duffield and waddell - securing humans in a dangerous world

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Securing Humans in a Dangerous World Mark Duffield and Nicholas Waddell Department of Development Politics, Bristol University, 10, Priory Road, Clifton, Bristol BS8 1TU, UK. E-mail: [email protected] Human security is commonly understood as prioritizing the security of people, especially their welfare and well-being, rather than that of states. 1 Rather than examining human security as a measurable or specific condition, however, the focus here is how ideas of human security facilitate the way that Southern populations are understood, differentiated and acted upon by Northern institutions. Of special interest is how human security as a relation of governance has continued to evolve within the war on terrorism. This is explored, among other things, through interviews with a number of British-based NGOs and the Department for International Development. At the close of the 1990s, human security encapsulated a vision of integrating existing aid networks into a coordinated, global system of international intervention able to complement the efforts of ineffective states in securing their citizens. Compared to this more universalistic and Southern-oriented notion of human security, which had a place for independent aid agencies, the war on terrorism is refocusing developmental resources on those sub-populations, regions and issues regarded as important for homeland security. International Politics (2006) 43, 1–23. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ip.8800129 Keywords: security; NGO’s; aid; war on terrorism; development Introduction Human security addresses a world in which concerns over catastrophic nuclear war between Northern states have been replaced by a more diffuse and multiform threat associated with alienation, breakdown and insurgency emanating from Southern ones. While competing definitions exist, human security it is generally understood embodying a merger of ideas of development and security. Human security implies a broadening and re-prioritization of determinants of security by which the security of individuals, rather than that of states, takes centre-stage. The idea suggests that security is something that goes beyond conventional concerns with military capacity and the defence of borders. Human security approaches usually treat an expanded range of social and developmental variables as being able to constitute an international security threat. Poverty, population displacement, HIV/AIDS, environmental breakdown and social exclusion, for example, all bear directly on human and International Politics, 2006, 43, (1–23) r 2006 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 1384-5748/06 $30.00 www.palgrave-journals.com/ip

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Securing Humans in a Dangerous World

Mark Duffield and Nicholas WaddellDepartment of Development Politics, Bristol University, 10, Priory Road, Clifton, Bristol BS8

1TU, UK.

E-mail: [email protected]

Human security is commonly understood as prioritizing the security of people,especially their welfare and well-being, rather than that of states.1 Rather thanexamining human security as a measurable or specific condition, however, the focushere is how ideas of human security facilitate the way that Southern populationsare understood, differentiated and acted upon by Northern institutions. Of specialinterest is how human security as a relation of governance has continued to evolvewithin the war on terrorism. This is explored, among other things, throughinterviews with a number of British-based NGOs and the Department forInternational Development. At the close of the 1990s, human security encapsulateda vision of integrating existing aid networks into a coordinated, global system ofinternational intervention able to complement the efforts of ineffective states insecuring their citizens. Compared to this more universalistic and Southern-orientednotion of human security, which had a place for independent aid agencies, the waron terrorism is refocusing developmental resources on those sub-populations,regions and issues regarded as important for homeland security.International Politics (2006) 43, 1–23. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ip.8800129

Keywords: security; NGO’s; aid; war on terrorism; development

Introduction

Human security addresses a world in which concerns over catastrophic nuclearwar between Northern states have been replaced by a more diffuse andmultiform threat associated with alienation, breakdown and insurgencyemanating from Southern ones. While competing definitions exist, humansecurity it is generally understood embodying a merger of ideas of developmentand security. Human security implies a broadening and re-prioritization ofdeterminants of security by which the security of individuals, rather than thatof states, takes centre-stage. The idea suggests that security is something thatgoes beyond conventional concerns with military capacity and the defence ofborders. Human security approaches usually treat an expanded range of socialand developmental variables as being able to constitute an internationalsecurity threat. Poverty, population displacement, HIV/AIDS, environmentalbreakdown and social exclusion, for example, all bear directly on human and

International Politics, 2006, 43, (1–23)r 2006 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 1384-5748/06 $30.00

www.palgrave-journals.com/ip

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hence global security. The concept of human security has achieved strikingprominence in the post-Cold War period. The term has gained widespreadcurrency and, over the past few years in particular, has attracted a growinginstitutional interest. There has been a proliferation of government, practionerand academic networks,2 university centres, courses and research initiatives,3

publications,4 official reports5 and international commissions that drawdirectly on ideas around human security. Established in 2001, for example,was the independent International Commission on Human Security co-chairedby Professor Amartya Sen and the former UN High Commissioner forRefugees, Sadako Ogata.6 In the same year, a separate InternationalCommission on Intervention and State Sovereignty sponsored by the Canadiangovernment suggested that human security is,

yincreasingly providing a conceptual framework for international action[y] there is growing recognition world-wide that the protection of humansecurity, including human rights and human dignity, must be one of thefundamental objectives of modern international institutions (ICISS, 2001, 6).

