During the 1970s and 1980s there was considerable public debate across the Western world around the issues of international security and development as concerns mounted over the failure of economic growth and the promised ‘trickle down’ to benefit the poor and to relieve the fragile security situation in most regions of the Third World. In this climate, a number of independent commissions were set up to report and make recommendations on development and security.7 The linkage between security and development is particularly clear in Common Security: A Blueprint For Survival which recognised that threats to security are wider than “political rivalry and armaments …[and]… stem from failures in development, environmental degradation, excessive population growth and movement, and lack of progress towards democracy” and in Common Responsibilities in the 1990s which addressed attention to the “security of people and the security of the planet.”8 The emphasis on the individual in these reports was not new in Western concepts of the state. MacFarlane traces the long “prehistory of human security” and identifies the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the period in which the “welfare of individual human beings, the mitigation of poverty, and the protection of the economic rights of the less privileged were growing preoccupations.”9 These preoccupations were also framed as international or universal norms and subsequently were incorporated in the UN Charter which, reflecting on the
7 For example the Club of Rome publicatin by Donella H Meadows, Dennis L Meadows, et
al., Limits to Growth (New York: Universe Books, 1972); the Independent Commission on International Development Issues, North South, a Programme for Survival: Report of the Independent Commission on International Development Issues (London: Pan Books, 1980) known as the Brandt Report; and the Independent Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues, Common Security: a Blueprint for Survival (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982). See also Kanti Bajpai, "Human Security: Concept and Measurement," (Kroc Institute: 2000), 5-7; and Richard Falk, "Pursuing the Quest for Human Security," in Worlds Apart: Human Security and Global Governance, ed. Majid Tehranian (London: I.B. Tauris, 1999), 8.
8 Bajpai, "Human Security: Concept and Measurement," 7.
9 S Neil MacFarlane and Yuen Foong Khong, Human Security and the UN: A Critical History
experience of the inter-war years, recognised that economic and social welfare were critical for international peace and security.10
The concern for individual welfare and security is implicit in human security. Mahbub ul Haq, one of the founders of human development theory and the creator of the Human Development Index, was also influential in the development of the concept of human security in the 1994 UNDP Development Report.11 He spelled out his views in a widely distributed paper commissioned by the UNDP.12 In it he nominated as the five “pillars” of human security: sustainable human development; using a peace dividend to move from arms to human security; partnerships between North and South based on justice, not charity; new forms of global governance such as an economic security council of the UN; and a global civil society to hold leaders accountable.13
The UNDP Report argued that there were two main aspects of human security – “safety from such chronic threats [such] as hunger, disease and repression … and protection from sudden and hurtful disruption in the pattern of daily life.”14 The components spelled out were economic security (discussed mainly in terms of secure and adequate income); food security (physical and economic access); health security (prevention of disease and mortality - access to services, nutrition and lifestyle); environmental security (environmental degradation, pollution of air, water and land, sanitation); personal security (physical violence and threats, accidents, trafficking); community security (cultural identity, religious freedom, indigenous rights); and
10 Ibid., 65. MacFarlane notes, too, that Roosevelt’s New Deal in the US was a mechanism to
avert the risk that economic and social insecurity might carry over into political unrest.
11 UNDP, Human Development Report 1994 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). It
was said that the UNDP agenda was to use human security as the organising principle for the 1995 Copenhagen UN Conference on Social Development. See Gary King and Christopher J L Murray, "Rethinking Human Security," Political Science Quarterly 116, no. 4 (2002), 589.
12 Mahbub ul Haq, "New Imperatives of Human Security," (A Policy Paper Commissioned by
UNDP for the World Summit for Social Development, UNDP: 1994). This Paper was widely reproduced including by the Society for International Development (SID) and the Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies (RGICS), Papers, and in U Kirdar and L Silk, eds., From Impoverishment to Empowerment (New York: New York University Press, 1995); and Bibek Debroy, ed., Challenges of Globalisation (New Delhi: Konark Publishers, 1998). Ul Haq considered human security should be “universal, global and indivisible.” See Mahbub ul Haq, "Global Governance for Human Security," in Worlds Apart: Human Security and Global Governance, ed. Majid Tehranian (London: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 1999), 79-94.
13 Mahbub ul Haq, "New Imperatives of Human Security," in From Impoverishment to
Empowerment, 22.
political security (basic human rights and freedoms). It argued that these were universal concerns for rich and poor countries and that its components were interdependent as well as being people-centred.15 It noted that a breakdown in human security in any one place may have local, regional or global impacts, and that human security is best ensured through prevention rather than by later restoration. Thus, “when human security is at threat anywhere, it can affect people everywhere. Famines, ethnic conflicts, social disintegration, terrorism, pollution and drug trafficking can no longer be confined within national borders,” and therefore the need for the new human security approach.16
The Report barely addressed the relationship of human security with human rights and human development, noting only that human rights violations represent a threat to human security everywhere and that human development was a broader concept relating to people’s choice, while human security “means that people can exercise these choices safely and freely.”17 The relationship of human security with human rights and human development was not well developed although it is an important issue and is discussed later in this chapter.18
The essence of the concept being promoted was radical as it challenged the adequacy of the contemporary approaches to development and security. It sought to locate developing countries in a more global and more urgent security framework addressing the needs of people rather than serving the purpose of protecting and securing the rich and powerful states and the capitalist free market global economy. Its broad scope, however, contained the seeds of controversy as to the usefulness of the concept for analytical, practical or policy purposes.
15 Despite this, much of the ensuing debate has been based on either implicit or explicit
assumptions that the issue of human security is about underdeveloped countries. For example Suhkre says that human security is about the South and can be addressed by the universalisation of rights and development. Astri Suhrke, "Human Security and the Interests of States," Security Dialogue 30, no. 3 (1999): 273-4.
16 UNDP, Human Development Report, 34. 17 Ibid., 22-23.
18 The Report found it difficult to locate human security and added somewhat unhelpfully that