Download - Delievering Human Security
I
Delivering Human Security
through multi-level Governance
Delivering Human Security
through multi-level Governance
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United Nations University – Comparative Regional Integration Studies (UNU-CRIS)
UNU-CRIS is a research and training unit of the United Nations University based in Bruges, Belgium. It specialises in studying the processes and consequences of regional integration and cooperation. The mission of UNU-CRIS is to contribute towards achieving the universal goals of the United Nations through comparative and interdisciplinary research and training for better understanding of the processes and impact of intra- and inter-regional integration. The aim is to build policy -relevant knowledge about new forms of governance and cooperation, and to contribute to capacity -building on issues of integration and cooperation, particularly in developing countries. The UNU-CRIS peace and security research cluster aims to further expand understanding of the contribution of regional integration processes to peace and security and to support the interactions between the UN and regional organisations.
http://www.cris.unu.edu/
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
in Brussels UNDP focuses on providing the tools and resources necessary for people to build a better life and realise their human rights. UNDP Brussels works to promote greater coordination across the UN system, facilitating the UN’s interaction with institutions of the European Union (EU) and the development of inter-institutional networks. UNDP’s mission in Brussels is to enhance the relationship between UNDP’s global system and EU institutions, ensuring that the policies of both parties contribute to universally -agreed goals and supporting the implementation of joint programmes in the field. UNDP Brussels also directly supports the work of UNDP country offices around the world in their cooperation with the European Commission.
http://www.undp.org/eu
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Project team:
Luk Van Langenhove Antonio Vigilante Emmanuel Fanta Tãnia Felício Monica Ferro Tiziana Scaramagli Rodrigo Tavares The team is grateful for the special contributions by Nicola Harrington and Richard Cox and for the valuable comments and advice received from: Marc de Bernis Fernando Calderon Marcos Farias Ferreira Karen Fogg and colleagues in DG RELEX Douglas Gardner Ana Maria Gomes Andrey Ivanov Christopher Louise Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh Massimo Tommasoli Rastislav Vrbensky
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March 2009 Disclaimer This paper is produced by the authors in their individual capacities. The views expressed do not necessarily represent those of the United Nations
Cover photo credits: 160648 UN Photo - Eskinder Debebe 180268 UN Photo - Tim McKulka 191132 UN Photo - Marco Dormino 183044 UN Photo - Martine Perret Ticker 3 1339718060_46b3527144 - Z. Esmeralda via Flickr.com Manifestation anti CPE du 18 mars à Paris - Alain Bachelier via Flickr.com Page IV: Photo European Parliament
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Foreword
I would like to welcome this report as an important contribution to the debate on strengthening human security responses
through multi-level governance. i.e. responsibility of governance actors from local to global level. The development of human security as a guiding principle for our external policies has made steady progress since its introduction in the 1994 Human Development Report
1. The
European Parliament has embraced this principle and considers that, along with the
“responsibility to protect”, it entails “both practical consequences and strong political guidelines for the strategic orientation of European security policy...”
2
This endorsement of a policy approach with a human security dimension is important as the European Union develops its own nascent European Security Strategy alongside its longstanding Foreign, Development and Humanitarian Policies. In this respect a focus upon governance at all levels becomes an
essential tool through which we bridge our Security (with an emphasis on freedom from fear) and Development (with an emphasis on freedom from want) priorities. Security pursued through multi-level governance ensures that the institutions and instruments of governance (police, military, judiciary, and executive and legislative branches of government) are reformed to protect and promote human development and not to exploit or repress civilians. Development pursued through multi-level governance promotes
human development by working to eradicate waste, corruption and exploitation in the instruments and institutions of governance, creating an environment in which people can develop their full potential and lead productive, creative lives in accordance with their needs and interests.
1 Human Development Report, UNDP, 1994
2 European Parliament resolution of 19 February 2009 on the European Security Strategy and ESDP (2008/2202(INI)),
para 7
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Multi-level governance, therefore is an important means through which we can achieve more complementary and effective development and security policies. I would like to compliment the authors of this project and their sponsoring institutions, the UN Development Programme and the
United Nations University (UNU-CRIS), for this timely and policy-relevant report. It is an important source of information and provides concrete case studies for those wishing to learn more about human security. More importantly, the report is also an important reference for those seeking to make human security through multi-level governance more operational and effective in ensuring that all civilians around the world have the opportunity to realise their full human potential. I hope that the European Union and the United Nations will continue to put human security at the core of their daily work around the world.
The European Parliament, for its part, will support such action through its regional and international Parliamentary Diplomacy.
Hans-Gert Pöttering
President of the European Parliament
VII
Executive Summary
This paper aims at furthering
the debate on human security. It
considers the incorporation of the
concept into policy frameworks and
suggests concrete tools to operationalise
human security on the ground. The
paper emphasises the role and
responsibilities of governance actors at
all levels - from the local to the global - in
ensuring individuals’ freedom from fear
and freedom from want, the two central
planks of human security.
The paper is divided into four parts:
I. Conceptualising human security
II. Local governance and assessment of
human security
III. Regional governance in the
promotion of human security: the Case
of the European Union
IV. Other regional experiences: the
African Union, the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations and the Pacific
Islands Forum.
Principal conclusions:
The definition of human security
proposed by this paper encompasses
both freedom from fear and freedom
from want. This differs from the more
limited human security definitions,
essentially related to physical violence.
Human security shifts the security focus
from the state to the individual, and
highlights the importance of protection
of individuals from sudden and severe
disruptions in their lives that may derive
from a variety of actual, potential or
perceived threats. Human security is thus
understood to include a variety of issues
such as economic, food, health and
environmental security, as well as
personal, community and political
security.
There are clear links between the
concepts human security, human rights
and human development, all of which
put the well-being of the individual at
their core. However, in recent years,
human security has often been more
closely associated with the concept of
responsibility to protect, thus
emphasising individuals’ freedom from
fear. Yet if the international community is
willing to protect civilians - and indeed
has accepted international
responsibilities in that regard - then it
should also accept that peoples’ needs
and vulnerabilities go far beyond their
freedom from fear. The international
community should be prepared to act in
different and additional spheres of
human security, adopting a
comprehensive approach that takes
account of the differing sources of
vulnerability and human security risks.
The paper goes on to argue that human
security must necessarily be provided by
a wide range of actors operating at all
levels, from local community-based
authorities through to the national,
regional or global governance
institutions. Therefore, the assessment of
human security and analysis of needs
should also be multi-level.
To the extent that all entities vested with
governance powers are responsible for
the development and security of people
they serve, governance should lead to
improvements in the human security
status of people. Indeed, good
governance can be seen as the art of
enhancing human security, with the
latter serving as a measurement by
people of the effectiveness of those who
govern them.
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Human security is highly context-specific.
It is thus inappropriate and indeed
probably impossible to elaborate a single
standard international measure, since
the relevant variables are likely to differ
greatly between places and across time
periods. However, whilst it may not be
possible to make scientific comparisons
between locations of overall levels of
insecurity (except in specific
circumstances where many indicators
happen to coincide) it should
nevertheless be possible to compare
human security trends in single locations
over time.
This paper suggests that many
dimensions of human security are most
effectively dealt with either at a local,
sub-national level (communities,
municipalities, regions), or at a
supranational, regional or continental
level (the European Union being a case
in point).At the local level it is possible to
determine the most important
vulnerabilities to include in a context-
specific formula for the measurement of
human security. This data could provide
a baseline for the formulation of a
human security action plan comprising
policies and concrete actions designed to
improve local human security conditions.
Easily-understood indicators of local
human security have the potential to
empower communities to better
understand and express their
vulnerabilities, to hold political leaders
accountable for responding to these,
and to take appropriate actions
themselves to reduce their levels of
insecurity. In this way, measurement of
the trend and evolution of human
security over the medium-term offers real
potential in assessing the effectiveness of
local governance.
As to the role of supranational regional
organisations, the human security
concept has mainly been used in relation
to external interventions and in
connection with securing freedom from
fear for peoples outside the region. Very
little attention has been paid to how
regional-level governance can be a
provider of human security within the
region itself. Yet many aspects call for the
inclusion of regional processes among
the contributors to human security,
particularly since regional integration
and regional organisations tackle many
issues that have direct consequences on
both freedom from fear and freedom
from want.
The role and influence that the
European Union, as a regional
organisation, has on human security
takes many different forms. Whether it
concerns economic, political integration
or social policies put in place at the
regional level, the process of regional
integration with its emphasis on four
freedoms - free movement of goods,
persons, services and capital - has direct
links to safeguarding the well-being of
citizens and thus ensuring their human
security. By becoming somewhat of a
role model for other regional
organisations, and by establishing
requirements for entry into the European
Union, the Union has also played a
major role in influencing human security
in the candidate countries and in its
neighbouring states.
The European Union is not a sole
successful case of regional integration
which fosters human security, although
it is the most prominent and developed.
Other examples include the African
Union, through its endorsement of the
responsibility to protect within the
African Peace and Security Architecture
and its efforts to promote development
through the New Partnership for African
Development; the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations through its
regional coordination efforts in the face
of pandemics; and the Pacific Islands
Forum efforts to combat environmental
threats. It has thus become increasingly
evident that regional organisations have
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a role to play in the many aspects that
constitute human security.
To conclude, since the state is no longer
the alpha and omega of the provision of
human security to its citizens, it becomes
increasingly necessary to look also to
both local and regional governance
actors as human security providers. The
importance of the local level is based
largely on the non-uniformity, or context-
specific nature of actual and perceived
threats to individuals and groups. On the
other hand, the regional level allows for
the tackling of cross-border threats. The
assessment of human security is also
closely linked to good governance, a
core aim of which should be to lower the
threats facing individuals. Real and
perceived threats can usefully be
combined to provide a set of indicators
that allow both the measurement of
change in levels of insecurity over time,
and assessments of the effectiveness of
responses of different actors in
enhancing human security.
Contents
FOREWORD ............................................................................................. IV
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ...................................................................... VII
ACRONYMS .............................................................................................. XII
INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................... 1
PART I: CONCEPTUALISING HUMAN SECURITY ...................................... 5
Human Security as context-specific ................................................... 8 Human Security as Policy Doctrine ................................................. 11 Human Security, Human Rights, Human Development .......... 12 Human Security and the Responsibility to Protect ..................... 14 Security by Whom?.............................................................................. 17
PART II: LOCAL GOVERNANCE AND ASSESSMENT OF HUMAN SECURITY ........................................................................ 19
Human Security exposes the Vulnerabilities of People ............ 21 Good Governance as the Art of increasing Human Security . 22 Human Security and Democracy .................................................... 23 Can Human Security be measured? ............................................... 25 Human Security in National Human Development Reports ... 28 A Hypothetical Example .................................................................... 30
a) Identification of Human Security Priorities .......................... 30 b) Indicators for Insecurity Factors .............................................. 31 c) Human Security Action Plan .................................................... 31
Applicability of Human Security ...................................................... 36
PART III: THE CASE FOR REGIONAL GOVERNANCE IN THE PROMOTION OF HUMAN SECURITY: THE EU ....................... 39
Regional Integration and Human Security ................................... 41 The EU and Human Security ............................................................ 42 The CFSP and the ESDP ...................................................................... 43 European Integration and Economic Security ............................ 45 European Social Policy and Human Security ............................... 47 Political Integration and the Link with Human Security .......... 50 The Influence of European Integration in the Human Security of Neighbouring Countries ............................... 52 Regional Governance and Human Security ................................ 53
PART IV: OTHER EXPERIENCES OF REGIONAL GOVERNANCE IN THE PROMOTION OF HUMAN SECURITY .......................... 55
African Union: APSA and NEPAD ................................................... 57 Association of Southeast Asian Nations: the Economic Crisis and Pandemics ........................................................................... 60 Pacific Islands Forum and Environmental Security .................... 63 Regional Organisations and Human Security ............................. 64
CONCLUSION......................................................................................... 65
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................... 71
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Acronyms APRM – African Peer Review Mechanism APSA – African Peace and Security Architecture ASEAN – Association of Southeast Asian Nations AU – African Union CAADP – Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme CARDS – Community Assistance for Reconstruction, Development and Stabilization CEWS – Continental Early Warning System CFSP – Common Foreign and Security Policy EES – European Employment Strategy EGF – European Globalisation Fund ENP - European Neighbourhood Policy ESDP – European Security and Defence Policy EU – European Union G8 – Group of Eight G20 – Group of Twenty Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors GDP – Gross Domestic Product HIV/AIDS – Human Immunodeficiency Virus / Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome HPAI – Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza HPI – Human Poverty Index IDPs - Internally displaced persons MDGs – Millennium Development Goals NEPAD – New Partnership for Africa’s Development NGOs – Non-Governmental Organisations NHDR – National Human Development Report PIF – Pacific Islands Forum SARS – Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome UN – United Nations UNDP – United Nations Development Programme UNU-CRIS – United Nations University programme on Comparative Regional Integration Studies WCSDG – World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization
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Introduction
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3
Delivering Human Security
through multi-level Governance is the
result of cooperation between staff
working in their personal capacity of two
Belgium-based entities of the United
Nations (UN) system. The United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP) in
Brussels is an office that aims to facilitate
interaction between the UN and the
European Union (EU). The United
Nations University programme on
Comparative Regional Integration
Studies (UNU-CRIS) is a research
programme of the UNU aimed at
fostering understanding of the
interactions between the UN and
regional organisations. Both UN entities
share an interest: in contributing to the
mutual reinforcement of global and
regional governance structures. Hence,
the idea emerged to embark upon a joint
intellectual exercise to analyse the
implications of the concept of human
security for interactions between global,
regional and local governance actors, in
order to offer policy reflections and
operational tools to those responsible for
putting human security into practice.
The quest for human security
can be seen as part of a broader
paradigm shift from government to
governance. In the old paradigm, states
were considered to have a monopoly on
the provision of public goods, including
security. States were depicted as the
sovereign building blocks of an
international order. In the new
paradigm, states are no longer seen as
the sole provider of public goods. Other
actors such as non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) or regional
organisations also play a role. At the
same time, the two-level approach to
international relations (level one being
the state and level two,
intergovernmental organisations) is
being replaced by a much more complex
multi-level system of governance that
also involves local, sub-national providers
of public goods as well as regional
governance actors acting at a
supranational but not a global level. If
one adds to that complexity the fact that
meanwhile all kinds of new security
threats have been put on the agenda, it
becomes clear that there is a need for
new thinking about security that is
adapted to this new reality of multilevel
governance and to expanded concepts
of security.
Concepts play a major role in
thinking, debating upon and shaping
the world. The concept of sustainable
development, for instance, was coined
only in 1983 and has since had an
enormous impact at all kinds of policy
levels. Using new concepts is therefore
not neutral. They can be an instrument
of change in their own right. Human
security is such a concept with the
power to change approaches to security
and it already represents new shared
understanding in International Relations.
Yet it is also an ambiguous and elastic
concept that needs further analysis. This
paper aims to contribute to that analysis
through a multi-level, governance-based
approach to human security.
Part I Conceptualising Human Security
6
“Much is said about ecological
scenarios of doom and the nuclear threat but poverty and hunger are worse
than an atomic bomb”
Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann
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Human security is a novel
concept, but few other ideas were
accepted so quickly and with so much
enthusiasm by policy makers and
academia alike. It is an idea invoked
repeatedly in political debates,
advocated in a multitude of security
policy documents, and proposed by a
range of development and security
actors. But what is human security?
What do we still need to know about it?
In a narrow sense, human
security is about a new central reference
point for security – the individual. This
approach can be traced back to the
1993 Human Development Report,
which triggered debate over the need to
challenge crystallised views of security:
from an exclusive stress on national
security to a focus on the security of the
individual and of people; from security
through armaments to security through
human development; and from territorial
security to food, environmental and
employment security. The old edifice was
shaken. It became evident that the
traditional conception of security –
based upon military defence of territory
– was a necessary but indeed not a
sufficient condition for people’s security
and welfare. The 1994 edition of the
Human Development Report,
championed by Mahbub ul Haq,
elevated the discussion to a level of
doctrine. The intent of human security
was to bridge freedom from fear –
indicating freedom from violence – and
freedom from want – related to poverty
alleviation. It thus included economic
security, food security, health security,
environmental security, personal
security, community security and political
security. As such, human security reflects
the concern that security must focus
upon individuals or people collectively,
wherever the threat comes from and
whatever the nature of this threat.
Therefore, human security is a
transversal concept that affects every
sector that can impact upon peoples’
welfare, and that requires the adoption
of cross-sectoral policies to respond to a
range of human security vulnerabilities
in societies. The focus on the individual
presupposed that security policies should
be moulded by the needs of people and
their perceived or real threats. As
described in the 1994 UNDP report,
“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” (HDR, 1994: 22).
The report identified four
essential characteristics of human
security:
• Universality – it is relevant to people
everywhere;
• Interdependence – all components of
human security are mutually reinforcing;
• Prevention – human security is better
ensured by prevention than reaction;
• People-centred – it is concerned with
how people live in a society and how
freely they exercise their many options.
The two notions of freedom from
fear and freedom from want comprise a
multiplicity of both positive and negative
freedoms and rights that have been
linked to human security. In order to be
meaningful, the concept needed to be
narrowed. The central question became
what to include or exclude in human
security as well as the rationale for such
criteria. Divisions emerged around the
scope and mechanisms of human
security, giving birth in particular to a
Canadian and a Japanese version of the
concept. Some indeed advocate a
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
8
“Our human security approach deepens efforts to address
terrorism through initiatives in public safety, conflict prevention,
civilian protection, peace operations and governance”
Bill Graham ,
“Human security is an idea that focuses on protection of people
from threats to human life such as poverty, degradation, terrorism
and conflicts” Makiko Tanaka
narrow definition, arguing that human
security can only be of practical use if it is
centred on freedom from fear, or on
preventing physical violence and
securing the integrity of people
(MacFarlane and Khong, 2006). Others
take a maximalist view and define
human security as both freedom from
fear and freedom from want. In other
words, human security represents the
freedom from all the insecurities that
prevent people from living a life in
dignity, including non-military threats to
the security of individuals, groups and
societies. This contrasts with the more
traditional focus on protecting states
from external threats (Paris, 2001).
Human Security as context-
specific
In line with the UNDP 1994
Human Development Report, this paper
takes the core components of human
security - understood as freedom from
fear and freedom from want - as:
economic, food, health, environmental,
personal, community and political
security.
The weight given by an
individual or group to each of these
elements is likely to be conditioned by a
multiplicity of factors such as ethnicity,
age, gender, time, geography, political
regime, economic situation and culture.
Ethnicity represents both an
important variable in the perception of
vulnerabilities and a major risk factor in
the generation of violence itself. In
approaching the components of human
security, the ethnic perspective gives
primacy to community-level security
because this encompasses the physical
protection of the ethnic group. The
remaining elements of human security
are relevant to the extent that their
accessibility is jeopardised by
discrimination based on ethnicity. People
belonging to different ethnic groups are
unlikely to attribute the same weight to
the components of human security. For
example, the vulnerabilities of a minority
in a country under an authoritarian
regime may well differ from the risks to
which the majority of the population are
exposed. An individual belonging to a
minority group is likely to be concerned
about the protection of his or her
political rights and aspires to his or her
children avoiding the risk of
marginalisation or persecution in the
future. An individual from within the
majority may fear economic or financial
risks and have little or limited concern
about issues of equality or discrimination.
History has shown ethnicity to represent
a major factor of risk of violence in its
own right. Numerous violent conflicts in
the world, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Darfur
being cases in point, were linked to
ethnicity as political, cultural, economic
and social problems among ethnic
groups degenerated into civil war.
