Human Security in C21st

Theo Farrell, CSI Lecture 7, 2011

Course re-cap

Security studies after the Cold War

Humanitarian intervention: why, when and how

Global terrorism: the bad guys

America unipolarity and rising China

Nuclear proliferation: Iran and Indo-Pak

The Iraq Wars: American RMA

COIN and Afghanistan: tough going

Whose security?

Referent object?

Rise of the state

Buzan (neorealist): states

Booth (critical theorist): people

Booth: states and security

Too unreliable

Illogical

Too diverse

Biggest killers: the 2 Ps

Extreme poverty

Preventable disease

Key stats

World pop = 8 billion by 2025

3 billion live on $2 per day or less

850 m under-nourished

14 m die from hunger each year

HIV/AIDS: 40 m – approx 3 m deaths

Malaria: 225 m per year – 800,000 deaths

Human security is 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. Human security is not a concern with weapons – it is a concern with human life and dignity.

UNDP Human Development Report 1994

For most people today, a feeling of insecurity arises more from worries about daily life than from the dread of a cataclysmic world event.

UNDP Human Development Report 2007

Characteristics of Human Security

1. Universal concern

2. Interdependent issues

3. Early action

4. People-centric

UNDP Human Development Report 1994

Major threats to Human Security

1. Population growth

2. Economic disparities

3. Migration pressures

4. Environmental degradation

5. Drug trafficking

6. International terrorism

UNDP Human Development Report 1994

Human security means protecting fundamental freedoms — freedoms that are the essence of life...It means protecting people from critical (severe) and pervasive (widespread) threats and situations…It means creating political, social, environmental, economic, military and cultural systems that together give people the building blocks of survival, livelihood and dignity.

Commission on Human Security, 2003

Millennium Development Goals, 2000

1. Extreme poverty: halve

2. Primary education: universal

3. Gender equality: in education

4. Child Mortality: reduce by 2/3

5. Maternal morbidity: reduce by ¾

6. HIV/AIDS, Malaria: reverse spread

7. Environmental sustainability: improve slums for 100 m

8. Global partnership for development: focus on poorest states

The conflict trap

Average interstate war = 6 months

Average civil war = 6 years

Experience of civil war doubles risk of another conflict

Civil war reduces economic growth by 2.3% per year

Civil war = mass population movements and collapse of public health systems

Conflict-poverty trap

War and poverty

1. Low-income and civil war: halve income = double risk of war

2. Slow growth: weak economy = weak state

3. Dependency on primary commodity exports: diamonds, oil, etc

“A flagrant grievance is to a rebel movement what an image is to a business.”

Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion (2007)

Collier’s 4 instruments

1.Aid

2.Military intervention

3.Laws

4.Trade

“Useful idiots”

Problems with trade barriers

Discourage competition and retard growth

Key source of corruption

Foreign currency: more aid = less exports

Bottom-billion need to diversity exports into labor-using manufacturing and services

Need temporary protection from Asia

Human security is normatively attractive, but analytically weak.

Dr. Edward Newman

Conceptual overstretch

The broad vision of human security is ultimately nothing more than a shopping list; it involves slapping the label of human security on a wide range of issues that have no necessary link, and at a certain point, human security becomes a loose synonym for ‘bad things that can happen’.

Prof. Keith Krause

GS Afghanistan case 2009

‘Serious and individual threat’ to a person arising from a situation of armed conflict.

EC Qualification Directive, Article 15 (c)

Tests for asylum from conflict

1.Conflict severity

2.Individual risk to applicant

Tests for conflict severity

1. Battle deaths: 1,000 mark

2. Civilian casualties: data reliability and indirect?

3. Population displacement

4. State failure: essential services

Conflict severity

DRC, 2000

Chad, 2000

Somalia, 2007

Sudan, 2007

Afghan, 2008

Total killed

36,250 100 547 2,718 3,378

Displaced

317 k 54 k 85-115 k 500-625 k

3.1 m

Child mortality

17.9% 20.5% 14.2% 10.9% 20%

Child under-weight

31.1% 28.1% 35.6% 31% 45%

AIT ruling in GS case, 2009

“The food supply problem cannot be shown to be connected otherwise than very remotely to indiscriminate violence.”

Mass displacement and state failure “may provide reinforcing evidence when looking at the severity of an armed conflict [but] they are not necessarily independent tests of conflict severity.”