In the subsequent twenty years since the initial 1994 UNDP definition of human security, the concept has continued to evolve and be defined. Detractors of human security have criticised it as lacking innovation (Tomuschat, 2003:56), being meaninglessness (Khong, 2001:235), and lacking in precision (Paris, 2001:92). Human security has also been accused of being “an ideological instrument” with little merit for policy formation
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(Oberleitner, 2005a:188). Nevertheless Oberleitner still lists human security succinctly as a political agenda for governments; an academic challenge; an emerging framework for international relations; and a call to assembly upon a single real issue relevant to actual individuals. From an academic perspective human security has largely defied departmentalisation within any discipline as well (Hamson and Hay, 2002:4). From a legal perspective authors such as Oberleitner (2005a:187) have also suggested that human security appears to have generally been met with a level of reticence. The relatively ambiguity of the framework lends human security to all of these definitions and criticisms, but a further description of what human security is about, is perhaps better defined by its core aspects individually.
The Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is the custodial agency within the UN system responsible for the dissemination and promotion of the ‘operationalisation’ of human security (OCHA, 2014). The Red Cross is independent and external of the UN system. It is through the status of both the IFRC and the ICRC as ‘standing invitees’ to the UN Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) that the Red Cross is able to engage within the UN system on human security matters. Rather than creating a new framework per se, UN implemented human security locates and promotes inter- related core aspects (of human security) that are already found within the pre-existing expertise of the different parts of the UN system, such as the IASC.
As identified by OCHA (2014:1), the five core aspects of human security are described below. Each of these constituents of human security is relevant to the work of the Red Cross, as will be explained in Chapter Six.
Context Specific
Human security requires solutions that are embedded in local realities and are based on identified vulnerability, needs and capacities of the focus community, and the relevant authorities. Such a contextual relativity recognises that the source of threats to security vary significantly across and within the region of interest, at different points in time, or at different phases of the humanitarian operation or development programme.
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Human security requires that solutions are cohesive, multi-sectorial and attempt to eliminate duplication. This is to ensure that solutions are integrated so as to “give rise to more effective and tangible improvements in the daily lives of people”
(OCHA, 2014 - www.unocha.org/humansecurity/human-security-unit/human- security-approach). This aspect of human security directly relates to a coordinated effort to collaboratively realise the covenants of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), i.e. “freedom from fear”, “freedom from want” and “freedom to live in dignity” (UDHR, 1948).
Prevention Orientated
Human security assists in identifying the required changes in behaviour, as well as changes in structure (whether internal or external), that are needed to help mitigate and pre-empt the occurrence of current and imminent risks. This aspect focuses on the root causes of a particular threat.
People Centred
Human security is interested in all the components of human life; economic, environmental, cultural, political, social, and military systems that serve to facilitate and maintain sustainable development, and peaceful outcomes. The human individual is supposed to be kept at the core of security considerations.
Protection Focused
Human security seeks to improve and protect local capacities, as a guiding principle for the formation of any policy. This involves the combination of both a bottom-up participatory processes (that highlights an individual’s or a community’s role in realising their essential freedoms and responsibilities) with more top-down normative institutions, processes and structures (such as the involvement of good- governance, cautioning mechanisms, and instruments for social protections). In this regards, human security also seeks to assure the development of protection measures against any further particular threat.
The above core aspects found within the discourse are not exclusive to the human security framework, but represent the distillation of selected ideas found across the development and humanitarian spectrum already. There is a number of theoretical
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foundations that inform the development and humanitarian ideas that in turn reinforce the operational importance of human security concerns. These theoretical foundations include dialectic understandings, cultural relativity, globalisation, participatory development, bottom-up or grass-roots development, and a basic needs approach (BNA)23 (Elliot, 2006:40).
In particular, the BNA draws together theory and practise from a range of traditions to reinforce the wider people-centred and context specific process of human security (Elliot, 2006:41). Authors such as Oman suggest that it is the need to be comprehensive, as informed by a BNA that strengthens the role of rights (specifically human rights) within the development and security ‘equation’. The BNA presents human security to the implementing community as a “dual commitment” to the ‘freedom from fear’ and the
‘freedom from want’ mandates articulated previously within the UDHR definition (Oman, 2010:291).