Differences in age heavily
influence perceptions of vulnerability in
human security, without being linked to
violence as such. A young person is likely
to be primarily concerned about
employment, job security, peer violence,
environment and education, whilst
elderly people will be concerned about
the ability of the state to respond to their
Conceptualising Human Security
9
needs, their access to social services and
the purchasing power of their pensions.
Gender constitutes a complex
variable in perceptions of human
security. In particular, it can be a major
factor in increased risk of violence,
notably in conflict situations. Gender
potentially affects perspectives on all
seven components of human security,
since economic, food, health,
environmental, personal, community and
political securities are fundamental to
women in reducing their vulnerability.
Many women suffer both individual and
societal discrimination in all or some of
these domains. Generally, women have
less control over resources, a factor
which makes them particularly
vulnerable and constantly exposed to
the risk of discrimination. Women are
exposed differently to risks than men. In
terms of physical violence, in conflict
situations in particular, women are often
the target of rape or HIV contagion
through sexual violence: as one
seasoned peacekeeper said recently, it is
now more dangerous to be a woman
than a soldier in modern conflicts. Even
during peace time, women remain much
more vulnerable to physical threats than
men. At a societal level, women are often
affected by disparities in their salaries
compared with men undertaking the
same work. Women may fear
encountering greater difficulty in finding
and maintaining a job, or weak social
protection during their maternity leave.
Finally, in some political regimes, women
are specifically excluded from
participation in political and economic
life of the country because they are not
considered equal to men in society.
Time affects perceptions of
human security vulnerabilities in that it
attributes different levels of importance
to risks depending on historical periods
or on the social or cultural trends that
dominate particular decades or
centuries. What is now perceived as a
threat or a risk may not even have been
considered a potential source of
vulnerability a century or even decades
ago, an instance being climate change
or terrorism, now major international
security concerns. World wars and the
fear of heavy fighting between nations
were fundamental concerns during most
of the 20th
century, whereas now the risk
concerns few countries in the world.
One might expect that elements
currently perceived as major global
security threats, for instance energy
security, may well be of less relative
concern to future generations as other
sources of vulnerability not yet foreseen
become the object of global concern.
Geography affects the analysis of
human security because perceptions of
vulnerability are affected by the location
of individuals, countries or continents.
The geographical perspective puts
primacy on the environmental
dimension of human security, but is also
sensitive to economic, food and personal
security dimensions of vulnerability. In
reality, as a consequence of its
surrounding geography, a population
with less access to resources is likely to
have an underdeveloped economy,
restricted food availability and greater
exposure to natural disasters, all of which
threaten its security. People living in a
desert environment are more exposed to
vulnerabilities in their economic,
personal, physical and environmental
security than individuals living in more
benign environments. At the same time,
islands or states located in areas
threatened by earthquakes or floods
display high levels of vulnerability in
terms of environmental and personal
security. Geography is also a potential
source of risk of violence since it often
implies access to particular resources
with economic or geostrategic
implications and can thus generate
violence amongst groups fighting for
control of the geographical space in
order to appropriate the resources. This
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
10
can be particularly relevant in the cases
of water or oil, for example.
Political regimes, as with ethnicity
and geography, constitute both a
variable in the perception of human
security vulnerabilities and a risk to the
generation of violence itself. Differences
in the political regime can affect all seven
components of human security, due to
the fact that most of the vulnerabilities
facing individuals and communities, be
they economic, social, environmental or
personal, depend upon the political
system. People living under an
authoritarian regime naturally have
different perceptions of their
vulnerabilities than those living within a
democratic system. In the first case, for
example, even physical security can be
jeopardised, and there is greater scope
for a wide range of freedoms to be
arbitrarily threatened by abuse of power.
However, this shortfall may not be clearly
perceived by the population, as free
access to information is likely to be
curtailed. In democratic countries, people
may fear corruption or misrepresentation
of a legitimate interest, but the legal and
judicial apparatus should ensure a
certain level of protection of the
population’s human security. Political
regimes can also be catalysts for
violence, if interstate conflicts explode as
a result of expansionist policies of the
leadership, as was the case in the
invasion by Iraq of Kuwait in 1990.
The economic situation of a
person or country naturally affects all
elements of human security, since
economic vulnerabilities can have
repercussions on the security of food,
health, environment, communities, the
political system and individuals3. A rich
country will almost inevitably be less
vulnerable to a lack of food, inadequate
3 See, for instance, UNDP (1998) NHDR Chile, which
analyses different security situations according to different political/economic systems, pp. 39-40
health provision, environmental
catastrophes, physical violence or
political instability. A poor country, on
the other hand, is much more concerned
by all these vulnerabilities and, in
addition, to the risk that it can be
weakened by problems deriving from
rich countries upon which it depends for
its economy or for political support. The
same applies to groups and individuals
within the same country since wealth
and individual capacities vary greatly so
giving place to different levels of
resilience and response ability to human
security threats.
The example of the recent
financial crisis is emblematic, in that
while it originated in particular parts of
the developed world, it has triggered
severe economic and human
repercussions in both rich and poor
countries.
As with ethnicity, culture affects
the perception of human security
components, whilst cultural intolerance
represents a potential catalyst of violence
itself. From a cultural perspective, the
most important element in human
security is community security because of
its emphasis on traditions, values and
ethnic links. As with ethnicity, a cultural
approach to the other six human security
characteristics focuses mainly on the risk
of cultural discrimination in access to the
economy, food, health, environment and
political life. People with different
cultures are likely to have divergent
priorities within their human security
perspective. Identity, religion, traditional
values and social systems strongly
influence the identification of risks for
individuals. Especially during the last
decades, religion has become influential
in shaping perceptions of threats and
vulnerabilities. This suggests that culture
represents one of the elements deeply
influenced by time. Some current
international tensions emphasise the
resurgent difficulty in finding common
ground between people belonging to
Conceptualising Human Security
11
different cultures, whilst religious and
cultural intolerance represent a factor in
creating violence where groups with
different identities may clash violently.
As the above indicates, ethnicity,
age, gender, time, geography, political
regime, economic situation and culture,
all forge an individual’s sense of security
or insecurity. Human security at its core is
built on peoples’ perceptions, which are
themselves embedded in individuals’
cultural background. This means there
can be different perceptions of security
even within the same community and in
circumstances where theoretically
people should share similar feelings of
insecurity. At the same time, common
perceptions of security may develop
across people living in different
continents if they share a core set of
common human security characteristics.
In terms of shared felt vulnerabilities, it is
thus possible to recognise human
security from both a horizontal and a
vertical perspective.
Human Security as Policy
Doctrine
From the time of the 1994
Human Development Report, the
concept and practice of human security
started to permeate the international
political discourse. It took four years until
the then UN Secretary General Kofi
Annan declared that “ensuring human
security is, in the broadest sense, the
cardinal mission of the United Nations”
(UN Secretary General, 1998: 1). In the
same report, he also highlighted the
importance of the development
dimension in dealing with conflict
prevention and sustainable stability. The
position of the Secretary General derives
directly from the work carried out by
UNDP. The reiteration by him of the
centrality of human security, however,
had a multiplying effect and provided
encouragement and legitimacy to the
incorporation of human security in the
policy discourse of UN member states. In
preparation for the 2000 Millennium
Summit, the Secretary General presented
another report entitled We the Peoples:
The Role of the United Nations in the 21st
Century, which proposed solutions to
diminish the negative impact of
globalisation on the weakest human
beings. The importance of this report for
human security resides in its inclusion of
a definition of the concept, which is
described as a value encompassing
human rights, good governance, access
to education and health care as well as
opening access to opportunities and
choices to fulfil every individual’s own
potential. Freedom from want and
freedom from fear come together with
the freedom of future generations to
inherit a healthy natural environment.
Poverty, water, education, HIV/AIDS,
youth employment and building digital
bridges are identified as issues to be
addressed to secure freedom from want.
On the other hand, international law,
peace operations, targeted sanctions,
small arms and nuclear weapons
represent the key issues from the
freedom from fear perspective. These
ideas were retained in the Millennium
Declaration adopted by 189 states at the
2000 UN Millennium Summit.
Responding to the challenges
proposed by the Secretary General Kofi
Annan in his We the Peoples report
about the legitimacy of military
intervention in case of gross human
violations4, during the Millennium
Summit, the Prime Minister of Canada
announced the establishment of the
International Commission on
4 “If humanitarian intervention is, indeed, an
unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we
respond to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica - to gross and systematic violations of human rights that offend every precept of our common humanity? Surely no legal principle - not even sovereignty - can ever shield crimes against humanity. Armed intervention must always remain the option of last resort, but in the face of mass murder, it is an option that cannot be relinquished” (UN Secretary General, 2000: 48).
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
12
Intervention and State Sovereignty. The
Commission aimed at promoting a
comprehensive debate on the
relationship between intervention and
sovereignty, trying to reach a global
political consensus on the criteria that
could be used to allow external
interventions in a state that is unable or
unwilling to protect its own citizens. In
December 2001, the Commission
finalised its report entitled The
Responsibility to Protect, in which it
studied the relationship between the
rights of sovereign states and the so-
called “right of humanitarian
intervention”. Although the report
focused mainly on state responsibilities
towards its own citizenry, it also
highlighted the concept of human
security, which it defined as “the security
of people – their physical safety, their
economic and social well-being, respect
for their dignity and worth as human
beings, and the protection of their
human rights and fundamental
freedoms” (International Commission on
Intervention and State Sovereignty,
2001: 15). Even though the report
focuses mainly on the concept of
responsibility to protect, inclusion of the
concept nonetheless illustrated the
degree to which human security had
become a central topic in policy-making5.
In 2001, a Commission on
Human Security, chaired by Nobel
Laureate Amartya Sen and the former
UN High Commissioner for Refugees
Sadako Ogata, was established to
explore the concept of human security
and to produce policy recommendations.
In 2003, the Commission presented a
report, Human Security Now, which
represented the first important attempt
5 Also the World Bank, in its 2000-2001 World
Development Report, made a very important contribution to the human security debate, identifying three main policies aiming to reduce poverty: facilitating empowerment, enhancing security, and promoting opportunities. It consequently gives high important to the full set of components of human security identified above.
to construct a comprehensive definition
of human security and to elaborate an
official statement on the fundamental
link between human security and
development. It recognised that
achieving human security included not
only protecting people, but also
empowering people to fend for them.
Along similar lines, the 2004 Report of
the High Level Panel on Threats,
Challenges and Change, prepared under
the chairmanship of former Prime
Minister of Thailand Anand Panyarachun
at the request of the Secretary General,
underlines that human security and
development are indispensable
foundations for a collective security
system and fundamental tools to help
combat poverty, infectious disease and
environmental degradation that
threaten human security. These ideas
were incorporated in the landmark
report of the UN Secretary General In
Larger Freedom: Towards development,
security and human rights for all,
submitted to the General Assembly in
2005.
Human Security, Human Rights,
Human Development
To better understand human
security from a comprehensive
perspective and to have a more general
view of the framework within which
human security is inserted, it is important
to emphasise its linkages with the
concepts of human development and
human rights. The 2003 report Human
Security Now rightly sees human security
and human rights as complementary:
“Human rights and human security are
mutually reinforcing. Human security
helps identify the rights at stake in a
particular situation. And human rights
help answer the question: How should
human security be promoted? The
notion of duties and obligations
complements the recognition of the
ethical and political importance of
Conceptualising Human Security
13
human security” (Commission on Human
Security, 2003:10).
Both human security and human
rights have the individual at the core of
national and international policies:
human security cannot be assured
without the respect for and the
protection of human rights. Both
concepts have freedom from fear and
freedom from want as fundamental
goals. Additionally, human security has
as its core the indivisible and non-
hierarchical value of human rights,
which allows living a life of dignity.
Moreover, human security and human
rights are deeply interconnected in their
motivations and areas of concern (Alkire,
2003). The objectives of human security
are the most basic and universal human
rights and the two concepts address the
fight against poverty and violence as
priorities in their policy implementation.
Finally, human security and human
rights are both connected to duties and
responsibilities of particular actors. The
enjoyment of human security and
human rights cannot be assured without
people, institutions or structures whose
duty it is to provide individuals with a
range of opportunities enabling their
personal fulfilment. At the same time, this
obligation does not mean that people
themselves have to wait for the provision
of the above-mentioned opportunities by
others. On the contrary, human beings
have to make a proactive effort towards
their realisation. In both human security
and human rights, the responsibility
resides in the provider, but also in the
individual as the principal determinant in
the fulfilment of his/hers own
development.
The inter-linkages between
human security and human
development are also striking. As Alkire
highlights, both human security and
human development are people-centred;
they are multi-dimensional; they have a
strong development perspective in the
long term; and they address deep
poverty (Alkire, 2003). First, the centrality
of people represents the core of both the
concepts, and the individual constitutes
the principal focus in the definition of
human security and human
development-related policies. Second,
they are both multi-dimensional because
they involve different spheres and levels
of society as well as individuals. Their
different components cannot be
considered in isolation, but rather have
to be addressed simultaneously across
their various dimensions. Third, human
security and human development each
have a strong development perspective,
implying a commitment to long-term
action to address vulnerabilities through
policies aimed at fulfilment of human
potential. For UNDP, the right to
personal realisation represents a
fundamental component of both the
concepts. Finally, human development
and human security reflect a strong
commitment to poverty reduction
because there cannot be security or
development in conditions of abject
poverty. On the contrary, poverty
represents a fertile ground for the rise of
all kind of vulnerabilities.
The theoretical differences
between the concepts of human security
and human development lie in the
emphasis on prevention and in their time
horizons (Alkire, 2003). Human security
reflects a strong commitment to
prevention rather than reaction - . Whilst
theoretically speaking, human
development takes a longer-term
perspective than human security, in fact
the latter cannot be addressed without a
clear long-term approach because it
encompasses prevention, crisis
management and post-reconstruction
efforts. Finally, human security permits
the taking into account of perceptions,
which whilst all-important, nevertheless
make attempts at objective measurement
still more elusive and varied. Despite
these differences, human security and
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
14
human development overlap in many
areas. If human development is the
enlargement of people’s life choices,
human security is the protection of the
availability of such choices and their
continued undisrupted enjoyment.
Nevertheless, their implementation still
requires different institutions and policy-
making.
An analytical study of human
security cannot overlook the importance
of these links and the reciprocal
interactions between the three concepts.
Human security complements state
security, enhances human rights and
strengthens human development
(Commission on Human Security, 2003).
Human Security and the
Responsibility to Protect
As noted above, human security
has traditionally been linked to human
development and human rights.
However, in recent years, it has also
increasingly been associated with the
concept of responsibility to protect and
so closely linked to the freedom from
fear. Its importance resides in the duty of
the international community to
intervene in protecting the civilian
population in a country unable or
unwilling to do so. The Responsibility to
Protect could, in that sense, be seen as a
normative precept able to facilitate the
implementation of a human security
paradigm.
The origins of the responsibility
to protect can be traced back to the
debate over the right of humanitarian
intervention for the protection of civilians
in conflicts and crises held at the UN in
the 1990s mostly in the wake of the
genocide in Rwanda. The 2005 World
Summit put the need to protect
populations from genocide, war crimes,
ethnic cleansing and crimes against
humanity on the main stage of the policy
debate. On 28 April 2006, the Security
Council unanimously adopted Resolution
1674 on the protection of civilians in
armed conflict. The document contains
the historic first official reference to the
responsibility to protect: it “reaffirms the
provisions of paragraphs 1386 and 139
7
of the World Summit Outcome
Document regarding the responsibility to
protect populations from genocide, war
crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes
against humanity.” Security Council
Resolution 1674 was followed by several
other juridical texts and policy
statements where the responsibility to
protect is regarded as a cardinal principle
in international relations. For instance in
May 2008, the Security Council
reaffirmed “the responsibility of States to
comply with their relevant obligations to
end impunity and to prosecute those
responsible for war crimes, genocide,
crimes against humanity and serious
violations of international humanitarian
law” (SC, 2008:3). The debate around the
responsibility to protect concept keeps
6 “Each individual State has the responsibility to protect
its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means. We accept that responsibility and will act in accordance with it. The international community should, as appropriate, encourage and help States to exercise this responsibility and support the United Nations in establishing an early warning capability.” 7 “The international community, through the United
Nations, also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. In this context, we are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the Charter, including Chapter VII, on a case-by-case basis and in cooperation with relevant regional organizations as appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. We stress the need for the General Assembly to continue consideration of the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against
humanity and its implications, bearing in mind the principles of the Charter and international law. We also intend to commit ourselves, as necessary and appropriate, to helping States build capacity to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and to assisting those which are under stress before crises and conflicts break out.”
Conceptualising Human Security
15
intensifying. In January 2009, in his
report to the General Assembly, the
Secretary General highlights a three-
pillar strategy for the implementation of
the concept. The first pillar concerns the
protection responsibilities of the state;
the second foresees international
assistance and capacity-building and the
last encompasses a timely and decisive
response by the international
community.
In spite of its universal scope, the
general acceptance of the concept and
indeed the assumption of international
obligations, the responsibility to protect
remains a highly politically sensitive
issue. On what basis can the
international community judge whether
a population is in need of a
humanitarian intervention that requires
the use of military means? Who decides
whether a crisis falls under humanitarian
emergency? Who actually takes the
decision to use military means to
intervene in a country? The SG Report
provides some answers to these
questions and including the role the UN
Security Council should play as the
global institution in this sense under
Chapter VII of the UN Charter. The
Security Council’s legitimacy, however, is
sometimes perceived as controversial,
mainly due to its composition which is
judged almost universally as obsolete
and the weight and veto power of the
five permanent members in deciding for
or against international interventions.
A fundamental set of questions
remains, however. Why has the
responsibility to protect been confined
only to cases of violent threats to
physical security? In this sense, the
principles related to the responsibility to
protect, being limited to physical
security, take into account just some
components of freedom from fear,
leaving aside, for instance, the whole
spectrum of non-physical violence
security threats. What about the other
constitutive principles of human
security? The concept of responsibility to
protect does not include epidemics or
mass starvation for example, even
though these may cause the death and
destitution of millions of individuals.
If the international community is
willing to protect civilians, then their
fundamental necessities and
vulnerabilities go much further than the
sole freedom from fear. If one takes into
consideration the whole spectrum of
human security, the international
community should in principle be
compelled to engage not only in case of
physical violations but also according to
other fundamental elements that make
up human security. When facing
reluctant states, the international
community has been willing to engage
in humanitarian crises deriving from
natural disasters, as in the case of
Myanmar, more than in situations that
are directly linked to the current
understanding of responsibility to
protect8.
Important criticisms to the
human security concept reside in the fact
that it could be used to legitimise military
8 The debate within the UN is not only
confined to the concept of responsibility to protect. In fact, the General Assembly and the Security Council have already referred to humanitarian crises as justifying international interventions. In a soft written provision the General Assembly (RES/43/131) when
endorsing the need for humanitarian assistance to victims of natural disasters and similar emergency situations, clearly states that is “up to each State first and foremost to take care of the victims of natural disasters and similar emergency situations occurring on its territory.” Buy considers that the “abandonment of the victims without humanitarian assistance constitutes a threat to human life and an offence to human dignity,” therefore setting the stage for international action. The Security Council in distinct Resolutions (e.g., 688, 794 and 929, for Iraq, Somalia and Ruanda, respectively) explicitly considers that humanitarian emergencies are a threat to international security and peace and resort to the provisions under Chapter VII of the Charter to decide the set up of multinational operations. The assumption of this linkage between humanitarian crises and international security is groundbreaking and is used by the
promoters of a right to intervene as turning point from mere observation (that marked the first 50 years of UN history) to a proactive and restorative action (Ribeiro & Ferro, 2004: 289). But still there is no recognition on the necessity to intervene just for the sake of the humanitarian situation; that recognition only comes when there is a threat to international peace and security.
