will harbour those dangerous
to others, or states that can only maintain internal order by means of gross human rights
violations, can constitute a risk to people everywhere.” (ICISS, 2001: 5)

Thus, the concept of human security not only emphasizes the individual as the referent of
international security through the merging of the previously independent issues of
development and security, it makes the security of “those over there” an international matter
and inextricably linked to “us over here”. “The link between human insecurity and
international insecurity has been invigorated” (MacFarlane and Khong, 2006: 230).
REFERENCE

1) Http://ljournal.ru/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/a-2017-023.pdf. (2017). Human
Security. doi:10.18411/a-2017-023

2) Http://ljournal.ru/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/a-2017-023.pdf. (2017). What Is
Human Security. doi:10.18411/a-2017-023

3) Figure 2f from: Irimia R, Gottschling M (2016) Taxonomic revision of Rochefortia

Sw. (Ehretiaceae, Boraginales). Biodiversity Data Journal 4: E7720.
https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.4.e7720. (n.d.). A Critical Evaluation of Human Security.
doi:10.3897/bdj.4.e7720.figure2f