It is the ‘freedom from want’ within BNA, rather than the role of rights, that insinuates the link between the basis for human security and the humanitarian mandate of the Red Cross. However, the ‘freedom from fear’ also links it to the protection mandate of the red Cross, as well the requirement for protection of health-based delegates. Furthermore, BNA also consolidates the central incorporation of individual rights and personal security as a precondition for all definitions of security and protection (Elliot, 2006:41). BNA may also be considered a core support for how human security may be viewed within the development programmes and humanitarian operations of the Red Cross, as will be elaborated upon in Chapter Six.
Human Security within a Development Paradigm
The iniquitousness of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s 2005 statement that “[we] will not enjoy security without development, we will not enjoy development without security...”
(UN, 2005) suggests the acceptance of the centrality of security within the development paradigm. The evolution of human security concerns is closely linked to developments by ideas of sovereignty, globalisation and ‘post-development’ narratives.
23 Most popular in the 1970s, BNA draws together a theorists and practitioners from a wide range of institutions to
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By the end of the Cold-War, many of the assumptions that informed development practice were being challenged by what Desai and Potter (2008:1) describe as “post-its”
stances; post-modernism, anti-development and beyond-development typologies. Development prior to this was somewhat framed as a ‘colonialist’ activity, involving a progression of stages towards a progression of social and economic advancement (Hettne, 2008:13).
Being originally based on the Westphalia system of states, development in the post-cold war period was impacted by the process of globalization. Globalisation saw an unraveling of the traditional role of the state, and an increasing alienation between the state and civil society (Hettne, 2008:10). The post-Cold-War globalisation period facilitated three important refocusing exercises within the development construct; focus on incorporating greater sustainability into development thinking, greater localised-empowerment through new forms of intervention or assistance, and changes in conflict resolution and post- conflict reconstructive programmes (Bennet, 2009:31). Each of these factors is critical to the human security and development discourse nexus.
There have also been two related notable ideological shifts across the nexus of development and national sovereignty that connect to the concerns of human security and development; liberal internationalism and interventionism. Liberal internationalism argued that, rather than being grounded in a nation-state notion of sovereignty, the discourse regarding security should be based on the international human-rights frameworks. Interventionism built on this and accepted that an interposition into a state’s sovereignty was viewed as a necessarily condition for enforcing basic human-rights, in line with aspirations of a burgeoning global community (Chandler, 2012:218).
It was in the wake of the promotion of Western ideas for policing a quasi-‘global sovereignty’ that a post-interventionist tactic in human security emerged (Oberleitner, 2005a:194). This indicated a shift away from Western powers as the agent and mainstay of security, towards a focus upon the lack of capacity or adequate governance within the insecure or ‘fragile state’ itself. Writers such as Oberleitner (2005:194) supported the idea that human security indicated a genuine shift away from state interference toward a more contemporary community-orientated approach to security of the individual.
Security considerations as the consequences of insecurity, post- global or local event, also directed a new focus onto the lack of capacity and governance issues within development. This, in turn, redirected the interventional focus upon the pre-emptive
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factors that could contribute to the attainment of security in the first place (Chandler, 2012:220). The way that human security was manifested pre-emptively within development thinking is through programmes such as disaster risk reduction (DRR) and preparedness, and resilience.
Disaster risk reduction (DRR) is the systematic practice of reducing disaster risks by analyzing and reducing the causal factors of disasters, or as the result of such things as climate change (GECHS, 2008:26). Examples of DRR include; preparedness, early warning, lessening vulnerability of property and people, and reduction in exposure to hazards. Authors such as Hilhorst, Ozerdem and Michelle-Crocetti (2014:174) do challenge the value of human security in guiding local DRR. However, GECHS (2008:28) state that human security is a clear rational for DRR and climate change adaption as it emphasizes the connection of eco-social systems, people, and issues of equity (GECHS,2008:28). Furthermore, the prefix of human security to DRR is supported by the UNDP who state, “Both mitigation and adaptation should be seen as human security imperatives in a broader sense” (UNDP, 2007:39).
Resilience is expressed in this context as the capacity, or indeed incapability, to adequately or positively respond to external threats. In this regard, communities that are deemed to lack such a capability are “considered to be vulnerable” (Chandler, 2012:217).
This directly links to the idea of community security, as a component of human security.
DRR, preparedness and resilience ideas are inherent in much of the work that the Red Cross does, particularly through the programmes of the IFRC in accordance with a development paradigm. The dynamic consideration of personal security in terms whether the Red Cross context relates to programmatic ideas of DRR, preparedness or resilience, as well humanitarian operational phases will be discussed further in Chapter Six. Before reviewing human security within a humanitarian paradigm however, a review of how the issue of individual rights relate to human security should briefly be examined.