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
16
interventions under the guise of the
responsibility to protect. Yet surely the
international community should be
prepared to act in different and
additional spheres of human security,
with the aim of ensuring an adequate
and comprehensive approach to
peoples’ fundamental vulnerabilities.
There are many cases in point.
The present financial crisis and the
related economic downturn is leading to
a profound crisis affecting the everyday
lives, livelihoods and survival of millions
of individuals and has deeply affected
the safety and value of people’s savings
in many countries. This has increased
their economic vulnerabilities and hence
their vulnerabilities in many other
aspects of human security. This requires
action on the part of the international
community to prevent the more serious
consequences on individuals. Indeed, the
international actions needed to stabilize
financial markets and the measures
required to alleviate the consequent
economic hardship for developing
countries could be presented at least as a
compelling contribution to human
security, if not as part of the responsibility
to protect, the duty bearer being the
international community at large,
especially the G20, the donor countries,
the International Financial Institutions
(IFIs) and the UN.
Another security element that
should be assured by the international
system is environmental security. Natural
disasters are usually out of states’ control.
Floods, earthquakes or drought can
hardly be tackled by national
governments. Inhabiting a secure
environment represents a core value for
human beings. The international
community has already intervened in
several environment-related crises or
natural hazards. Without its help, it is
difficult to imagine how states such as
Pakistan during the 2005 earthquake
could have dealt with the crisis. The
alleviation and prevention of climate
change-related disasters can therefore
also be considered as vital and relevant
to a wider framework of the
responsibility to protect.
Food security represents another
important factor that could demand
international intervention within a
particular state. If a large segment of the
population does not have physical or
economic access to basic food because
its state cannot or is not willing to
provide it, the international community
should have the responsibility to act in
protection of these peoples. The right to
food represents a core value in the
affirmation of security: aside from the risk
of outright starvation, a hungry person is
more exposed to violations to his or her
integrity.
Today, religious and ethnic
identity represent values easily
threatened both by other communities
and by national authorities in certain
countries. Community security is more
and more a central right to be defended.
Despite numerous genocides, identity-
related violations still constitute one of
the most common threats to human
security. States are often unable to
prevent violence between communities
and major community security violations
could come once again from states’
actions. In these cases, the international
community should engage to ensure the
protection of civilians from threats to
their own identity, cultural or physical
survival.
If a wider understanding of the
responsibility to protect envisaged in this
paper is considered reasonable, then
one can derive from that that the
international community should not only
have a mandate but also the
responsibility to protect all human beings
through facilitation or the provision of
essential global public goods such as a
reliable international economic and
Conceptualising Human Security
17
financial order, sustainable development
frameworks, international peace, climate
stability, sufficient food availability to all,
human rights enhancement and
protection systems and more.
In today’s international politics,
humanitarian assistance is perceived as
an act of good will or generosity from
the international community or
individual states. Instead, it should be
promoted as a fundamental tool
somehow linked to the responsibility to
protect principle and it should be
provided as a real commitment in the
fight against all severe human security
violations.
The current international debate
is understandably focused on the
responsibility to protect people from
massive, violent threats to their lives9.
However, this should not exclude a
debate on the enlargement of the
concept to other severe and massive
threats connected to freedom from
want. Indeed the on-going work on the
protection of persons in the event of
disasters in the International Law
Commission suggests the existence of a
right to humanitarian assistance and
may lead to a legal framework at least for
international disaster response activities.
This possibility is recognised in
the resolution on humanitarian
assistance adopted by the Institute of
International Law in 2003, which states
that “if a refusal to accept a bona fide
offer of humanitarian assistance or to
allow access to the victims, leads to a
threat to international peace and
security, the security Council may take
the necessary measures under the
Chapter VII of the United Nations
Charter”.
9 “The responsibility to protect applies, until Member
States decide otherwise, only to the four specified crimes and violations: genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity”. (UN Secretary General, 2009: 8)
Security by Whom?
Human security is centred on the
idea that the object of security is the
people (security to whom?). The
providers of security (by whom?), or the
agents responsible for diffusing and
containing the threats are studied less in
the human security literature. This paper
argues that human security should be
facilitated or provided by a wide range of
actors from the local to the global levels.
As seen above, a comprehensive
interpretation of the responsibility to
protect could be a powerful instrument
to underline state’s responsibilities and
rectify the incapacity of the state to
provide human security. However, the
responsibility to protect individuals, or
the ability to intervene to address correct
wrongdoings, presupposes the idea that
human security can indeed be facilitated
or provided at different levels and by a
multiplicity of actors:
• Local Level. Human security is
deeply rooted in the idea of grassroots
empowerment. Citizens are often
embedded in formal and informal local
networks that may help to prevent
threats10
. Municipalities and other
administrative structures of local power
are also particularly well-equipped in this
regard given their proximity to the
citizens and the local problems facing
them. Some threats to human welfare
are highly localised and have a very
short range (e.g. water quality) which
makes them highly suitable for local
interventions.
• National Level. The natural
social contract presupposes that the
state is responsible for the protection of
its citizens. Indeed, sovereignty has been
equated to responsibility, i.e. the state
sovereignty consists in fulfilling
10
This is defined as “sociabilidade” in UNDP (1998) NHDR Chile, p. 106. The Report also discusses the importance of social capital for human security at p. 37
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
18
fundamental protection obligations and
respecting core human rights towards its
citizens (UN Secretary General, 2009).
And that protection cannot be limited to
physical violence. The state remains the
most prominent political actor and the
bedrock of social organisation and social
protection, and is more powerful and
better-resourced than local institutions.
• Regional Level. Regional and
other intergovernmental organisations,
for example the European Union (EU),
the African Union (AU) and the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN), are gradually becoming
prominent actors in international
relations. A large number of such
organisations have strengthened their
mandate in peace and security and
adopted regional development plans.
• Global Level. The United
Nations and other relevant global
institutions are well positioned and
mandated to tackle global threats. What
they may lack in local specificity and local
impact, they compensate with their
capacity to provide international
legitimacy to particular actions.
All these levels operate in an
interdependent and inclusive way. The
range of human security threats is
heterogeneous and undefined.
Therefore no single method or actor is
able to counter all threats. Indeed,
individuals need to be protected by a
wide range of different actors who
might intervene according to the
specificity of each threat.
The complexity of the
relationship of human security to its
context is addressed more concretely in
Part II. Indeed, the universal conception
but local application of human security
represents a fundamental element in the
study of human vulnerabilities, security
providers and cross-border threats.
19
Part II Local Governance and
Assessment of Human Security
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
“People protected can exercise choices, and people empowered can
make better choices and actively prevent or mitigate the impact of
threats and insecurities”
Sadako Ogata
21
“Because human security is a public
good, it entails the state responsibility, as w ell as a
corresponding duty of engagement by the people. With the ultimate aim s of ensuring survival, livelihoods and dignity, the obligations of those in
power – the state and the international community – consist of
protecting, providing and empowering”
UNDP, Afghanistan HDR
This section focuses on the link
between local governance and the
provision of human security. It takes as a
starting assumption that enhanced
human security is a central outcome of
good governance, and seeks to
demonstrate first, that it is possible to
monitor human security at the local level;
second, the political and programmatic
utility of this approach; and, third, the
fact that mapping the evolution of a
chosen set of human security indicators
at the local level can provide an
indication of the quality of local
governance by local authorities.
Security carries with it the
notion of living without concerns, of
being carefree. As such, it encompasses
predictability and control over one’s
destiny, and it implies the removal of
obstacles that prevent people from
realising their aspirations towards a
better life for themselves, their families
and for communities.
Human security thus has a double
agenda of protection and
empowerment. Protection refers to the
norms, processes, and institutions
required to shield people from critical
and pervasive threats.
Empowerment emphasizes
people as actors and participants in
removing “unfreedoms” and defining
and implementing their vital choices.
(Ogata, 2004:10) In all fundamental
social contracts, good governance is
expected to respond to these challenges.
The state has been created to provide
people with the necessary public goods
to ensure their well-being. Because
sometimes the state is either too big or
too small to deliver these goods to
people effectively, other layers of
governance have also been created.
Human Security exposes the
Vulnerabilities of People
Worldwide, people experience
“unfreedoms,” namely obstacles and
insecurities that prevent them from
realising their aspirations to live a life of
dignity in larger freedom: free from want
and free from fear, and ensuring the
freedom of future generations to inherit
a healthy natural environment. This
legitimate aspiration implies that a set of
governance institutions, starting from
the state and moving across the whole
spectrum - from municipalities up to
international organisations and
including the regional and sub-national
layers of the governance processes -
works towards the creation and
maintenance of an environment
conducive to the fulfilment of such
aspiration. This shift away from an
exclusively state-based conception of
collective security to a people- and
community-centred definition enables
security to be understood as the sum of
individual and community concerns,
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
22
“Afghanistan has no policies for any of the things that help w ith
human security and human development. It has no education policy, it has no health policy, it has no economic policy, it has no environmental policy, it has no
security policy. It just takes everything by the day and many of the days are bad. I w ish I could
have been more optimistic”
Hamdullah from Jalalabad
with a possible positive-sum game in
which all actors can realize greater
security (Jolly and Ray, 2006:12).
As noted earlier, human
security is rarely just about the protection
from violence, and security is always
more than just freedom from fear. In
crises and other extreme scenarios,
conflicts and social upheaval may focus
peoples’ security concerns on violence.
More often, however, the primary threats
to the lives of millions of people living in
developing countries are related to the
“supply side” of societal systems, and
involve socioeconomic risks: security of
employment and income, the access of
individuals to health care and education
systems, or the promotion and
guarantee of their basic human rights.
Where large segments of the population
spend most of their income on food,
where people face the menace of
recurrent devastating floods, (as in
Bangladesh), or droughts, (as in
Ethiopia), security there means above all
else development.
This enlarged perception of
what impacts on people’s security and
related dignity means that “[in] today’s
world, the well-being of the individual
requires a far more complex set of
considerations than was considered
necessary within the state-based
definition of security. The very reason
that for an Afghan citizen the definition
of security is drastically different than
that of a Latvian citizen compels an
immediate reformulation of the very
definition of security” (Jolly and Ray,
2006: 9).
That being said, there is no
fundamental difference between the
aspiration to human security of an
Afghan, of a Latvian or of an inhabitant
of flooded Bangladesh or of drought-
ridden Ethiopia: they all want to realize
their potential. As Amartya Sen clearly
states: “[p]eople need security so as to
enjoy the greatest possible degree of
freedom and dignity in their lives” (Sen,
2000).
Good Governance as the Art of
increasing Human Security
Governance constitutes the
system of values, policies and institutions
by which a society manages its
economic, political and social affairs
through interactions within the state and
between the state, civil society and the
private sector. Governance is the way a
society organizes itself to make and
implement decisions through mutual
understanding, agreement and action. It
comprises the mechanisms and
processes for citizens and groups to
articulate their interests, mediate their
differences and exercise their legal rights
and obligations. It is the rules, institutions
and practices that set limits and provide
incentives for individuals, organisations
and firms. In its social, political and
economic dimensions, governance
operates at every level of human
enterprise, be it the household, village,
municipality, nation, region or globe.
(UNDP, 2000)
Local Governance and Assessment of Human Security
23
In principle, governments, and
indeed all entities vested with
governance powers, seek to secure
development and security for the people
they serve. Serving people means to
empower them to face the challenges of
life. Good governance is central to
human development. It requires
fostering fair, accountable institutions to
protect human rights and basic freedoms
(UNDP, 2002, a: 2). Effective governance
must by definition lead to improvements
in the human development and human
security status of people, enlarging
choices available to individuals to live the
long, healthy life they value and
effectively reducing risks and threats
associated with human security.
With this understanding of
good governance, it is evident that the
performance of governance institutions
(judiciary, political parties, public
administration, municipalities and
governments) and their attributes
(representativeness, legitimacy, fairness,
transparency, accountability, equity)
often help to determine the nature and
scope of human security in a given
society. These institutions may
themselves constitute major factors
influencing positively or negatively
human security levels. Indeed, some
human security surveys have found that
the major threats and factors of
insecurity identified by the population
include their own government and
politicians, their lack of influence on
decisions or the absence of legitimate
and impartial representation. In some
surveys, respondents have identified
international organisations as the best
security providers for them, expressing
higher levels of confidence in them than
in their own national institutions.
Box 1. Human Security and Democracy
Human security’s challenges of the 21
st century require the promotion of a
broader definition of democracy that includes human rights concerns, capacity for social
and economic development, accountability, the building of consensus in settings of high
diversity, improving electoral processes and promoting public involvement. Sources of
insecurity lie in exclusion and lack of access to power and resources. The concept of
human security emphasizes the protection of people from grave threats to their lives,
safety from harm and violent conflict, and empowerment against such social threats as
disease or crime. Democracy enables the protection of peoples through institutional
safeguards, equality before the law, and the advancement of human rights. Democratic
practice links the empowerment of people to critical developmental outcomes such as
education, health care, and opportunities for livelihood.
Human Security and Democracy
This section sought to convey
the vital continuum between
governance, its effects, and the provision
of human security, leading to the
conclusion that protection and
empowerment should be embodied in
the functioning of any well-governed
state (Ogata, 2006: 11). The counter
argument can be made for states
displaying weak governance: where the
state does not deliver the political goods
for which it was created (e.g. security,
rule of law, accountable and transparent
public institutions, a functioning judicial
system that guarantees people due
process), and the regional and local
governance structures are not
empowered to do so. In such an absence
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
24
“Building a safer world also means
looking at the real sources of insecurity from which millions of
people suffer. Promoting security is not just about fighting a war against
terrorism . It is about looking at threats more broadly and
understanding them in the context not of state but people’s security.”
Irene Khan
of good governance, people are bound
to feel insecure.
Today, the state level alone
seems inadequate to deal with human
insecurity, since many of the related
issues are either dependent on local
conditions at sub-national level, or are
derived from global challenges (such as
climate change, transnational terrorism,
proliferation of nuclear weapons,
pandemics, financial crises, energy and
food price rises, unfair and unpredictable
global trade practices). Crisis prevention,
mitigation and recovery require actions
beyond the reach of a single state. In the
latter case, such insecurities should
indeed be dealt with at a global
governance level, although global
organisations, with their current
institutional settings (mainly in terms of
composition and decision making
power), seem hardly able to tackle them
effectively (Secretary General’s High-
Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and
Change, 2004: 4).
The dramatic events that the
world witnessed in 2008, such as the
food and energy exploding costs, the
severe financial crisis and economic
downturn, the increasing effects of
climate change, stress the need for a
human security framework and
governance system at the global level. It
has become clear that more and more
factors of human insecurity are “external”
- and frequently confused and
unforeseen - variables, which escape
control of even the most powerful states.
From there the ongoing call for better
international economic and financial
order rules and early warning systems
and the revamped call for reform of
international and political governance
institutions. The international community
should endow itself with much more
effective mechanisms of prevention and
protection against global security
challenges which affect hundreds of
million people all over the planet, with
different degrees and modalities, and
that end up, in any case, reflected in the
“classical” individual human security
dimensions.
The efforts to build more
inclusive, accountable global
governance systems face two main
challenges. The first is increasing
pluralism: expanding the space for non-
state actors to participate in global
decision making; the second is increasing
participation and accountability in
multilateral institutions to give
developing countries a larger role
(UNDP, 2002, a: 7). Pending the much-
needed reform of the overall global
governance mechanisms, especially of
the United Nations Organization and
System, other possible “supranational”
governance mechanisms such as the G8,
the G20 and the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) also seem able to provide
only partial, (and sometimes contentious)
responses since their legitimacy,
adequacy and universality are often
questioned. In this specific subject, the
Least Developed Countries (LDCs) claim
that they are the ones whose peoples’
daily lives are most threatened by
current crises (with an emphasis on the
financial global crisis and climate change
effects) and therefore have the highest
risks impeding on their human security,
while they are not adequately
represented in the existing mechanisms
Local Governance and Assessment of Human Security
25
of global governance. This was a claim
that was echoed recently at the Doha
International Conference for Financing
for Development.
Many human security
dimensions are however better dealt
with at a local level (municipalities,
regions, communities), or at regional
(continental) level (EU) where it is
possible to tackle similar issues of
insecurity felt in countries sharing similar
geography, economic development,
demographic features, shared cultural
backgrounds and practices, networks,
etc.
Compared with the restrictions
noted above for operating at the global
and national levels, the local level offers
greater scope to identify the main
priority dimensions of human security.
The focus on the local
dimensions and structures of
governance represents a fundamental
tool to assess, manage and provide
human security. It allows for a closer
perception of vulnerabilities, threats and
aspirations, which is likely to facilitate the
measurement and management of
human security indicators.
As will be demonstrated
below, it is not only desirable but also
quite possible to create a local human
security framework that can support the
efforts of local decision-makers and their
societies to understand the local human
security challenges better. Such a local
framework, with indicators, would
permit the crafting of tailored policies,
enable their implementation and impact
to be monitored, and ultimately allow all
stakeholders to evaluate the
effectiveness of the interventions
themselves, and ultimately the
governance system that delivered them.
Can Human Security be
measured?
From the discussion in Part I of
this paper, human security can be seen
to be highly context-specific and
dynamic. Moreover, the assessment of an
individual’s human security is influenced
by subjective perceptions of vulnerability
as much as by real threats. Perceptions
and threats are all a product of space,
time and other factors.
Drawing from this, measures of
human security need to include not only
quantitative indicators (such as those
included in the UNDP human
development index), but also qualitative
indicators. This combination is
fundamentally important. A good
indicator of human security, that adds
real value to the existing research in this
field, needs to include not only the
amount of existing or perceived threats,
but also the nature of existing
vulnerabilities and how these are felt by
individuals and groups. That said, the
difficulties in measuring these elements
are enormous, not only because of
availability of data on such aspects, but
also because of the risk of their
politicisation. Who decides which cases
should be taken into consideration and
on which criteria? Who elaborates the
ratio for surveys on the ground and
prepares survey content? Who
determines the hierarchy among
different threats and on what basis?
These are just a few of the problems in
the identification and interpretation of
peoples’ vulnerabilities that need to be
carefully taken into consideration to the
extent possible.
These concerns with
measurement have been far from absent
in the debate on implementation of the
human security concept. Decision-
making, policy design and programmatic
implementation all require monitoring
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
26
“The goal in Afghanistan is not simply to create a development or democracy agenda, but to use these
tools to prevent conflict, on one hand, and to provide the ultimate goal of
human security as a public good, on the other”
National Human Development
Report Afghanistan
against some benchmark, to verify the
impact of a given policy, and to ascertain
the need to reformulate courses of
action. Monitoring is served by the use of
indicators, indices and other analytical
tools that make measurements possible
and feasible over time.
When analyzing human
security, the two aspects - real and
perceived threats – should be combined
and eventually produce a set of
indicators allowing, first, to measure
changes of insecurity over time and,
second, to undertake comparisons
between different places. The complexity
of this task is self-evident. In some cases,
socioeconomic risks can be measured
through quantitative indicators. The
same can be true for many
environmental risks. However,
measuring other insecurities, such as
personal security risks, requires the use of
subjective or proxy indicators. Moreover,
the perception of insecurity needs to be
captured since this is as important as real
insecurity – feeling secure is of capital
importance. The degree of resilience,
which is not the same even amongst
people belonging to the same
community, also needs to be measured.
However, the number of
factors that have a direct impact on
human security is very large and the
influence of each one of them is also felt
differently across time and space. Threats
(real and perceived) are either linked to
external factors, those that are difficult to
control locally (for instance: human-
made or natural disasters, regional
conflicts, world commodity and energy
prices, financial crisis, pandemics,
economic cycles, political developments
in neighbouring countries) or are very
much localised (soil erosion or
salinisation, common criminality, access
and affordability of basic services,
employment opportunities, health and
education infrastructure availability and
quality, desertification, water availability
etc.).
