Pardee-CFLP-Remittances-TF-Report

Cold War when it became evident that the nature and modes of management ofviolent conflicts have profoundly changed: “Attention is now drawn to persistentand diffuse regional conflicts in fragile, failing, and failed states plagued byproblems that inhibit their basic governing capabilities, including mass displacementof populations, uneven economic development, delegitimization of thestate, and the rise of factionalized elites” (Goldsworthy 2010, 451). The processesof liberalization and globalization have created new political spaces, but alsogiven rise to new conflicts and instabilities. Increasing transnational mobility anddiversity of interests and affiliations have profoundly changed the contexts forsecurity management. The concept of human security constitutes a conceptualshift from a state-centered security paradigm to an individual and communitycenteredapproach. Through a focus on diverse factors that can underminesecurity and well-being from a human centered perspective, a human securityapproach promotes concentration on a broader set of problematic issues,including environmental, social, and economic causes of vulnerability. Humansecurity therefore enables a more integrated approach that relates the concernsstemming from violent conflicts as well as increasing economic inequalities anddeprivation: “Essentially human security is both about preventing violent conflictand reducing the multiple deprivations and social inequalities experienced bypeople” (Taylor 2004, 66). 5The human security approach allows a broader focus that goes beyond armedconflicts, recognizing a variety of factors that can destabilize peace and security.These threats fall into diverse categories—economic security, food security,health security, environmental security, personal security, community security,and political security (Therien 2012). Famines, environmental shocks anddisasters, financial crises as well as various forms of violent unrest and criminalityare thereby all seen as potentially disruptive to peace and development. Oneof the major contributions of the human security approach is highlighting theincreasing interconnectedness of these threats that suggests a need to build localresilience to diverse shocks and disruptions.5 A broader approach to security that links peace to the issues of social justice and sustainable developmentis not an entirely novel phenomenon. Even before the recent systematic articulation of the human dimensions ofsecurity, elements of more comprehensive approaches to security issues have been elaborated in various earlierUN initiatives including the Brandt Commission, Palme Commission, and Brundtland Commission of the 1980sthat highlighted the connections between peace, poverty, environment, and economic development (Therien 2012,192). The 1994 UNDP report articulated the need for a redefinition of the concept of security along the followinglines: “’From an exclusive stress on territorial security to a much greater stress on people’s security’ and ‘[f]romsecurity through armaments to security through sustainable human development’” (cited in Therien 2012, p. 199).Remittance Flows to Post-Conflict States: Perspectives on Human Security and Development 11