OPINION Vol.1, No.1 June 2013 - National Defence University

Commission for Human Security, co chaired by Amartya Sen. In one of its landmark reports, the
commission pleaded international community for effecting a paradigm shift, from state to people, because
of the ‘dramatic’ shift in the security debate since its inception in 17 th century when state was accepted as
ultimate provider of security to its citizens 3 . It cannot be denied that in present times many states fail to do
that, rather, they can even be hostile towards their own population, at times directly and at others through
neglect, mismanagement or misappropriation. Hence people deserve to be the focus of security rather than
the state. It highlighted the complementary nature of human security vis-à-vis state security, human rights
and human development, seeking to forge interconnectivity between individual, state and the global world
through institutional policies. Kofi Annan, the then UN Secretary General explained that human security
includes human rights, good governance, access to education and health care and personal actualization
leading to poverty reduction, economic growth and conflict prevention. He described freedom from want,
freedom from fear and a healthy environment as ‘interrelated building blocks of human, and therefore
national, security’. The commission also gave a definition of human security: ‘to protect the vital core of
all human lives in ways that enhance human freedoms and human fulfillment’. It did not distinguish
freedom from fear and freedom from want for the individuals. The report emphasized on ‘empowerment’
whereby people can identify and implement solutions to the myriad insecurities of their daily lives.
In adopting the human security approach, whether a radical departure from the traditional security
paradigm is suggested or a gradual one, the main argument remains the protection and empowerment of
people 4 . Liotta and Owen argue against the faith placed in the realist school of thought to provide security,
whereas it actually failed in doing so, as the ordinary people kept suffering from disease, hunger,
unemployment, crime, terrorism, social conflict, political repression and environmental hazards.
Traditional security failed to protect the individual. Emma Rothschild sees four important changes coming
about in the concept of security, beginning with the state. 1) Being brought down to the individual. 2)
Being brought up to international or supranational environment. 3) Being broadened from a focus on the
military to include the environment, society and economy. 4) Being diffused to include local governments,
international agreements, NGOs, public opinion, natural disasters and financial markets as sources of
responsibility. 5
In the west, the idea of human security, as expounded in aforementioned reports, replacing or
augmenting national security per se, is evolving. Canada, Japan and Norway are perhaps few of its active
proponents in the developed world, who adopted the notion while expanding their national security
concept ‘comprehensively’. Canada and Norway advocated freedom from fear as the domain requiring
more attention 6 , which is often criticized as the narrow definition. There prevails an inevitable east-west
divide in perception of human security. Asia hosts some of the original thinkers of this idea, yet some
Asian Governments view it as a ploy for ‘human rights promotion and humanitarian intervention’ and
others consider it an old idea, with many Asian countries having already developed their own concepts of
‘comprehensive’ national security. Japan, interestingly, appears to stick to its Asian values when it differs
from the Canadian approach in declaring that it does not consider freedom from want to be less critical
than freedom from fear 5 . Ideally, both should get equal attention, but a preference between them will
remain a dilemma for human security.
An important reason for assigning the “security” suffix to humans or individuals rather than states
lies in the semantic value of this term which provides greater meaning to an idea since factors at state level
carrying this denotation tend to be viewed much more seriously. Barnett and others term security a “speech
act” ‘that raises the profile of a problem’ 7 . Securitization implies a change of status for a risk ‘from a
problem that is able to be dealt with through mainstream institutions to one requiring extraordinary
measures’. Absence of democracy may accentuate peoples’ insecurities on the pretext of national security
as perceived by the security elite, and even in democracies the same pretext can be used to induce fear, like
the Patriot Act in USA. So the fundamental questions remain: Whose security and security from what
These questions lead the debate for the need to change the referents of security. It is resisted by the
mainstream, state centered, security community due to the salience that they accord to the fundamental
‘imperatives of national security’.
Cunha’s adaption of Buzan’s five spatial levels for analysis of security in International Relations
are important to identify the disadvantage of reducing the referent to individual level in the human security
debate 8 :
OPINION Vol.1 No.1 141 June 2013