Whilst various dimensions of
human security are increasingly
connected globally, nevertheless their
impact and how they are felt need to be
looked at in the local context. Comparing
human security between countries may
not allow meaningful results. Even those
who take a strong stand for developing
a “system of monitoring levels of human
security based on measurable indicators”
warn that “the elaboration of a human
security index is undesirable for political
and practical reasons” (UNDP Bratislava,
2003: 4). An attempt to build a standard
international index could introduce
unnecessary confrontation between
different national governments in a
particular sub-region and shift the
attention from the substance to the
question of relative rankings or more
political aspects. Even the call even for
national measurement of human security
is still controversial.
Over and above the potential
controversy inherent in creating such an
index, the task is in any case
methodologically arduous. Only a
detailed analysis of the human security
situation, through a matrix of a plethora
of indicators, prevailing in different
places and over time, could give the
possibility to make comparisons. Even so,
such comparisons would remain
unscientifically-based and largely
intuitive. What may be possible is to
compare separate elements of human
security, taken individually. For instance,
Local Governance and Assessment of Human Security
27
it may be possible to ascertain whether
physical insecurity is higher in a place
than in another through a set of
quantitative indicators (provided they
are available) such as crime rates, the
incidence of violent deaths, or numbers
of cases reported to the police; or to
compare economic insecurity between
places using indicators such as the
incidence of extreme poverty, utilising
the UNDP human poverty index, income
distribution, unemployment rates, and
others.
For these reasons, exploration
of the preparation of a standard and
internationally-comparable index of
human security seems a wasted effort.
Even assuming that suitable measures
and indicators could be identified for the
main dimensions of human security and
for each factor capable of influencing
them, nevertheless the variability in the
severity or relevance of the different
factors in time and space would make
the index hardly fit as a comparative tool.
It is perhaps equally difficult to
arrive at a single composite index of
human security even at the local level.
That notwithstanding, at the local level it
may be possible to identify a set of
indicators corresponding to prioritised
insecurity factors. These indicators,
monitored over time, can as a minimum
provide a measure of the evolution of
human security in situ. Indeed,
measuring human security focusing at
the local level is not only feasible, but can
also be an important source of insight
from which to discern trends and take
action.
Identification of a baseline
measurement of the individual priority
components should provide a first
diagnosis, from which policies,
instruments and initiatives could be
identified aimed at removing the
obstacles to peoples’ exercise of their
freedoms. Ex-post monitoring of the
implementation of policies and actions
should permit assessment of whether
and the extent to which they are
enhancing people’s capacities to make
choices. The challenge here is to find
measures that are closely and irrefutably
related to, and behave in a similar way to
the targeted element.
Of course, this approach
requires instruments that can provide,
firstly the available statistical data on
local issues (such as crime, employment,
access and use of basic services,
morbidity and mortality indicators,
household expenditures) and, secondly,
a subjective vision of insecurity factors by
citizens, which could be delivered
through a human security survey
interpreted by expert analysis. The expert
analysis should seek to purge
perceptions from possible distortions
induced by media, local leaders, political
propaganda, commercials, etc.
And because governance is the capacity
resident in a system of government to
adopt decisions and public policies in a
legitimate, effective and efficient way,
good governance can be defined as the
art of enhancing human security, with
the latter serving as a measurement by
people of the effectiveness of those who
govern. Easily-understood indicators of
local human security could serve to
empower communities to better
understand and express their
vulnerabilities, to hold political leaders
accountable for responding to these,
and to take appropriate actions
themselves to reduce their levels of
insecurity. In this way, measurement of
the trend and evolution of human
security over the medium-term offers real
potential as a tool to assess the
effectiveness of local governance.
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
28
Human Security in National
Human Development Reports
The mechanisms through
which human security can be explored
include an array of instruments, ranging
from public opinion polls, surveys,
enquiries and interviews. Many existing
local, national and regional experiences
can be examined as starting points. A
number of UNDP National Human
Development Reports (NHDRs) focused
on human security, albeit with different
approaches to the concept, and have
produced statistics, surveys and detailed
analyses. Reports on Afghanistan (2004),
Chile (1998), Former Yugoslav Republic
Of Macedonia (2001) and Latvia (2003)
and undertook specific statistical surveys
to obtain original data on how people
perceive threats to their security and
about their own experiences of
insecurities in their lives or communities
(Jolly and Ray; 2006: 17).
Box 2. National Human Developments Reports
Afghanistan
The Afghanistan NHDR 2004, Security with a Human Face, Challenges and
Responsibilities, is built around the concept of human security. It conducts a threat-based
analysis of people’s wants and fears, a study of the causes and consequences of these
insecurities, and an evaluation of Afghanistan’s state-building process from a human
security perspective. The report emphasizes that “human security is a public good that
belongs to all and cannot be exclusive, it entails a responsibility for the state to provide
guarantees that people will not fall below an acceptable threshold, but also a
corresponding duty among people to remain engaged.” (UNDP, 2004:10). In the analysis
of Jolly and Ray, the National Human Development Report of Afghanistan is “a brilliant
example of human security’s multidimensional analysis, with particular reference to post-
conflict reconstruction.” (Jolly and Ray, 2006: 15). Features of this report are elaborated
upon below in relation to local governance and post-conflict peace-building.
Chile
Among the attempts to arrive at a composite national index of human security,
the case of Chile, in the NHDR 1998, where 2 indexes are proposed, is an interesting one.
The first indicator constitutes an objective index, based on six dimensions and 12 variables,
and derived from statistical indicators. This index reflects the availability to individuals of
security “mechanisms”, those capabilities or instruments able to build empowerment and
resilience to face threats. This index assumes that the availability of security mechanisms is
directly correlated to the objective security of the individual, but does not take into
account the degree of the risk or the severity of insecurity, nor assign weights to the
different elements, according to different circumstances. The second subjective index
reveals the perceptions of individuals with respect to the effectiveness of the security
protection mechanisms or, in other words, their perceived vulnerability. Results were
analyzed according to several variables. The authors acknowledge that the methodology
is not suitable for international use and that it provides a static, “frozen” image of the
reality. They also stress the need to accompany measurement with sophisticated expert
interpretation of human security factors.
This report interestingly analyses also the relationship between phases of societal changes
and human security perceptions and stresses the individual agency towards human
security and the relevance of social capital for human security.
Local Governance and Assessment of Human Security
29
Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM)
In the report on the FYROM, Social Exclusion and Human Insecurity in the FYR
Macedonia, a public opinion poll asked the respondents which category of threat made
them feel more insecure. The data indicated that “almost every citizen of the FYROM feels
some kind of insecurity derived from the societal context or circumstance. The insecurity in
the transitional period (over the last decade) is much higher in comparison to the previous
period. The absolute strongest origin of insecurity is due to unemployment. The next type
of insecurity derives from low and/or irregular remuneration, followed by inadequate
social assistance. In general, causes related to subsistence (or obtaining the means to make
a decent standard of living) dominate (about 80% of the total number of responses) in
Macedonia” (UNDP, FYR Macedonia, 2001: 11).
Latvia
In Latvia, in preparing the NHDR 2003, Human Security and Human
Development, a survey was undertaken to identify the complex and multidimensional
vulnerabilities of the population. Respondents were asked about their perception of more
than thirty specific threats: they were asked whether or not they felt concerned about
each and were asked to rate their degree of concern (from not afraid at all to very afraid).
This approach permits a ranking of the different threats, and deeper analysis of
perceptions and relative degrees of concern felt by respondents (Jolly and Ray, 2006: 17).
Since, in this case, economic/income uncertainty and access to health care were defined
as the two most pressing threats to security, the policy conclusions on human security
contained in the report pointed to a multi-stakeholder employment strategy consisting of
both formal sector employment initiatives and a comprehensive government-led social
security network (UNDP, 2003: 120-121). This report usefully draws attention to the
different levels of human security: the individual, family, community, national and finally
the international level. It highlights how improved security in any one individual sphere
can translate into a greater sense of security and an ability to act at other levels.
Conversely, insecurity at any one level can have negative ramifications on people’s sense
of security at other levels (UNDP, 2003: 18). The Latvian report is conceptually innovative,
introducing the concept of securitability. Securitability is explained as the interconnection
of two dimensions of security: an objective state of security and a subjective sense of
security. The first is the actual state of being free from threats and the latter is the inner
state of feeling secure. Securitability is thus the cumulative effect of a set of subjective and
objective factors about the capacity to be and to feel secure (UNDP, 2003: 19). It is what
this paper refers to as real and perceived threats.
The value of such surveys carried out for
both the Afghan and FRY Macedonia
reports is twofold: to understand the
dimensions of human insecurity and to
guide actions to diminish them. These
surveys also help to rate relative threats
in ways that can be useful in assessing
alternative public actions and tradeoffs in
the use of resources (Jolly and Ray, 2006:
18).
Experiences of measurement,
including through instruments like these
carried out at a national level and
disaggregated at a local level, can
provide some indicators of human
security levels. In turn, the policies and
action plans to address the identified
human security priorities may provide
indicators to measure governance
effectiveness. However, the
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
30
“When people’s livelihoods are
deeply compromised – when people are uncertain where the next meal
will come from , when their life sav ings suddenly plummet in value, when their crops fail and they have
no sav ings – human security contracts”
Commission on Human Security
measurement, even at the local level,
should more usefully consist of a set of
locally-determined indicators, rather than
any single composite index of human
security. What the experimental National
Human Development Reports show is
that analytically11
, it is normally possible
to identify four or five local human
security priorities, each with a form of
baseline data. If this approach is retained,
it may be also possible to apply such an
approach to specific groups of people,
e.g. by minorities, ethnicity, age, gender
and economic groups. This would allow
formulation of policies that in a targeted
way, addressed a clearly identified
priority dimension of human security for
each of the relevant groups.
The same survey instruments,
accompanied by statistical data, if
applied periodically, should allow for the
identification and monitoring of
variations and trends in local human
security in the medium and long-term.
Once changes deriving from a force
majeure (external insecurity elements
which are not in control by local actors)
are discounted, the periodic
measurements would allow an
assessment of whether at the local level,
good governance has been exercised
and the capacity - through policy, direct
actions, programs, empowerment,
capacity building, leadership and
participation - to improve the human
security situation of large segments of
the population has been demonstrated.
A Hypothetical Example
Taking into consideration all
the conceptual and methodological
limitations noted above, the case for
11
For a list of National Human Development Reports adopting a human security approach, see: Richard Jolly and Deepayan Basu Ray (2006), “The Human Security Framework and National Human Development Reports”, UNDP, NHDR Occasional Paper 5. Available at: http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/Human_Security_GN.pdf.
specific-context analysis on human
security as the best way to translate this
approach into practice has been made.
An imaginary test case, albeit one with
several resemblances to familiar realities,
is elaborated below to test the
hypothetical viability of the proposed
local human security framework,
The methodological approach
has four phases. It starts by taking an
imaginary region where it is possible to
identify a set of human security priority
dimensions through a survey of the local
population and analysis of the results.
Once the determinants of human
security at the local level have been
selected, for each one a small number of
suitable indicators need to be identified.
This set of indicators represents the
baseline situation of human security in
the selected locality. On the basis of the
survey, local authorities should then
devise a human security action plan,
identifying the measures to be taken to
improve the status of human security.
After a period of implementation of such
measures, the survey should be repeated
and the indicators updated to assess
whether the intended improvement has
been realised.
a) Identification of Human Security
Priorities
The seven dimensions of
human security identified by UNDP in
1994 can be used as the starting point,
Local Governance and Assessment of Human Security
31
namely: economic, food, health,
environmental, personal, community and
political security (UNDP, 1994: 24). Each
dimension in turn contains a number of
specific insecurities that can be identified
by applying one of the surveying
techniques to assess vulnerabilities of the
targeted group, assumed to be a
representative sample of the local
community or a geographic district. It is
also assumed that the revealed insecurity
priorities, namely the ones assigned the
highest degree of importance in the
survey and/or that demonstrate the
greatest severity when combining
factual findings and perceptions, were:
1) Decreasing quantity of available water
per capita (due to increased population
and increasing agricultural water
demand);
2) Civil strife in a country bordering with
the district in question, which impedes
safe transportation of products to a port
for forwarding to final market;
3) Recurrent agricultural pests which
make food availability and affordability
uncertain;
4) Rising personal insecurity due to
violence and crimes of juvenile gangs;
5) Job scarcity and high unemployment,
especially affecting young people,
women and an ethnic minority.
b) Indicators for Insecurity Factors
For the identified priorities,
several indicators could be used to
develop a baseline insecurity situation.
Without being exhaustive, some
indicators that could be used to assess
the above-mentioned severity include:
for insecurity priority 1), the cubic meters
available pro capita for daily
consumption and the patterns of water
usage; for insecurity priority 2), the
number of road blockades per week and
of violent episodes occurring in the
nearby country; for insecurity priority 3),
the number of recurring disease types
and the harvest losses; for insecurity
priority 4), the number of criminal
episodes communicated to the police
and those revealed by victimisation
surveys; for insecurity priority 5), the level
of long-term and youth unemployment
rate, disaggregated by sex and ethnic
groups, and the average time for
securing a first employment or to find a
new job.
c) Human Security Action Plan
The human security baseline
information, obtained through surveys,
expert analysis and indicators, should
help local governance institutions in the
design of specific policies and
implementation instruments that address
the identified human security priorities
and build resilience and empowerment
mechanisms. This exercise can also
provide the governance structures with
the analytical capacity to develop early
warning mechanisms and craft tailored
responses. It goes without saying
perhaps that generally it will be
considerably less costly and more
humane to meet these threats upstream
rather than downstream, early rather
than late (UNDP, 1994: 3).
It is then possible to envisage
the type of response by the local security
providers, namely local authorities,
including the municipalities and the
district authorities.
Faced with such a scenario, a
human security local action plan could
include: for priority 1), the decreasing
quantity of available water could result
in a request for technical assistance to
increase water recycling and water
efficiency and the exploration of new
groundwater possibilities.
For priority 2), civil strife in a
country bordering with the district in
question which impedes the safe
transportation of products to a port for
forwarding to final market, the rapid
impact measures that have to be
undertaken are likely to fall outside the
purview of the local authorities and even
from their capacity to influence. In fact,
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
32
this is one of the cases when the
national authorities themselves have little
political space to manoeuvre. What the
local authorities could do is to request
the national government to revamp
efforts and negotiations with the
neighbouring country, for instance
possibly including the nomination of
local negotiators to facilitate a peaceful
solution of the current crisis. The local
level could also ask national authorities
to provide escorts for convoys or to
improve infrastructure for alternative
routes to markets. With this proactive
approach, the local authorities are
helping to shape the response of
another security provider, even if
national authorities may be ineffective in
dealing with this specific insecurity
component. As a minimum, local
constituencies may also perceive that
there is an active commitment to act
from the authorities which may reduce
the perception of vulnerability.
For priority 3), recurrent pests
that are undermining food security, the
local institutions can make available to
local farmers organic pesticides through
subsidised purchases or conditional
loans (with reimbursement conditional
upon crop performance) and make
available specialised technical assistance
and extension services for pest control
and improved agricultural practices.
For priority 4), to deal with
rising personal insecurity due to crimes
from juvenile gangs, the authorities, after
analysing possible root causes of the
phenomenon, can organize a system of
community safety control, introduce a
small arms control and reduction project.
It can introduce parental counselling,
introduce upgrading skills training of
local enforcement authorities and
eventually improve its internal
organisation and possibly increase the
effective numbers, enhance the creation
of facilities and social infra-structures
offered to young people, and promote
the creation of part-time job
opportunities for youngsters.
Finally for priority 5), job
scarcity and insecurity, local authorities
can envisage several active labour
market policies, including vocational
training for unskilled workers,
improvement of productive
infrastructure, and review investment
promotion measures and micro-credit
schemes. Such measures should be
tailored by gender and particularly target
the ethnic minority most affected, to
protect and empower those identified as
the most insecure.
As summarised in the table
below,12
it is possible to relate each one
of the identified priority factors of human
insecurity to a human security
dimension. It is a clear, common-sense,
experimental framework that can have a
high positive impact on policy design
and implementation.
12
For an abstract application of a similar matrix to a real case study, see the Summary of the Dimensions of Human Security in Afghanistan, UNDP (2004), NHDR Afghanistan, pp. 243-244.
Local Governance and Assessment of Human Security
33
Table 1. Human Security Priorities and Dimensions
Priority factor
of Human
Insecurity
HS Dimension Indicators Response Provider
Decreasing
water
availability
Health
security
Environmental
security
Water per capita
(cubic meters)
T/A for policy
and action to
increase
efficiency of
water usage and
recycling
Municipality
Disrupted
route to
markets
through
bordering
country
Economic
security
Personal
security
Number of road
blocks and
violent incidents
Request state to
undertake
mediation in
nearby country,
explore
alternative
routes, organize
escorts
State upon
request of
local
governor
Agricultural
pests
Economic
security
Food security
Recurrence and
type of pests.
Harvest losses
Subsidised
organic
pesticides,
extension
services
District
authorities
Violence and
crimes by
juvenile gangs
Personal
security
Incidence
revealed by
victimisation
surveys
Small arm control
Youth vocational
training and
employment
programmes
Strengthen law
enforcement
Municipality,
local labour
offices,
governorate
law
enforcement
authorities
Unemployment
especially
among youth
and minority
Economic
security
Disaggregated
unemployment
rate and labour
indicators
Active labour
market policies,
incl. vocational
training and
microcredit
Municipality,
labour
offices, local
NGOs
As it can be seen from the very
simple example provided above, most
threats can be dealt with at the local
level and even those which fall outside
the sphere of influence of the unit could
be indirectly supported locally by
creative and proactive engagement and
by involving the national authorities. If
the policies are well-designed and
implemented, they should lead to an
improvement in the indicators over time,
confirmed by periodic human security
surveys, which should show the
percentage of people identifying the
threats in question and the perceived
severity of these, actually decrease.
By monitoring the levels of
insecurity in such a way in the medium
and long-term, and by regularly cross-
checking these with the factual
measures of impact of the actions taken,
the local authorities can obtain feedback
on the quality and effectiveness of their
governance capacities.
In the above-mentioned
example, a human security social
contract is implicitly being forged
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
34
between citizens and local authorities. In
that case, good governance would
correspond to the ability to increase
human security of people concerned
and weak governance would
correspond to the inability to meet the
human security demands of those
people. Discounting possible cases of
force majeure which may interfere with
the evolution of the human security
indicators, the lion’s share of the work
should be done by local governance
structures.
The applicability of this
approach to measurement of human
security at local level depends largely on
the quality and impartiality of the
surveys, including the correct and
precise composition of the representative
sample and on the availability of
statistical data. It is also clear that
another district of the same country may
reveal a completely different composition
of factors of vulnerability, depending on
geography, demographic composition
and other factors mentioned earlier. It
may well prove impossible to make
scientific comparisons in the overall level
of insecurity between districts, unless the
priorities and indicators happen to be
the same. However, it should be possible
to compare human security trends at the
local level, over time.
Box 3. Local Governance in Post-Conflict Situations
Local Governance: building Human Security in post-conflict settings
Conflicts have a long and lasting impact on peoples’ human security. They
hamper the physical personal security of individuals, and because they destroy livelihoods,
infrastructures and governmental institutions their effects last throughout into the post-
conflict settings. Hence, economic, political, food, health, community and environmental
securities are disrupted and the feeling of insecurity is widespread and enduring.
Post-conflict peace-building should, therefore, be seen by all major rebuilding
stakeholders (international community, national governments, civil society organisations
and NGOs) as an opportunity to implement a human security action plan.
UNDP’s work on Governance in Post-Conflict Situations seeks to highlight the
inter-linked nature of development, human rights and security, acknowledging that they
are interdependent and mutually reinforcing, and to identify opportunities at the
grassroots level as the entry strategy for building resilient states with good governance.
Local governance is the obvious tool with which to do this.
The National Human Development Report of Afghanistan of 2004 addresses
peace-building with that view point. Entitled Security with a Human Face, Challenges and
Responsibilities, the report uses human development and human security as analytical
frameworks and advocates a human security perspective for Afghanistan’s state-building
process. The end-result of this process should be building a state for good governance
(UNDP, 2004: 160).
In the same line, Serge Yapo, in a paper entitled Improving Human Security in
Post-Conflict Cote d’Ivoire: A Local Governance Approach, advocates for the recognition of
local governance as a key entry point for improving human security in a post-conflict
situation (Yapo, 2007:3).
The rationale behind this assumption is based on lessons learned on the
ground. Often, in post-conflict reconstruction, the challenges are addressed at the national
Local Governance and Assessment of Human Security
35
level and, out of necessity to restore state legitimacy, the majority of reconstruction
strategies are state- centric. Putting local governments at the centre in post-conflict
situations has several advantages: authorities at the local level are close to the citizen; local
governance provides an opportunity to develop a locally-owned peace building strategy
through the participation of the public in security sector reform and in the provision of
basic social services; local governance can give voice to the most vulnerable, empower
individuals and build strong communities. Moreover, if local reconstruction programmes
are planned in cooperation with the local authorities and well implemented, their
cumulative effects can contribute to national peace and stability and form the basis for
sustainable development at the national level (Yapo, 2007: 5).
The 2003 report Human Security Now, Protecting and Empowering People,
dedicates a chapter to the challenges of recovering from violent conflict. Recognising that
helping countries recover lays the foundations for development to take off as well as for
human security (Commission on Human Security; 2003: 57), the report acknowledges that
“post-conflict recovery requires an integrated human security framework, developed in full
partnership with the national and local authorities to ensure ownership and commitment
to the objectives.” (Commission on Human Security; 2003: 61).
By emphasising the role of local governments in fostering post-conflict
development, decentralised governance in post-conflict settings appears to represent a
major opportunity to re-establish governments’ services and mobilize communities,
empowering individuals, reinforcing citizenry, and giving people national ownership over
the process of building good governance.
Tentative approaches to
human insecurity identification and
action have to be devised, application of
which will necessarily be dependent on
the governance structure of each
country. In a highly centralised
environment, the responsibility for
human security will rely almost
exclusively on the government and on
the international and regional
organisations to which the country
chooses to belong. In such
environments, there is probably little
room for local enquiry and for the
promotion of locally-based assessments
and action plans. In authoritarian
regimes, where everything is decided
and applied by the state structures, there
is likely to be limited scope to research
and model locally-based human security
local and empowerment approaches. In
autocratic regimes all threats, external
and internal threats, are perceived as
against the very existence of the state.
Therefore, individuals are treated only as
part of the group and their security in
not differentiated from the state security.
The security agenda has not been
“humanised” and the process, even if it
makes it onto the political agenda,
would be meaningless.
The more democratic and
decentralised a country is, normally the
greater the level of power vested in each
layer of governance. Decentralised
governance, carefully planned,
effectively implemented and
appropriately managed, can lead to
significant improvement in the welfare of
people at the local level, the cumulative
effect of which can lead to enhanced
“Local governance is a key entry
point for improving human security in a post-conflict situation”
Serge Armand Yapo
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
36
“If people can be of any help in
enhancing human security they need to be taken into confidence with
respect to the relevant policies. They should be provided w ith information about the current policies and asked
about their advice w ith respect to improving them ”
Gul Ahmad Yama from Ghanzi
human development. (UNDP, 2004:
156). Local institutions and civil society
organisations all have a part to play in
deciding and implementing the policies
that empower people and lead them to
a higher degree of human development,
in identifying and reducing threats or in
offsetting the impact of the threats that
were not diminished (either because
they fell out of its purview or because
they were addressed too late with too
little means). Strengthening civil society
organisations, therefore, is vital do the
implementation of human security
(Ogata, 2004: 11). In this scenario,
human security is a cross-cutting
approach whose responsibility resides in
governments, local authorities and civil
society organisations, depending on the
type and severity of the vulnerability.
While some “unfreedoms” can
only be removed by a normative and
legislative exercise that has to be
assumed by national powers (the
protection agenda), the local institutions
normally have the potential to address
vulnerabilities faster and with more
tailored solutions (filling in the
empowerment gap). If a human security
problem is localised in a certain
community, because it is exposed to a
particular threat or because it constitutes
a clearly-identified group, then the case
for local action is evident.
A particularly interesting case,
in this sense, is that of climate change.
Despite the global dimension of the
roots and consequences of climate
change, certain populations are affected
by a determined set of events. Not
everyone is affected by droughts, and
certainly not everybody is affected by
hurricanes – at least directly. A global
action is needed to slow down and
reverse climate change effects. However,
adaptation to climate change has a
crucial local dimension. For instance,
dealing with rising sea level, frequent
intense atmospheric events, or soil
erosion, may provide the case for specific
local actions to increase resilience,
preparedness and devise economic
diversification activities, infrastructure
improvements.
When adopting a human
security approach, the focus shifts from
the state to people, from the exclusive-
national-layer to local, sub national
institutions; this shift also brings other
actors into play. “Because human
security is a public good that belongs to
all and cannot be exclusive, it entails a
responsibility for the state to provide
guarantees that people will not fall
below an acceptable threshold, but also
a corresponding duty among people to
remain engaged. It is in its response to its
citizens that the state finds its meaning
and moral legitimacy.” (UNDP, 2004: 10)
“Those in position to receive – people
and communities – must assume,
demand and defend their rights” (UNDP,
2004: xxv). Civil society organisations are,
hence, part of the equation.
Applicability of Human Security
Human security can be useful
at a national level to devise the “security
deficits” (including unbalanced
developed across territories or
populations). Because of that, it
represents a valid analytical framework
which enables the identification of
desirable policy directions and the
selection of those human security factors
Local Governance and Assessment of Human Security
37
“Good governance at the local,
national and international levels is perhaps the single most important factor in promoting development
and advancing the cause of peace”
Kofi Annan
whose evolution could usefully be
followed by early warning systems.
However, it is essentially the application
of a human security framework at local
level that allows the mapping of specific
priority gaps and the prescription of
more targeted actions. Since it leads to
the evaluation of results, human security
can reflect the efficacy and quality of
local governance.
Therefore, the opportunity for
practical applicability of the human
security concept, as an essential element
of policy and accountability, seems to
reside primarily at sub-national level,
where there is an important governance
role to be played, and where the real
power of the human security tool can be
felt. It is there that, with appropriate
tools, one may define the content and
meaning of human security, identify
priority threats and potential measures at
policy level to improve it, and monitor
performance and results over the
medium- and long-term.
Part III
The Case for Regional Governance
in the Promotion of Human Security:
The European Union
“The philosophy underlying the EU’s approach to security, as outlined in the Security Strategy, is that security can
best be attained through development, and development through security.
Neither is possible without an adequate level of the other.
That’s why we focus on the holistic concept of human security”.
Benita Ferrero-Waldner
41
As it has been shown in Part I
and II, the concept of human security
has led to a redefinition as to the subject
of security policy. The premium is no
longer placed on the security of the state
but rather, there has been a shift
towards the individual. This shift also
calls for a revision as to who the security
provider(s) should be and at which level
actions ought to be taken. The
complexity of the threats, but also of the
ways to prevent them, point to the
importance of governance in
safeguarding and promoting human
security in all its forms. However, this
governance should not be considered as
restricted to one level only. Quite to the
contrary: it is important to recognise that
in regard to the human security
conundrum, governance must be
acknowledged in its multi-level
dimensions. From the local to the global,
there are various entities exercising
governance and thus have a role to play
in human security. Regional
organisations represent one of these
levels and as they evolve and expand it
becomes increasingly necessary to take
them in consideration as actors that can
affect human security.
Concerning the role of regional
organisations, the human security
concept has been mainly used in regard
to external interventions while very little
attention has been dedicated to how
regional levels of governance can be a
provider of human security within the
region itself. Nevertheless, there are
many aspects that call for the inclusion of
regional processes as part of the human
security contributors, especially since, in
many ways, regional integration and
regional organisations tackle issues that
have direct consequences on the
components of human security.
Regional Integration and
Human Security
One of the main reasons for
taking into account the regional
dimension is the very fact that several
issues affecting human security are cross-
border issues. The problems affecting
human security are not restrained by
political borders but to the contrary tend
to affect more than one state.
In fact each of the seven
components of human security can be
considered to have a cross-border reach
for which a solely national response can
be insufficient. The globalisation
phenomenon has demonstrated that
economies in various parts of the world
are now closely intertwined. The recent
financial crisis has been the latest
reminder that economic security can no
longer be thought solely at the national
level but now needs a multilateral
approach. Similarly, food security is often
a challenge that affects more than one
state. Lately the food crisis in the Horn of
Africa has shown that food security is
not just restricted to individual countries
(Ethiopia, Kenya or Somalia for instance)
but affects many states at the same time.
Moreover, it is caused not only by local
but also international factors ranging
from world commodity and energy
prices, exchange rates, agricultural
outputs, land use changes, small farmers’
productivity, etc. Health security can also
be a concern that goes beyond national
frameworks. One just has to think about
potential pandemic risks such as the
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
(SARS), the Avian Flu or HIV/AIDS.
Environmental security also needs a
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
42
broader perspective than the national
one. It would be ineffectual for example
to try to tackle environmental problems
in the Mediterranean Sea without trying
to include as many coastal countries as
possible. Regarding personal security,
community and political security it is
possible to make reference to the case of
Darfur and the spill-over of the conflict to
Chad and the Central African Republic.
Given the cross-border
characteristics of these problems
affecting human security, it becomes
insufficient to look at the state as the sole
provider of security. As it has already
been mentioned in Part II, since similar
problems affect a set of countries or
because a national issue poses a threat
to neighbouring states, it is necessary to
envisage solutions and remedies at a
larger framework than the national one.
As recognised by Boin and Rhinard, “if
threats to safety and security unfold
along boundary-crossing trajectories,
response capacities of individual states
will have to become linked if not
integrated” (2008: 1). States throughout
the world are aware that on many
different issues they would gain more
and become more effective by pulling
together and combining their efforts.
Regional integration has emerged as one
of the key developments in international
relations at the beginning of the twenty-
first century. States are increasing their
cooperation and collaboration with their
neighbouring countries in order to
better respond to the pressures and
opportunities presented by globalisation
(Farrell, Hettne and Van Langenhove,
2005).
This tendency to set up
regional frameworks has reached such a
scale that it is now possible to say that a
new level of governance has been
created that oscillates between the
national and international ones. This
regional level is not as broad and as
diluted as can be the case with global
governance mechanisms while still
offering the opportunity to surpass that
narrow national level. Moreover, this
new regional level of governance should
not be considered as undermining
neither the global level nor the national
one (Thakur and Van Langenhove,
2008: 24). It rather offers an intermediate
level that allows neighbouring states to
collaborate on a given set of issues.
However, it is necessary to be
wary of the idea that the creation of a
new level of governance is followed
automatically by an improvement in the
amount of good governance. Rather,
regional governance, just as it is the case
for global governance, national
governance or local governance needs
to be benchmarked so that its
effectiveness can be evaluated. It is
important that regional governance is
assessed in regard to its actual capacity
to provide the citizens of the member
states with a higher level of human
security. So far, most studies on good
governance and regional governance
focus only on the legitimacy and
democracy promotion and little on
human development, stability and
human security – the actual results that
good governance is expected to achieve.
Taking into account the degree of
human security that is provided by the
regional organisation also allows one to
go beyond the immediate aim of the
integration process and evaluate as well
some other more far-reaching
consequences of the integration process.
The EU and Human Security
Ever since the adoption of the
1994 Human Development Report and
the appearance of the concept of human
security, major actors of the international
scene have shown their interest in
promoting human security worldwide.
Among these actors the European Union
embraced the concept of human security
and included it in many of its policy
The Case for Regional Governance in the Promotion of Human Security: The EU
43
documents. However, in most cases the
adoption of this concept served the EU
policies outside its own borders and not
within them. Whether it is out of
conflicts, humanitarian, human rights or
development concerns, the EU has
persistently referred to the concept of
human security as an instrument of its
external relations and its effort to
promote security as a global actor.
This EU human security vision
can be problematic as it often seems to
equate human security and the
responsibility to protect even though
they are two very different concepts. As
human security has been coined to
involve many features such as economic
security, food security, health security,
environmental security, personal
security, community security and political
security, limiting its applicability to the
sole field of external relations and
political instability situations can only be
counter-productive. At a closer look, it is
not only state security that the EU is
promoting but also elements of human
security within its own borders.
In this chapter, rather than
taking the usual perspective of the EU as
a security provider in other parts of the
world, the aim here is to look as well on
the EU’s role within its own borders. This
paper wishes to illustrate how various
policies adopted at the regional level
have contributed to an increased
security level for people within the
regional area. After all, the Treaty of
Rome signed in 1957 clearly stipulated
that the aims of the European
integration process were “to promote
throughout the Community a
harmonious development of economic
activities, a continuous and balanced
expansion, an increase in stability, an
accelerated raising of the standard of
living” (Art. 2). Using the European
integration process allows us to look at
how one of the most successful regional
integration schemes has helped in the
provision of human security to the
citizens living within its borders.
Boin and Rhinard state that
“today’s crisis management capacities
are the result of a broader process of
policy integration in Europe” (2008: 11)
and later on that “the EU has gradually
but steadfastly assumed a role in the
provision of transboundary crisis
management capacity. Across the three
Pillars, and within its institutions, a
substantial collection of venues,
mechanisms, policies, and funding can
be found that directly enhance the
capacity to deal with future threats”
(2008: 18). In this paper, four particular
ranges of issues will be the focus of our
attention. Firstly, the EU itself has
become increasingly active in the field of
peace and security including through its
Common Foreign and Security Policy
(CFSP). Secondly, the issue of economic
security needs to be looked at. This is
quite an evident choice as one of the
leading topics of European integration
has been economic integration. Thirdly,
sets of policies that are of relevance for
the evaluation of the European
governance effect on human security
concern social policies. Fourthly, the
consequences of political integration
cannot be left out either, also because it
concerns not only the current member
states but also has an influence on the
future members and other membership
candidates.
The CFSP and the ESDP
The EU has also empowered
itself so as to become a global actor in
the field of peace and security. In 1992
the member states decided with the
Maastricht Treaty to introduce some
responsibilities in the field of security at
the European level by opening the way
for a future common defence and
foreign policy. Eventually, the Treaty of
Amsterdam in 1999 clarified the role of
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
44
“We have worked to build human security, by reducing poverty and
inequality, promoting good governance and human
rights, assisting development, and addressing
the root causes of conflict and insecurity”
European Security Strategy (2008)
the EU by introducing a new title
specifically related to defence policy and
peace and security. It also marked the
incorporation of the Petersberg Tasks
that give the EU the opportunity to
undertake military missions such as:
humanitarian and rescue tasks;
peacekeeping tasks; as well as tasks of
combat forces in crisis management.
Following this empowerment, the EU
has been working hard to become
operational for these new tasks. It was
under the aegis of this European Security
and Defence Policy (ESDP) that the EU
has been able to deploy troops in
different parts of the world13
.
The ESDP itself is in fact part of
the larger ranging Common Foreign and
Security Policy (CFSP) which constitutes
the second pillar of the three pillars of
the EU. According to the Article J.1 of
the Treaty on European Union:
“The objectives of the common
foreign and security policy shall be:
- to safeguard the common values,
fundamental interests and
independence of the Union;
- to strengthen the security of the
Union and its Member States in all
ways;
- to preserve peace and strengthen
international security, in accordance
with the principles of the United
Nations Charter as well as the
principles of the Helsinki Final Act and
the objectives of the Paris Charter;
- to promote international
cooperation;
- to develop and consolidate
democracy and the rule of law, and
respect for human rights and
fundamental freedoms.”
The CFSP itself is driven by the
European Security Strategy, a policy
13
These overseas deployment include most notably the 2004 EUFOR Althea in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the 2006 Operation Artemis in Eastern DR Congo and since 2007 the EUFOR in Chad and Central African Republic.
document that not only identifies the
threat the EU is facing but also sets out
the strategic objectives for the EU.
Additionally, the EU has also decided to
establish the position of a High
Representative to be the figure of the
common European position on the
international scene. The document was
assessed during the December 2008
European Council, when a new version
of the Strategy, the Report on the
Implementation of the European Security
Strategy - Providing Security in a
Changing World, was adopted. In this
document, the EU takes into account a
variety of new challenges and threats it
aims to address and it makes explicit
reference to human security in its
policies.
The European Union has been
advocating a human security approach
to international affairs. At the request of
EU High Representative Secretary
General Javier Solana, a study group was
convened to examine the possibilities to
integrate human security in the foreign
policy of the EU. The group’s report, A
Human Security Doctrine for Europe
(September 2004) boldly proposed, for
instance, the formation of a 15,000-
strong human security response force
(HSRF), with at least one third being
civilian (police, human rights monitors,
development and humanitarian
specialists, administrators, etc.), and a
The Case for Regional Governance in the Promotion of Human Security: The EU
45
human security volunteer service to
assist the HSRF. Although these
proposals have never been adopted, the
European Union has repeatedly
expressed the need to reconcile security
with development in all aspects of its
foreign policies.
Nevertheless, the same study
group presented a new report in 2007
entitled A European Way of Security, in
which it articulates a proposal for a
European military and security doctrine
based on the principles of human
security. The report calls for the primacy
of human rights and the protection of
civilians, legitimate political authority, a
bottom-up approach, effective
multilateralism, an integrated regional
approach and a clear and transparent
strategic direction. Both the large
spectrum of foreign policy tools at the
disposal of the EU (including
development policies) and the fact that it
has strived to become a global military
security actor open up the way for EU’s
engagement in the protection of human
security. In fact, the EU, as a relative new-
comer to the challenges of military crisis-
management, has been keen to appear
as a new military actor, whose
interventions and actions intend to
ensure human security. Its interventions,
rather than aiming at physically
eliminating a given enemy, are more
focused on the provision of human
security. All of the EU’s military
operations so far have set themselves
goals that go beyond a traditional
military rationale. They include, among
others, providing security for elections to
take place in the DRC in 2006, to stabilize
post-conflict Bosnia-Herzegovina and
help it foster economic development as
well as providing security to Internally
Displaced Persons (IDPs) and refugees in
Chad and Central African Republic.
European Integration and
Economic Security
Europe has come a long way
since the signing in 1957 of the Treaty of
Rome establishing the European
Economic Community. The European
integration process has also greatly
facilitated the recovery of the economies
after the Second World War up to a
point where nowadays the EU with its
27 member states represents a third of
the world GDP (Eurostat, 2006:11). In
the 50 years since then, the integration
process has evolved in such a way that
Europe now has a single market, 16 of its
members share a common currency, and
has adopted a large set of common
policies regarding trade, regional
development, internal competition,
agriculture and many others.
The EU’s macroeconomic
policies are developed to handle these
issues at the regional level. The EU can
either act by formulating guidelines
within which member states have the
liberty to adopt tailor-made national
reform programs or it can have a more
direct implication in various aspects of
the economy. In fact, the EU as a
regional organisation has several ways
through which it can impact upon the
economic prospects of its member states
and the well-being of their citizens. Since
EU policies are set up with the aim of
improving the well being of European
citizens it thus becomes a provider and
promoter of human security for its own
citizens.
Ever since the beginning of
the European integration process,
economic integration has played a major
role. The creation of the single market
and of the customs union have been
two of the main achievements of the
European integration process. Both have
largely favoured trade and exchanges
between the member states and have
also eliminated the risks of a tariff war by
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
46
pushing the member states to
collaborate rather than compete.
Moreover, the EU has also repeatedly
thrived to create conditions to attract
investments including by instituting free
movement of capital within its borders.
The EU as the regional body that has
taken to its farthest point the free
movement of people, goods, services
and capital has enabled Europeans to
experience such economic development
that the economic security of European
citizens has become somehow
cemented. This has enabled the EU to
experience continuous growth since the
entry into force of the Single European
Act in 1987 and increase per capita GDP.
But there are also other ways
through which the EU as a regional
organisation tries to ensure and improve
the economic security of its inhabitants.
In fact, one of the overriding principles of
the EU is to coordinate the economies of
its member states so as to enable them
to foster growth. One of the methods
used for this purpose is the
establishment of guidelines and or
strategies agreed upon by all the
member states. One such case is the
Lisbon Strategy which states that it aims
at transforming Europe into “the most
dynamic and competitive knowledge-
based economy in the world capable of
sustainable economic growth with more
and better jobs and greater social
cohesion and respect for the
environment by 2010”. It is in this case
quite evident that a link exists between
the European policies and the provision
and promotion of human security, not
only with an impact on economic
security but also concerning
environmental and social or community
security. Since 2000, the EU economic
and social model has been redesigned
by the Lisbon Agenda to include high
economic growth, and a high level of
social and economic cohesion. “This is
Europe’s response to globalisation in
order to make business and labour more
competitive and better able to take
advantage of the opportunities arising
from globalisation” (UNU-CRIS, WP 2008:
14).
However, this does not mean
in any way that the Lisbon Strategy has
been met with full success. There have
been various aspects where there are
serious shortcomings. In 2004, the
European Council invited the
Commission to establish a High Level
Group headed by Mr. Wim Kok to carry
out an independent review and monitor
the progress and pitfalls of the Lisbon
Strategy. This High Level Group
recognised in its report that “halfway to
2010 the overall picture is very mixed
and much needs to be done in order to
prevent Lisbon from becoming a
synonym for missed objectives and failed
promises” (High Level Group, 2004:9).
The EU has also been able to
introduce on certain occasions more
forceful economic guidelines that ought
to be respected by the member states.
This has been the case for the fiscal
policy through the adoption in 1997 of
the Stability and Growth Pact
anticipating the introduction of the Euro.
Thus the Stability and Growth Pact
ensures that all member states maintain
their annual budget deficit under 3% of
the GDP and additionally that the
national debt remains lower than 60% of
the GDP. Similarly, the Convergence
Criteria have been set out for member
sates willing to join the European
Monetary Union with provision
regarding the maintaining under control
of inflation rates and the stability of
interest rates and exchange rates. The
aim is to ensure more rigorous
budgetary discipline through EU level
surveillance and coordination of
budgetary policies within the Euro area
and the EU.
The introduction of the Euro in
2002 has also benefited European
citizens in many different ways. Despite
the fact that prices across the EU are not
The Case for Regional Governance in the Promotion of Human Security: The EU
47
converging at the expected pace, the
European common currency has
enabled European citizens to be better
protected against negative global
economic and financial phenomena. The
Euro offers a much stronger currency
with a much less volatile exchange rate
on international markets and a better
protection against speculative actions. As
former European Central Bank Executive
Board member Otmar Issing recently put
it: “It is not difficult to imagine what
would have happened during the recent
financial-market crisis if the euro-area
countries still had all their national
currencies: immense speculation against
some currencies, heavy interventions by
central banks and finally a collapse of the
parity system.” (EPC, 2008) It is also
possible to cite a less expected
phenomenon which is the
strengthening of the Euro exchange rate
against the dollar that has for example
allowed European citizens not to bare
the full brunt of the high oil prices in the
first half of 2008.
Another element regarding
the role of the regional level in ensuring
the protection of human security
concerns the capacity and willingness of
states to work together to tackle a
specific problem. “Even in areas in which
no formal EU competences exist, states
sometimes display a “coordination reflex”
(Boin and Rhinard, 2008: 15). The latest
example to date is the coordinated
response EU heads of states and
governments have been able to give in
front of the looming financial crisis.
Although initially uncoordinated due to
a panic based, knee-jerk reaction, the
heads of states and governments of the
EU convened in order to streamline their
actions and act cohesively. This has
enabled the threat of a financial
meltdown to recede. And, of more direct
concerns to the citizens, it has also
allowed measures to be taken in order to
guarantee the repayment of private
savings and prevent banks from running
bankrupt.
The EU can also play a much
more direct role in improving the
economic security of its citizens through
a variety of redistribution instruments.
Looking at the EU budget is sufficient to
see that redistribution of resources
accounts for a very large share. Two of
the most important budget lines for the
EU are the Structural funds and the
Cohesion funds. Both are regional
integration instruments that have been
established in order to improve the
economic prospects and the well-being
of European citizens by reaching out to
the local level. These instruments were
developed and conceived so as to
ensure growth, economic development,
stability, rising employment and other
elements of citizens’ welfare that help
diminish vulnerabilities and therefore
promote human security. For example,
the Cohesion fund, available for the
member states whose Gross National
Income is below 90% of the EU average,
allows for European investment in the
field of trans-European networks and the
environment. Similarly, the European
Regional Development Fund (ERDF)
serves three objectives: improving
regional competitiveness and
employment, fostering territorial
cooperation and improving the
convergence of all European regions.
Taken together these two funds account
for no less than €348 billion over the
2007-2013 period.
European Social Policy and
Human Security
Social policies can cover many
different aspects of everyday life. At one
level it is about policies and practices that
support the means of social participation
(domains of health and social care,
income maintenance, employment or
livelihoods, housing and education) – all
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
48
critical aspects of the concept of human
security. At another level, social policy
may be understood as those
mechanisms, policies and procedures put
in place by governments (collaborating
with other actors) with a regulating
purpose for the general welfare of the
citizen and to create safeguards against
economic and social exclusion. They can
be characterised as being constituted by
three strands: redistribution (involving
investments, transfers or cross-
subsidisation from some socio-economic
groups to others), regulation (to frame
the activities of businesses and other
private actors so that they take more
account of social aims and impacts and
keep goods/services more affordable),
and rights (to ensure efficient legislative
processes and institutional mechanisms
to enable citizens to make claims about
social entitlement from their
governments) (Deacon, Ortiz and
Zelenev, 2007).
In front of the challenges
posed by globalisation especially
concerning the preservation of existing
social rights and policies that provide for
the social needs of populations, authors
like Yeates and Deacon (2006) have
claimed that regional integration can
have an important added value. Effective
regional groupings of countries can
develop cross-border regional
redistribution, regulation, and rights
articulation mechanisms that will protect
social rights. Therefore Yeates and
Deacon make the case for a regional-
based strategy to achieve a more socially
just globalisation (2006). Such an
approach affords protection from global
market forces that might erode national
social entitlement and allows such
grouped countries to have a louder
voice in global negotiations on economic
and social issues. According to the two
authors, this would be done through:
- regional social redistribution
mechanisms: regionally financed funds
to target particularly depressed localities
or to tackle significant health or food
shortage issues or to stimulate cross-
border cooperation;
- regional social, health and labour
regulations: food production and
handling standards, agreement on the
equal treatment of workers;
- regional mechanisms giving citizens a
voice to challenge their governments in
terms of social rights;
- regional intergovernmental
cooperation in social policy on health,
migration, education, food, livelihood
and social security;
- regional regulation of the de-facto
private regional social policies of health,
education, utilities and social protection
companies.
In 2002 the International
Labour Organisation (ILO) established
the World Commission on the Social
Dimension of Globalization (WCSDG) as
an independent body to reflect upon the
challenges globalisation has brought to
peoples’ lives, their families, and the
societies in which they live. The
Commission aimed at exploring the
existing and future opportunities to
combine the necessity of economic
development with social policies and a
sustainable environment. Its 2004 final
report, A Fair Globalization: Creating
Opportunities for All, claims that regional
integration can contribute to a more
equitable pattern of globalisation if
regional integration has a strong social
dimension (WCSDG, 2004:73).
According to the WCSDG, this could be
achieved by empowering people and
countries to better manage the global
economic forces, by capacity-building so
as to take advantage of global
opportunities and by improving the
conditions under which people connect
to the global economy (WCSDG,
2004:71).
The EU has also become
aware of the social challenges created by
globalisation. The Luxembourg
The Case for Regional Governance in the Promotion of Human Security: The EU
49
European Council in 1997 paved the
way for the European Employment
Strategy (EES), also known as the
“Luxembourg processes”. The EES aims
at achieving better European
convergence of national employment
strategies, while respecting national
diversity. The goal is to promote high
employment rates, but not at any price
(preserving quality of jobs, avoiding tax
competition between countries) (UNU-
CRIS, WP 2008:14).
Furthermore, the Commission
in its 2005 report European values in the
globalized world stressed that the gains
made so far through the European
integration process were under threat if
Europe could not rise to the challenge of
responding to the negative
consequences of globalisation especially
regarding job loss. As a part of the
solution, the Barroso Commission
proposed the establishment of a
Globalization Fund which was endorsed
with a few alterations at the December
2005 European Council. The European
Globalization adjustment Fund (EGF)
represents an innovative instrument “to
provide additional support for workers
made redundant as a result of major
structural changes in world trade
patterns” (European Council Conclusions
of December 2005). The novelty of EGF
is the direct support offered to workers
who have been made redundant, and
not the companies or institutions,
through active labour market tools such
as counselling, job search and mobility
allowance, and micro-credits (UNU-CRIS,
WP2008: 21). This new instrument,
which saw the first full payments being
made in December 2007, is an important
landmark in protecting the economic
and social security of European citizens.
The adoption of the EGF as an
instrument of European integration
proves that there has been a long-term
shift in the EU’s social concerns. While it
started from a vision of the European
project working on a restricted number
of issues between six quite similar
member states, it evolved into a broader
vision encompassing broad social
categories of people in a vast area of
great social and economic disparities.
The contrast between the short list of
specific articles contained in the Treaty of
Rome and the long list of social
provisions provided for in the Treaty of
Lisbon (incorporating the Charter of
Fundamental Rights) is palpable.
A clarification is needed in
regard to what is exactly meant by
“European Social Policy”. Confusion is
easy since for many years in the
European integration process the title
“Social Policy” meant working conditions,
equal pay for women and men, and
youth exchanges while important social
aspects such as health, education and
welfare policies remained conspicuous
by their absence, the wording of the
Treaty of Rome giving the European
Community no powers in these fields.
However, along the years
there has been a fundamental expansion
of the social agenda in European
integration. A small but significant set of
powers have been transferred to the
supranational level particularly with
regard to the physical working
environment of employees and equal
treatment at work. Still, major elements
of social policy at national level have only
a limited involvement with the European
policy making structures, and direct
provision of services by the EU remains
almost non-existent. Where there has
been European involvement, the social
transfers that member states are
supposed to provide after EU-level
agreement are mostly non-
benchmarked, suggesting that
differential implementation continues. So
in no sense has the EU grown into a
supranational welfare state. Yet,
paradoxically, the focus of the EU policy
is now definitely more directly oriented
towards the general welfare of its
citizens than it was even a decade ago.
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
50
The EU has developed a more
sophisticated multi-faceted role in social
policy, that goes beyond the supra-
national regulation of working
conditions towards taking responsibility
for setting up frameworks for adequate
living conditions, and guiding member
states through inter-governmental
coordination procedures. It is fair to say
that the social protection and freedom
from discrimination required ensuring a
better quality of life for EU citizens and
residents is now a fundamental concern
of the EU, even when it does not always
deliver clear improvements. Member
states have been able to combine the
autonomy they still enjoy over social
policy with the advantages brought by
burden-sharing, policy-learning and
gradual convergence of policy
outcomes, particularly in cases where the
harmonisation systems is problematic.
The EU itself has proven to be a dynamic
forum for advancing a sui generis form
of social integration and has transformed
itself into an actor that has a role in the
protection of the various components of
human security.
Political Integration and the Link
with Human Security
While using the concept of
economic integration when talking
about the EU may not raise many
eyebrows, such is not the case when
political integration is mentioned. It is
therefore necessary to make clear that
political integration as part of a regional
process does not always amount to the
creation of a federal state. Political
integration speaks about the multiple
beliefs and dynamics that pull together
the countries taking part in a same
regional integration process. In fact, the
ability of various independent states to
take action together in agreement can
be considered to reflect successful cases
of political integration. According to
Haas “political integration is the process
whereby political actors in several
distinct national settings are persuaded
to shift their loyalties, expectations and
political activities to a new centre, whose
institutions possess or demand
jurisdiction over pre-existing national
states” (1958: 16).
But if on the one hand political
integration refers to the building or
strengthening of formal political
institutions and regulative structures, on
the other hand it refers more specifically
to the sharing of common concerns and
the creation of a set of common norms.
In the case of more advanced schemes
of regional integration it is even possible
to witness the formation of political
communities and common political
identities (Kelstrup 1998).
The history of the European
integration process shows a tendency in
favour of political integration. Whether it
is considered the establishment of
regional level institutions or the creation
of a community of values, the 50 years
since the Treaties of Rome clearly show
that the EU has experienced a high
degree of political integration. This
phenomenon is also of particular interest
to study the role of the EU in regard to
human security. Firstly, as a process
establishing solid regional institutions
that can play a role in the protection of
various aspects of human security; and,
secondly, as a community of values that
has at its core a set of norms protecting
European citizens from abuses and
allowing them to enjoy larger freedoms.
Regarding the institutional
aspect of political integration, the
examples abound when one looks at the
EU especially because the European
integration is the most institutionalised of
all regional integration processes. The
history of European construction is also
the history of the creation and
reinforcement of supranational
institutions. The EU Commission and the
European Parliament have both
The Case for Regional Governance in the Promotion of Human Security: The EU
51
witnessed an increase in terms of
quantity (each of the enlargements
adding to their size) but also in terms of
quality (with more power being
delegated to the two institutions). Both
the Commission and the Parliament, as
supranational institutions have also
come to complement the role of member
states in protecting and promoting
human security. In fact, these European
institutions can also play a safeguarding
role by protecting European citizens
from abuses from the member states
themselves. It is even possible to wonder
whether infringement procedures
enacted by the Commission do not
amount to such a safeguarding role.
Through the broad range of
resolutions that are adopted at the
European Parliament, this institution is
deeply involved in the promotion of
essential elements linked to human
security. A concrete example concerns
the various safety standards that are
discussed and adopted at the European
level. These European safety standards
are more than helpful in what concerns
the protection of health, environmental
sustainability, food safety and many
other aspects that are directly linked to
human security.
Another, and a not EU limited,
European institution worth mentioning
given its role in safeguarding European
citizens is the European Court of Human
Rights. The Court is responsible for
ensuring the respect for the Convention
for the Protection of Human Rights and
Fundamental Freedoms which include
among others the right to life, to liberty
and security, the freedom of expression,
prohibition of discrimination, etc. As all
47 member states of the Council of
Europe are contracting parties to the
Convention, they all fall under its
jurisdiction. Moreover, the Protocol 11 to
the Convention also enables European
citizens to challenge member states
when their actions go against the
Convention thus enabling European
citizens not to be subjugated to the
abuses of their own states and to seek
reparation at a higher regional level.
What the European Court of Human
Rights also proves is that Europe, by
allocating such powers to a regional
court, shares a common understanding
of the rights citizens can enjoy.
To show how shared values
and norms can effectively protect human
security (and not just political security) it
is worth mentioning some of the core
values of the EU. Democracy and the
respect for democratic governance is a
very good example. Through a slow and
gradual process, democratic legitimacy
became one of the important features of
the European integration process. While
in the early days very little official
documents mentioned “democracy” as a
requirement for joining the European
integration process, it has now become
an essential part of the EU membership
conditions. EU’s embrace of democracy
as one of its core values is visible through
its inscription in the Preamble of the
Lisbon Treaty.
Moreover, in the 1980s and
1990s European institutions themselves
were increasingly criticised for their lack
of a democratic character. Moreover, it
was considered that European
institutions themselves ought to work in
accordance to the principles of good
governance. Well aware of this problem,
the Commission explicitly pushed
forward the idea of improving the
governance of the EU in order to
address its democratic deficit. The 2001
Commission’s White Paper on
Governance clearly states that improving
governance is an answer to the
difficulties met in transposing democratic
characteristics at the supranational level
(European Commission, 2001a:8).
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
52
The Influence of European
Integration in the Human
Security of Neighbouring
Countries
In 1993, the European Council
meeting in Copenhagen established
criteria that new member states needed
to comply with. These criteria, which
became known as the Copenhagen
Criteria, included strict rules regarding
candidate countries legislation to allow
them to join the EU. The Presidency
Conclusions explicitly stated:
“Membership requires that the candidate
country has achieved stability of
institutions guaranteeing democracy, the
rule of law, human rights and respect for
and, protection of minorities, […].
Membership presupposes the
candidate’s ability to take on the
obligations of membership including
adherence to the aims of political,
economic and monetary union.”
(European Council, 1993) By establishing
these requirements the EU has in fact
played a major role in influencing
human security in the candidate
countries and in its neighbouring states.
These Copenhagen Criteria
are divided into three parts. The political
criteria include various provisions
regarding, among others, the stability of
institutions guaranteeing democracy, the
rule of law, human rights and respect for
and protection of minorities. Economic
criteria ensure the existence of a
functioning market economy and the
capacity to cope with competitive
pressure and market forces within the
Union. And finally the acceptance of the
Community acquis ensures that
candidate countries have the ability to
take on the obligations of membership,
including adherence to the aims of
political, economic and monetary union.
Therefore, by setting out pre-conditions
to accession to the EU, the European
integration process has been able to
ensure various aspects of human security
were respected even outside its own
borders.
In fact, the prospect of
accession to the EU has played a very
important role in what concerns the
political stability of Eastern and Central
Europe after the end of the Cold War. It
provided these countries with a clearly
laid out and credible economic and
political project which they could aim for.
The EU became somewhat of a pole of
attraction that, with its influence, policed
the political dynamics in the countries
aiming for EU membership. In the 13
years between 1991 and 2004, the
shared willingness to be part of the
European integration process acted as a
preponderant stabilising factor, even
though Former Yugoslavia had to
endure major conflicts.
It was because the EU selected
some specific criteria that needed to be
respected and was itself a model that
could be followed, that the
neighbouring states adopted various
policies that ensured the respect for
human rights and promoted human
development.
The role that the EU as catalyst
can play in the provision and
safeguarding of human security in the
neighbouring countries is very well laid
out in the Ukrainian National
Development Report 2008 which
highlights the linkage between what
they call “European Choice” and a
tentative human security agenda. “The
modern European architecture is a
multidimensional structure whose many
intergovernmental organisations […] deal
with pressing political, security,
economic and humanitarian challenges
on a regional and global scale, including
eradicating poverty, combating health
and environmental degradation,
protecting human rights and freedoms,
strengthening democratic institutions
and the rule of law and fighting
The Case for Regional Governance in the Promotion of Human Security: The EU
53
terrorism and organized crime.” (UNDP,
2008: 11).
The EU has also been playing
a pro-active role in its neighbouring
countries. Aware that the very security
and stability of Europe depended on the
security and stability of the Eastern and
South-Eastern part of the continent, the
EU developed a series of programs
meant to help develop Eastern and
South-Eastern European states. As such,
the Phare program was established by
the EU to assist the applicant countries of
Central and Eastern Europe in their
preparations for joining the European
Union. The Phare program has three
overriding objectives: strengthening
public administrations and institutions to
function effectively inside the European
Union; promoting convergence with the
European Union’s extensive legislation
(the acquis communautaire) and reduce
the need for transition periods; and
promoting Economic and Social
Cohesion. Moreover, in 2000 the EU
decided to create another financial
instrument program known as the
Community Assistance for
Reconstruction, Development and
Stabilization (CARDS) meant specifically
for the Western Balkan region14
. This
program puts an emphasis on
reconciliation, reconstruction,
democratic stabilisation, and the return
of refugees as well as sustainable
economic and social development with
the eventual aim of preparing these
countries to one day join the EU. More
recently, the EU has launched an
Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance
(IPA) to support the same objectives, but
for countries aspiring to join the Union in
the period 2007-2013. This framework
encompasses the previous pre-accession,
stabilisation and association assistance to
14
Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Albania are eligible for CARDS
candidate and potential candidate
countries.
The influence that the EU
exercises is not limited to the potential
member states either. In fact, the EU has
also developed series of instrument that
focus on its neighbouring countries,
even though it is not expected that they
would join the European integration
process. The European Neighbourhood
Policy (ENP) has in fact been established
in this regard as well. It is, for example,
under the framework of the ENP that the
Euro-Mediterranean partnership, also
known as the Barcelona process, has
been placed since 2007. Through its
ENP, the EU has therefore been able to
get across its own borders and influence
the level of human security in its
neighbouring states as well.
Regional Governance and
Human Security
Both the number of existing
regional organisations and the
deepening of existing regional
integration processes call for a
reconsideration of the role of regions in
the world of today. In many ways it
appears that regional integration has
favoured the emergence of a new level
of governance that is an intermediate
between the national and the global.
The setting up of new institutions
accompanied with the delegation of
certain powers to the supranational level
has created new dynamics where states
try to increasingly collaborate to better
respond to the various challenges they
may have to face. As such, the regional
level, as a level where governance is
exercised, needs to be studied to see in
which ways it can serve to promote and
protect the human security of its citizens.
The EU, because it is the most
far-reaching regional integration process
with the most firmly institutionalised
supranational structures, is an interesting
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
54
case study to see how it can ensure and
safeguard the various components of
human security. Moreover, this role and
influence that the EU as a region has on
human security can happen in many
different ways. Whether it concerns the
economic integration, political
integration or the social policies that are
put in place at the regional level, it is
possible to see in each case that the
process of regional integration can be
instrumental in ensuring the respect for
the four freedoms and safeguarding the
well-being of citizens.
The Case for Regional Governance in the Promotion of Human Security: The EU
55
Part IV
Other Experiences of Regional Governance in the Promotion of
Human Security
“A regional organization can
fundamentally shift the dynamics of the
region toward peace and security. It can
build bridges of understanding; it can
transform relations from enmity to
amity; and it can bring stability and
prosperity where conflict and discord
previously reigned”.
Hassan Wirajuda
57
The European Union, as one
of the most institutionalised and far-
reaching processes of regional
integration, offers a good case study to
verify how issues affecting human
security can be managed at the regional
level. However, it is not enough to look
solely at the EU experiment to make the
point of regional governance in the
handling of human security threats and
lack of human freedoms. Looking at
other regional integration processes, one
sees that the EU, notwithstanding its sui
generis nature, is far from constituting a
unique case. Other regional integration
processes have perhaps developed
alternative ways to protect their citizens.
All parts of the world are not affected by
the same threats and some threats are
more accentuated in some regions
rather than in another. It is therefore
useful to see how various regional
organisations have understood the
threats they are facing and how they
respond to it. Such an exercise is
necessary since, as was shown in Part II,
threats to human security do not impose
themselves uniformly and there is no
unique scheme that is universally valid
and applicable to manage and curtail a
given threat.
It is almost impossible to assess
here all the existing schemes and
mechanisms that have been developed
by regional organisations throughout
the world. The number of existing
regional organisations and the number
and complexity of the human security
threats they have to face would make
this a fastidious task. An effort in that
direction has been undertaken by UNU-
CRIS which during the course of 2007
and 2008 researched one specific aspect,
namely the role and mandate of regional
and other intergovernmental
organisations in the maintenance of
peace and security. This Capacity Survey
that covers no less than 21 regional and
intergovernmental organisations shows
that analyzing in a similar way all the
issues pertaining to human security is a
Herculean task.
Rather than trying to have an
exhaustive list of regions and the
schemes and mechanisms that they have
developed to respond to threats
affecting them, this part of the work
gives an overview of some specific
instruments that have been developed
by some particular regional integration
process. Firstly the African Union (AU)
will be looked at, with more attention
being devoted to the African Peace and
Security Architecture (APSA) and the
New Economic Partnership for Africa’s
Development (NEPAD) and their role in
protecting and improving human
security. It will then turn to the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) to see how this regional
organisation has been able to respond to
such threats as the Asian economic crisis
and SARS pandemic. Eventually, it will
turn to the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) as
it has embraced the concept of human
security in its own internal agenda
because of worries concerning
environmental security.
African Union: APSA and
NEPAD
When the African Union was
established in replacement of the
Organization of African Unity (OAU), it
marked a major turn in the importance
of protecting human security on the
continent. One of the most persistent
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
58
“CONSCIOUS of the fact that the scourge of conflicts in Africa
constitutes a major impediment to the socio-economic development of the
continent and of the need to promote peace, security and stability as a
prerequisite for the implementation of our development and integration
agenda”
Preamble Constitutive Act of the
African Union (2002)
criticisms that had been expressed
towards the OAU had focused
specifically on the inability of the
regional organisation to intervene in
cases where human security was under
threat. In particular, the fact that the
OAU failed to prevent and to stop the
genocide in Rwanda in 1994 was a
demonstration that its strict adherence
to the concept of state sovereignty was
detrimental for the very security of
African citizens. The inclusion in the
Constitutive Act of the African Union of a
clause clearly allowing the regional
organisation to intervene in case of
“namely war crimes, genocide, and
crimes against humanity” (Protocol,
Article 4-j; Constitutive Act, article 4-h)
marks a u-turn as it ensures the
recognition of the responsibility to
protect.
The AU has also taken
additional steps so as to ensure that it
can effectively play a role in protecting
human security in the continent. An
important stage in that regard has been
the adoption in 2002, of the Protocol
Relating to the Establishment of the
Peace and Security Council of the AU.
This Protocol laid out the plans that the
AU needed to implement so as to
become an effective actor. As part of the
provisions included in the Protocol were:
the establishment of a Panel of the Wise
in charge of mediation, conflict
prevention and peacemaking efforts; a
Continental Early Warning System
(CEWS) to monitor political dynamics
and prevent crisis; an African Standby
Force (ASF) which establishes brigades
that the AU may deploy as peacekeeping
forces; and a Peace Fund to provide
financial support.
This Protocol therefore
establishes the backbone of the African
Peace and Security Architecture (APSA).
The APSA rather than focusing solely on
the AU, enlarges the responsibility of
establishing the African Standby Force to
the Regional Economic Communities
(RECs) as they are the stepping stones of
the continental integration. Therefore,
each of the five sub-regions of the AU
(namely, East, South, Central, West and
North) are to implement a scheme so as
to have Regional Brigades that can be
deployed in case a crisis erupts. Similarly,
the setting up of the CEWS will largely
depend on regional early warning
mechanisms. But it is also noteworthy to
mention that the APSA also opens the
door for other actors to collaborate with
the African Union in its effort to provide
peace and security in the continent. This
means for example that African citizens
may contribute to this effort firstly
through the involvement of the Pan-
African Parliament (established in 2004)
but also with the contribution that civil
society organisations may provide.
The setting up of APSA is a
promising step forward that has been
taken by African states. Nevertheless, the
implementation of the various
components of APSA has been met with
many difficulties both institutionally and
financially. So far, none of the APSA
instruments have been implemented in a
way that it can be described as fully and
efficiently functioning. There is in fact still
a long way to go before it will be
possible to give a positive assessment of
the working of APSA.
Other Experiences of regional Governance in the Promotion of Human Security
59
The New Economic
Partnership for Africa’s Development
(NEPAD) was adopted in 2001 to
become the official economic
development program for Africa. It is
interesting to briefly go back to the
genesis of the NEPAD to understand
what the program has been designed to
stand for. This new economic program
was in fact the realisation of various
different economic plans that had been
drafted by African head of states and
governments. The existence of different
proposals clearly shows that there was a
genuine interest in adopting a new plan
guiding the development of the African
continent. Moreover, whether it was the
Millennium Partnership for the African
Recovery Programme heralded by the
South African President Thabo Mbeki
along with Olesegun Obasanjo and
Abdelaziz Bouteflika, or the Omega Plan
for African development presented by
President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, it
was abundantly clear that this new
development strategy was to focus on
good governance to ensure effective
development.
Eventually, the NEPAD which
was adopted in 2002 is a multi-faceted
program that touches not only on
economic development but also on such
issues as good governance, women
empowerment, the eradication of
poverty and human development with a
focus on health, education, science and
technology and skills development.
Therefore, NEPAD already touches on
many aspects that are of direct concerns
to human security and its components.
Makinda and Okumu note that “NEPAD
was established to promote good
governance in return for aid, investment,
and debt relief. This initiative appears to
have been influenced by the desire for a
rethinking of the African state’s
responsibility towards its citizens. It is a
poverty-reduction initiative that reflects
the belief that African states can make
progress in development only if internal
governance is on solid foundations, and
external trade and investment climates
are transformed” (2008:69).
One of the major instruments
used by NEPAD is the African Peer
Review Mechanism (APRM) that has
been established with the aim of
monitoring the level of governance in
the participating states. The APRM thus
aims at enquiring if there is effectively a
conducive environment for economic
development. For that purpose it looks
at, among other things, the level of
corruption in the state under-review and
ensures that the state has ratified
international anti-corruption codes. But
the APRM goes even further by
scrutinising the respect for human rights,
democracy and the rule of law as well.
The APRM reports are then made public
in order to highlight the various
successes and pitfalls, and thus allow for
suggestion for improvement to be
expressed. As an integral component of
NEPAD, and because it focuses more
specifically in resolving “unfreedoms”
linked to bad governance, lack of
democracy and the lack of respect for
human rights, the APRM can be seen as
an essential regional instrument that
participates in the complex architecture
of human security protection and
provision. But in order to do so, the
APRM needs to be followed up with
effective willingness to resolve the
problems identified in the APRM reports.
The self-assessment effort undertaken by
the participating countries should also
not shy away from controversial issues or
serious political problems. Failing to do
so would pose the risk that the NEPAD
commitment to good governance
expressed through its APRM remains an
empty shell. (Jordaan, 2006)
More generally, NEPAD
through its various instruments needs to
be accounted for as a crucial mechanism
working against human security threats.
The overarching aims of NEPAD: to
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
60
eradicate poverty; to place African
countries (individually and collectively)
on a path of sustainable growth and
development; to halt the marginalisation
of Africa; and to empower women, can
in fact be closely linked to the provision
and improvement of economic security.
NEPAD is also active in regard to the
other components of human security.
For example, the attention devoted to
the promotion of agricultural
development through the
Comprehensive Africa Agriculture
Development Programme (CAADP) can
be directly linked to an effort to provide
food security to African citizens. The
2008 review of the CAADP undertaken
by the African Union recognised that “In
general, CAADP has made significant
progress over the last one and a half
years under the leadership of the Africa
Union Commission (AUC) and the
NEPAD Secretariat to establish itself as a
credible and actionable collective
framework to boost agricultural growth,
reduce poverty, and achieve food and
nutrition security among African
countries.” (African Union, 2008: 4)
All in all, and despite some
shortcomings, it is possible to say that
the AU as a regional organisation has
the ability to play an important part in
the human security equation. Whether it
is through the APSA that directly relates
to freedom from physical violence or the
NEPAD whose various instruments touch
on many aspects of human security, the
AU has been making important steps to
improve the security of African citizens
and reduce the threats they have to face.
This does not mean in any way that the
AU has the same resources and capacity
as other regional organisations such as
say the EU. In fact, despite the
engagement of the AU with various
human security related threats, this
regional organisation has found it quite
difficult to operationalise its endeavours.
Association of Southeast Asian
Nations: the Economic Crisis and
Pandemics
The Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) was first
established in 1967 with the aims of
accelerating economic growth, social
progress and cultural development in
the region and promoting regional
peace and stability through abiding
respect for justice and the rule of law in
the relationship among countries in the
region and adherence to the principles
of the UN Charter. The regional
organisation soon adopted a framework
to prevent conflicts arising between its
member states. The 1971 Zone of Peace,
Freedom and Neutrality Declaration
(ZOPFAN) commits all ASEAN members
to “exert efforts to secure the recognition
of and respect for Southeast Asia as a
Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality,
free from any manner of interference by
outside powers”, and to “make
concerted efforts to broaden the areas of
cooperation”. However, on the various
instances where ASEAN member states
have had to convene together and
attempted to resolve a given situation,
this has also led to the appearance of the
ASEAN Way which reflects the strict
adherence to the concepts of state
sovereignty and non-interference in
national affairs. The ASEAN Way was in
fact also visible in the institutional set-up
of the south-eastern Asia regional
organisation that gave pre-eminence to
states, was driven by a strictly inter-
governmentalist approach, and very
weak regional institutions. This strict
adherence to the ideals of state
sovereignty and the overarching interest
in state security rather than the security
of individuals has in the end hampered
the ASEAN in taking a stake in the
security of its citizens (Cheeppensook,
2007:6-7)
Other Experiences of regional Governance in the Promotion of Human Security
61
“We see v ibrant and open ASEAN societies consistent w ith their respective
national identities, where all people enjoy equitable access to opportunities for total human development regardless of gender,
race, religion, language, or social and cultural background.
We envision a socially cohesive and
caring ASEAN where hunger, malnutrition, deprivation and poverty are no longer basic problem s, where strong families as the basic units of
society tend to their members particularly the children, youth, women and elderly; and where the civil society is empowered
and gives special attention to the disadvantaged, disabled and
marginalized and where social justice and the rule of law reign.”
ASEAN Vision 2020 (1997)
Since its inception, ASEAN has
also furthered its regional integration as
it had to deal with various other
important socio-political and economic
issues affecting the region. To that effect
an important aspect has been the way
that ASEAN has responded to the
economic crisis in the 1990s. The 1997
Asian economic crisis deeply affected the
region and created a high level of
economic insecurity in the various
ASEAN member states. The lack of
adequate instruments to protect ASEAN
citizens against the threats created by
the crisis revealed the fragility of the
previously experienced economic boom.
But it also drew the attention of the
member states towards the very human
security of their citizens. “[The] enormous
human sufferings from the crisis put the
rationale of achieving state security
through economic growth in serious
doubt. In post-crisis era, the state’s role of
being the sole provider of security to its
citizens was damaged since it was no
longer capable of delivering continuous
economic growth and sustaining living
standards” (Cheeppensook, 2007:11).
Eventually, in December 1997
the heads of state and governments of
ASEAN adopted the ASEAN Vision 2020
which laid out the joint plan to help stir
the region out of the crisis. This
document is remarkable as it makes
some clear links with some of the
components of human security. It for
example sets out that the various
member states “envision a socially
cohesive and caring ASEAN where
hunger, malnutrition, deprivation and
poverty are no longer basic problems,
where strong families as the basic units
of society tend to their members
particularly the children, youth, women
and elderly; and where the civil society is
empowered and gives special attention
to the disadvantaged, disabled and
marginalized and where social justice
and the rule of law reign.” (ASEAN,
1997)
The adoption of the ASEAN
Vision 2020 represents an important step
for this regional organisation. With the
adoption of the economic recovery plan,
the ASEAN and its member states have
clearly turned the page of state security
and paid more attention to the security
of their citizens. This shift toward human
security is a clear and major change for
the regional organisation as it will
encourage it to work with the member
states to protect their citizens from
threats and “unfreedoms”. The provisions
made in the ASEAN Vision 2020 have
also been reinforced by the adoption in
2007 of a new ASEAN Charter. This
ASEAN Charter clearly sets out that the
regional organisation shall, among other
things, “ensure that the peoples and
Member States of ASEAN live in peace
with the world at large in a just,
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
62
democratic and harmonious
environment” (Par. 4).
This shift toward human
security would become instrumental in
the way ASEAN would respond to non-
traditional security threats. As such, the
outbreak of such pandemics as SARS and
the Avian Flu would both demonstrate
that the ASEAN interest in human
security was timely and much needed in
order to curtail the health threat the
pandemics posed not only to the region
but also to the entire world. In late 2002,
the epidemic of SARS broke out in some
southern China province. This pandemic
soon propagated to the neighbouring
areas and by 2003 had transformed itself
in a clearly regional threat affecting the
health of many citizens throughout Asia.
But SARS did not only represent a health
threat, it also had a very important and
negative impact on the economies of the
region. “The extent of the economic
impact of SARS was reflected in the
sudden disruption of economic activity in
several Asian economies. Although the
crisis lasted for about five months, the
economic loss was estimated to be
US$50 billion for the region and about
US$150 billion worldwide” (Caballero-
Anthony, 2008:200).
Asian countries were quick to
realize that to tackle with this threat and
the economic loss it curtailed, a
coordinated response was more than
needed. It is also interesting to note that
ASEAN countries also accepted to
collaborate in this instance with non-
member neighbouring states. Along
with Japan, Korea and China they
grouped as the ASEAN+3 in order to join
their efforts and work together to
combat the threat. Additionally, in April
2003 was also conveyed the Special
ASEAN Summit on SARS to outline the
needed mechanism against SARS and its
various socio-economic consequences
(Caballero-Anthony, 2008:202).
The experienced gained by
responding to the SARS pandemic would
become particularly useful only a few
months later when yet another
pandemic broke out in the region. The
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza
(HPAI), caused by the H5N1 virus
represented once again a major threat to
the region. As recognised by the ASEAN
Secretariat:
“[The Avian Flu] had detrimental impacts
on socio-economic development of
several ASEAN Member Countries. The
disease resulted in tremendous losses to
ASEAN poultry industry and posed a
threat to public health. It has also
created a panic in various other regions
all over the world over a potential
human influenza pandemic which
would be caused by mutation of the
H5N1 virus into new strains that could
be transferred between humans and
threaten lives of millions of people”
(ASEAN Secretariat, 2006).
Therefore, the member states
of ASEAN decided to jointly establish a
HPAI Task Force that would be
responsible for formulating and helping
in the implementation of definite
measures and areas of cooperation to
control HPAI in the animal health sector.
Moreover, the combat against the Avian
Flu was also spearheaded alongside with
the neighbouring countries as part of
the ASEAN+3 framework.
It is quite clear that, in the late
1990s, ASEAN made an important shift
towards being more focused on human
security. This new interest in the security
of citizens rather than the security of the
member states has allowed the regional
organisation to design various
instruments and mechanisms that have
ensured and promoted human security.
Whether it concerned economic security
in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian
economic crisis or health threats
following the two pandemics of SARS
and the Avian Flu, the role of the
Other Experiences of regional Governance in the Promotion of Human Security
63
“The Forum noted that the most immediate risks to security in the
region hinge on regional and domestic developments, including natural disasters, trans-national crime including drug trafficking, and
economic, social and environmental policies”
Aitutaki Declaration (1997)
regional organisation in finding a
solution to the threats affecting the
region has been more than instrumental.
It is also interesting to see that the very
existence of ASEAN as a coordinating
mechanism for its member state has
facilitated cooperation with non-member
states of the region through the
ASEAN+3 framework.
Pacific Islands Forum and
Environmental Security
The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF)
started as an international arrangement
in 1971 as the South Pacific Forum. It
was only in 2000 that it transformed
itself in a full-fledged regional
organisation following the Agreement
establishing its Secretariat. In fact, the
Agreement marked more than a simple
name change; it also represented the
willingness of the various states in the
Pacific regions to empower more the
regional level so as to improve
collaboration and cooperation among
themselves. Again in 2005 another step
was taken in the effort to strengthen the
PIF by adopting the Agreement
establishing the Forum and thus creating
a formal regional organisation.
According to the Article II of the 2005
Agreement “The purpose of the Forum is
to strengthen regional cooperation and
integration, including through the
pooling of regional resources of
governance and the alignment of
policies, in order to further Forum
members' shared goals of economic
growth, sustainable development, good
governance, and security”.
The institutional strengthening
of this regional organisation has in fact
followed the realisation by its member
states that the previous arrangement
was ineffectual in what concerned
important threats posed to the region.
The Pacific region has been among the
first regions to recognize and endorse
the concept of human security. In 1997 it
adopted the Aitutaki Declaration on
Regional Security Cooperation. This
document represented a major step
towards a more inclusive definition of
security and an increased concern
regarding non-traditional security
threats. This commitment to human
security has been further strengthened
in the various decisions that have been
adopted afterward by the PIF.
The Aitutaki Declaration states
that: “The Forum recognised the region's
vulnerability to natural disasters,
environmental damage and unlawful
challenges to national integrity and
independence and reaffirmed its
commitment to take a comprehensive,
integrated and collaborative approach to
maintaining and strengthening current
mechanisms for cooperation among
members in dealing with threats to the
security, broadly defined, of states in the
region and of the region as a whole”
(PIF, 1997). The attention being devoted
to environmental security is not innocent
since the Pacific region is particularly
vulnerable to the catastrophe induced
by climate change and environmental
degradation.
In order to better tackle this
environmental threat, the Secretariat was
empowered so that it could coordinate
the efforts being undertaken in that
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
64
regard. The PIF Secretariat not only
provides assistance in term of policy
assistance but it has also favoured a
more pro-active approach by providing
more direct technical assistance. For
example, the Pacific Plan, which consists
in a regular review of the
implementation of the adopted policies
and programs, ensures that the various
National Sustainable Development
Strategies (NSDS) implemented in the
member states take due consideration
for environmental security and receive
sufficient support in that regard.
Eventually, in 2008 the PIF adopted the
Niue Declaration on Climate Change
which clearly laid out that the PIF and its
member state clearly envisioned climate
change and environmental threats as
being integral parts of their security.
Regional Organisations and
Human Security
The examples given on the
African Union, ASEAN and the PIF show
that there are undoubtedly many ways
in which regional organisations can
contribute to the ongoing efforts to
protect and promote human security.
Each of these regional organisations has
already adopted some instruments and
mechanisms to better respond to human
security threats they have had to face. It
is worth noting that in all of the above
given examples the regional level of
governance has shown a genuine
interest in protecting human security
and is no longer restricted to the
protection of state security.
Moreover, it is also evident
that the role that regional organisations
can have in regard to human security is
not limited to the sole provision of
physical security. Whether it concerns
the AU’s effort to promote development
through NEPAD, ASEAN coordination
efforts in the face of pandemics or PIF
interest in combating environmental
threats, it has become clear that regional
organisations have a role to play in the
many aspects that form human security.
There are in fact many other examples
that could be elaborated to show that
such is the case. The increasing interest
towards the security of individuals has
allowed the regional level to better
coordinate efforts promoting human
security through a variety of issues. The
mechanisms and instruments that have
been established at the regional level
have also become an integral part of the
human security equation.
Another important aspect that
transpires from these examples is that
regional organisations do not only serve
their member states but can actually
create a momentum that allows
neighbouring states and their citizens to
board ship and also benefit from the
regional efforts in the protection and
promotion of human security. It is
interesting to take into account such
phenomenon as it shows that regional
integration processes have become
essential factors in furthering
collaboration and cooperation among
states. This facilitation rendered possible
by regional governance can become
crucial to thwart threats and
“unfreedoms”.
If it has been recognised, as
said in Part I, that the responsibility to
protect is not restricted to the
responsibility to protect from physical
threats, it is then important to also accept
that regional levels of governance can
be human security providers. This
regional level becomes particularly
important when it is indispensable to
tackle with cross-border threats that
need to be addressed above the national
level.
Conclusion
67
Human security encompasses
both freedom from fear and freedom
from want. It implies a paradigm shift in
the old concept of security, changing its
referent, from the state to people, and
covering formerly neglected security
areas: securing people not only
physically bur also protecting them from
sudden and severe disruptions in their
lives that may derive from a plethora of
real and perceived threats.
Human security, as discussed
in Part I, is a universal concept with local
application and relevance. There is no
inherent contradiction in this approach.
Rather, there is a clear recognition that
human security can only be achieved by
giving it concrete meaning for an
individual or a community, considering
that the weight of its composite
elements is likely to vary greatly
depending on several factors. Among
them ethnicity, age, gender, time,
geography, political regime, economic
situation and culture play a significant
role.
Human security does not
mean the same for a poor elderly Roma
woman in Bosnia, for a farmer woman in
Haiti, for a wealthy young man from the
Colombian élite, or for a European
citizen today. They may all face severe
human insecurities, but they face
different threats. The changing nature of
insecurity and vulnerability over time and
space makes, therefore, a strong case for
context-specific approaches.
The current status of human
rights doctrine, the priority given to a
human development agenda and the
ongoing debate on the responsibility to
protect, help to frame the novel concept
of human security, highlighting its
interlinked nature. Implicit in a human
security agenda is the respect and
enjoyment of basic and universal human
rights. Both concepts are sensitive, in
their implementation, to the fight against
poverty and the prevention of violence.
Human security is also intrinsically linked
to human development, since it
represents the protection of the safe and
uninterrupted enjoyment of the
enlarged opportunities and choices that
human development procures. And
finally, the concept of human security is
linked to that of the responsibility to
protect, because, as it was argued in Part
I, the responsibility to protect concept
could eventually be enlarged to all
severe cases of human insecurity.
The limited interpretation and
application of the responsibility to
protect concept to genocide, war crimes,
ethnic cleansing and crimes against
humanity, pertaining to the freedom
from fear sphere, is well justified by the
need to confirm acceptance, secure
consolidation and early implementation
of this basic principle. However, the
present prevailing understanding of the
responsibility to protect does not allow
the international community to apply the
same sense of compelling obligation to
prevent and remedy extreme sufferings
such as mass starvation, epidemics or
other massive life threats falling under
the category of freedom from want. The
ongoing debate and the discussion that
will follow the recently released report of
the Secretary General of the UN on
Implementing the Responsibility to
Protect should also link those major
insecurities to an explicit responsibility of
the States and the International
Community.
Since the factors of insecurity
may be of a local, national, regional or
Delivering Human Security through multi-level Governance
68
even international origin, any analysis of
human security must necessarily be
conducted through multilevel lens.
Indeed, providers and facilitators of
human security can range from the very
local authorities at the village level to the
regional or global institutions. It is clear
that global public goods are of central
relevance to human security and,
because of their very nature, they need
to be secured by global actors and often
by regional providers. This means that
the state is no longer the alpha and
omega of the provision of human
security to its citizens, albeit it remains a
critical one.
As explained in Part II, because
of the context specificity characterising
human security, it is not possible to
elaborate a single international standard
measure. The relevant variables change
greatly over place and overtime not
allowing systematic and wide coverage.
International comparisons of human
security situations through quantitative
measures do not seem meaningful in the
light of this analysis. However, it may be
possible to attempt measurement and
international comparison of some
individual factors of human security
taken individually and separately, for
instance the extent of physical insecurity
due to criminal activities.
At the local level
(municipalities, districts, etc.), it may be
possible to identify the priority factors of
real or perceived insecurity, in order to
measure human security through a set of
indicators. In this way, as demonstrated
in Part II, human security may represent
a highly appropriate outcome against
which to assess governance, especially at
local level. Following this rationale, the
medium-term trends and evolutions of
human security indicators at the local
level could provide an indication of the
effectiveness of local governance.
Human security should be a
primary conceptual framework, guiding
the elaboration of public policy and
international actions, again including the
interpretation of the responsibility to
protect. It is, however, at the local level
that human security can represent a real
framework for action since there it
becomes specific and measurable.
Locally, it is possible to determine the
most important vulnerabilities to include
in a context-specific formula for
measuring human security. Such a
baseline could lead to the formulation of
a human security action-plan composed
of policies and concrete actions and
aimed at improving local human security.
The outcome of such a plan should, in
turn, help communities assess the
effectiveness and quality of their local
governance structures.
The rise of regional
frameworks and institutions has created
a new level or layer of governance that
oscillates between the national and
international governance competencies.
This is clearly evident in the case of the
EU which is analysed in Part III. At such
regional levels of governance, the
concept of human security has been
widely used, but mainly in its limited
interpretation, namely as freedom from
fear and physical threat. In the EU,
human security has been applied mainly
to its external relations and foreign
policy. The EU has already proved to be
an interesting case of providing
increased human security outside its
borders, for instance in the impact of the
accession perspectives on neighbouring
countries. However, the internal
application of the human security
framework is highly relevant as well.
Human security of European citizens has
indeed been greatly enhanced by
economic and social integration policies
of the European Union, by the political
integration process, by the application of
the four freedoms (i.e. the free
movement of goods, persons, services
and capital) and by the monetary system
and adoption of a single currency in
some of the member states.
Conclusion
69
As illustrated in Part IV, the EU
represents the most advanced, but not
sole case of successful regional
integration which fosters human
security. Other regional organisations
such as the African Union (AU),
Association of South East Asian Nations
(ASEAN) and the Pacific Islands Forum
(PIF) for example, have shown that they
can potentially contribute in several
ways to the promotion of human
security in their regions. Several
organisations have already adopted
instruments to respond to some human
security threats, and not only limited to
physical security. The examples drawn
from the AU, the ASEAN and the PIF also
illustrate the wide spectrum of threats
that can be tackled by regional
organisations. Far from restricting
themselves to military operation such as
the establishment of a peacekeeping
force, these regional organisations have
demonstrated their willingness to
address, at the regional level, issues such
as economic development, health and
food security, environmental security
and many others. In addition, they create
momentum for their member states to
focus more on their own role as
providers of human security for their
citizens, while cross-border threats to
human security can usefully be dealt
with at the level of regional
organisations. Regional organisations
may have a major role in securing
increased human security for the citizens
of their member states when threats
have to be dealt with above the national
level.
The debate is not near its end.
Reconceptualising security, changing its
referent and advocating for new
instruments that can foster it, but that
can also help to correct the major
disruptions in the daily life of people
requires a shift in paradigm. The
abundance of human security
references, their inclusion into the
agendas of governments, international
and regional institutions is a clear sign
that this is in fact an idea with the power
to reorganize development thinking and
orient the policy response to the ever
changing nature of local and global
insecurities.
71
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Further Readings
Part I Chandler, David (2008), “Human Security: The Dog That Didn’t Bark”, in Security Dialogue,
Vol. 39, No. 4, August 2008, pp. 427-438 Human Security Study Group (2007) A European Way of Security (The Madrid Report),
Madrid: 8th
November 2007. Available at: http://www.lse.ac.uk/Depts/global/PDFs/Madrid%20Report%20Final%20for%20distribution.pdf
King, Gary and Christopher J. L. Murray (2001), “Rethinking Human Security”, in Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 116, No. 4, pp. 585-610. Available at: http://gking.harvard.edu/files/hs.pdf.
Large, Judith and Timothy D. Sisk (Eds) (2006, 2007) Democracy, Conflict and Human Security: Pursuing Peace in the 21
st Century, Volumes 1 and 2. Available at:
http://www.idea.int/conflict/dchs/publication.cfm MacLean, Sandra, David R. Black and Timothy M. Shaw (Eds.) (2006) A Decade of Human
Security, Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate Newman, Edward (2001) “Human Security and Constructivism”, in International Studies
Perspectives, Vol. 2, pp. 239-251 Newman, Edward and Oliver P. Richmond (Eds.) (2001), The United Nations and Human
Security, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan Study Group on Europe’s Security Capabilities (2004) A Human Security Doctrine for
Europe (The Barcelona Report), Barcelona: 15th
September 2004. Available at: http://www.lse.ac.uk/Depts/global/Publications/HumanSecurityDoctrine.pdf.
Tadjbakhsh, Shahrbanou (2007), “Human Security in International Organizations: Blessing or Scourge?”, Human Security Journal, Volume 4, Summer 2007
Tadjbakhsh, Shahrbanou and Anuradha M. Chenoy (2007), Human Security: Concepts and Implications, London and New York: Routledge
Thomas, Caroline (2000) Global Governance, Development and Human Security, London: Pluto Press
Von Tigerstrom, Barbara (2007) “Human Security and International Law”, in Studies in International Law, Vol. 14, Oxford and Portland: Hart Publishing
Part II Cahill, Kevin M. (2006) (Ed.), Human security for all, a Tribute to Sergio Vieira de Mello,
New York: Fordham University Press Muggah, Robert and Keith Krause, “A true measure for success? The Discourse and
Practice of Human Security in Haiti,” in the Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, Winter/Spring 2006. Available at:
http://www.journalofdiplomacy.org Owen, Taylor (2004), “Challenges and opportunities for defining and measuring human
security,” in Human Rights, Human Security and Disarmament, Disarmament Forum, three 2004. Available at:
http://www.prio.no Owen, Taylor (2004), “Human Security – Conflict, Critique and Consensus: Colloquium
Remarks and a Proposal for a Threshold-Based Definition,” Security Dialogue, Vol. 35, No. 3, p. 373. Available at:
http://www.prio.no/sptrans/-774147971/2004to001.pdf UNDP (2005), Venciendo el temor: (In)seguridad Ciudadan y desarollo humano en Costa
Rica, Informe Nacional de Desarrollo Humano, San Jose: PNUD
UNDP (2005), Agenda para el Fortaleciemiento de La gobernabilidad Local en America Latina, Proyecto Regional Feria de Conociemiento de Gobernabilidad Local en America Latina. Available at:
http://www.comminit.com/en/node/41110/36 UNDP, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Centre for the Study of Democracy (1998), Human Security
in Bulgaria 1997, People In Transition, Sofia UNDP (1999), Human Security in South-East Europe, Special Report Commissioned by
UNDP, Skopje, FYROM Part III Biscop, Sven (2005), The European Security Strategy: A Global Agenda for Positive Power,
Aldershot: Ashgate Burgess, J. Peter et al. (2007), Promoting Human Security: Ethical, Normative and
Educational Frameworks in Western Europe. Available at: http://www.peacecenter.sciences-po.fr/pdf/UNESCO_Burgess.pdf
Council of the European Union (2008), Report on the Implementation of the European Security Strategy - Providing Security in a Changing World, Brussels: 11
th December
2008 Glasius, Marlies and Mary Kaldor (Eds.) (2006), A Human Security Doctrine for Europe,
London and New York: Routledge Harris, Paul G. (Ed.) (2007), Europe and Global Climate Change: Politics, Foreign Policy,
and Regional Cooperation, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Howorth, Joylon (2007), Security and Defence Policy in the European Union, Basingstoke:
Palgrave Kirchner, Emil, and James Sperling (2007), EU Security Governance, Manchester:
Manchester University Press Meyer, Christophe O. (2007), The Quest for a European Strategic Culture. Changing
Norms on Security and Defence in the European Union, Basingstoke: Palgrave Monar, Jorg (2004), “The EU as an International Actor in the Domain of Justice and Home
Affairs”, in European Foreign Affairs Review, Vol. 9 (3) Smith, Michael E. (2004), Europe's Foreign and Security Policy. The Institutionalization of
Cooperation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Tadjbakhsh, Shahrbanou and Odette Tomescu-Hatto (Eds) (2007), Promoting Human
Security: Ethical, Normative and Educational Frameworks in Eastern Europe. Available at:
http://www.peacecenter.sciences-po.fr/pdf/UNESCO_Tadjbakhsh_Tomescu-Hatto.pdf Waever, Ole (1998), “Insecurity, security and Asecurity in the Western European Non-War
Community”, in Emmanuel Adler and Michael Barnett (Ed.), Security Communities, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Webber, Mark, Stuart Croft, Joylon Howorth, Terry Terriff and Elke Krahmann (2004), “The governance of European security” in Review of International Studies, Vol. 30 (1)
Part IV Abass, Ademola (2004) Regional Organizations and the Development of Collective
Security: Beyond Chapter VIII of the UN Charter, Oxford: Hart Publishing Graham, Kennedy and Tãnia Felício (2006), Regional Security and Global Governance, A
Study of Interaction between Regional Agencies and the UN Security Council; With a Proposal for a Regional-Global Security Mechanism, Brussels: VUB University Press
Lake, David, and Patrick Morgan (Eds.) (1997), Regional Orders, Building Security in a New World, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania University Press
Pugh, Michael and Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu (Eds.) (2003) The United Nations and Regional Security, Europe and Beyond, Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner
The African Union Cilliers, Jackie (2003) Peace and Security through Good Governance: A guide to the
NEPAD African Peer Review Mechanism, ISS Paper 70, April 2003. Available at: http://www.iss.co.za/Pubs/Papers/70/Paper70.html
Francis, David J. (2006), Uniting Africa: Building Regional Peace and Security Systems, Aldershot: Ashgate
Kent, Vanessa and Mark Malan (2003), “The African Standby Force, Progress and Prospects” in African Security Review, Vol. 12 (3). Available at: http://www.iss.co.za/pubs/ASR/12No3/EKent.pdf.
Laakso, Liisa (2005), “Beyond the notion of security community: What role for the African regional organizations in peace and security?” in The Round Table, Vol. 94 (381)
Murithi, Timothy (2005), The African Union: Pan-Africanism, Peacebuilding and Development, Aldershot: Ashgate
Van Nieuwkerk, Anthoni (2004), “The Role of the AU and NEPAD in Africa’s New Security Regime”, in Shannon Field (Ed.), Peace in Africa. Towards a Collaborative Security Regime, Johannesburg: Institute for Global Dialogue
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations Acharya, Amitav (1992), “Regional Military-Security Cooperation in the Third World: a
Conceptual Analysis of the Relevance and Limitations of ASEAN” in Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 29 (1)
Acharya, Amitav and Evelyn Goh (Eds.) (2007), Reassessing Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific, Cambridge MA: MIT Press
Caballero-Anthony, Mely (2005), “SARS in Asia: Crisis, Vulnerabilities, and Regional Responses”, in Asian Survey, Vol. 45 (3)
Caballero-Anthony, Mely (2005), Regional Security in Southeast Asia: Beyond the Asean Way, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
Garofano, John (2002), “Power, Institutions, and the ASEAN Regional Forum: A Security Community for Asia?” in Asian Survey, Vol. 42 (3)
The Pacific Islands Forum Chand, Satish (Ed.) (2005), Pacific Islands Regional Integration and Governance, Canberra:
Australian National University Press and Asia Pacific Press Fry, Greg (1991), “The Politics of South Pacific Regional Cooperation”, in Ramesh Thakur,
(Ed.), The South Pacific: Problems, Issues, and Prospects, New York: St. Martin's Press Graham, Kennedy (Ed.) (2008), Models of Regional Governance for the Pacific. Sovereignty
and the future architecture of regionalism, Christchurch: Canterbury University Press Peebles, Dave (2005), Pacific Regional Order, Canberra: Australian National University
Press and Asia Pacific Press