The rise of human security is usually portrayed as resulting from a growinghumanism within the international system that draws on increasingly acceptednorms and conventions associated with the UN Declaration of Human Rights,the Geneva Conventions, the founding of the International Criminal Court,and so on (ibid.). In the words of Astri Suhrke, human security ‘yevokes‘‘progressive values’’ ’ (quoted by Mack, 2002, 3). Rather than examininghuman security from a humanistic perspective, this essay regards humansecurity as a principle of formation. That is, as producing the ‘humans’requiring securing and, at the same time, calling forth the state/non-statenetworks of aid, subjectivity and political practice necessary for thatundertaking. Rather than rehearse the conceptual disputes surrounding thedefinition of human security (see King and Murray, 2001; Paris, 2001), theconcern here is with human security as a relation of governance. Rather thanfocusing on human security as a specific condition or measurable state ofexistence, the emphasis is on human security as informing how internationalinstutions and actors categorize, separate and act upon Southern populations.In exploring the governmental logic of human security, this article also

examines how the human security framework has been affected by the war onterrorism. In particular, we draw on interview material to explore what post9/11 changes mean for British-based NGOs and for the UK’s Department forInternational Development (DFID). These interviews were conducted duringJanuary to March 2004.7 At that time, the wider effects of the war on terrorismon humanitarian and development assistance, together with ongoing difficul-ties in Afghanistan and Iraq, were of continuing concern (BOND, 2003; CHS,

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2003; Oxfam, 2003; Christian Aid, 2004). We argue that the human securityassemblage that emerged during the 1990s has undergone significant change.While human security represents the fusion of development and security, thebalance has tipped against development and in favour of a ‘harder’ version ofsecurity which prioritizes homeland livelihood systems and infrastructures.This incarnation of security threatens to absorb development. Among otherthings, development criteria are being reprioritized towards the rebuilding oftoppled states and, in order to stem terrorist recruitment, towards addressingpopular disaffection in strategically defined areas. For its critics, the war onterrorism has reversed the progress made during the 1990s in promotinghuman rights and refocusing aid on poverty reduction. Development has beenrepoliticized, indeed, we have entered ‘ya new Cold War’ (ibid.). At the sametime, however, while disquieting many NGOs, the war on terrorism appears tohave created new opportunities and departures in relation to securing humansglobally.

Biopolitics and the Promotion of Life

In order to analyse human security from a governmental perspective,Foucault’s conception of biopolitics is a useful analytical tool. According toFoucault, the emergence of biopolitics marks the passage from the classical ageto the modern one. The governmental consequences of this passage are framedin terms of the difference between the ancient right of the sovereign to take lifeor let live and a new power ‘yto foster life or disallow it to the point of death’(Foucault 1998, 138). Beginning in the 17th century, this new power over life,able to ‘ymake live and let die’ (Foucault, 2003, 241), evolved in two basicforms. The first was a disciplinary and individualizing power, focusing on thehuman-as-machine and associated with the emergence of the great institutionsof medicine, education, punishment, the military, and so on (see Foucault,1991). From the middle of the 18th century, however, a complementary butdifferent power over life emerges. This newer form is not directed at human-as-machine. Instead, it is a massifying power concerned with human-as-species.Rather than individualizing, it operates at the aggregate level of populationand constitutes a ‘ybiopolitics of the human race’ (Foucault, 2003, 243).Biopolitics functions differently from institutionally based disciplinary

power. The multiple social, economic and political factors that aggregate toestablish the health and longevity of a population appear at the level of theindividual as chance, unpredictable and contingent events. Rather thanendeavouring directly to modify these events (or the individuals that experiencethem), biopolitics operates at the collective level at which apparently randomevents reveal themselves in terms of constants, probabilities and trends.

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Biopolitics, in other words, looks further upstream. It utilizes forecasts,statistical estimates and overall measures ‘yto intervene at the level at whichthese general phenomena are determined’ (ibid.). Based upon centralizedhygienic campaigns and interventions, the separation of public health fromcurative medicine is an early example of a regulatory biopower. Biopoliticsworks through regulatory mechanisms that seek to establish equilibrium,maintain an average or compensate for variations at the level of population.For Foucault, these mechanisms, in attempting to redress imbalance, are

connected with the issue of security. Biopolitics establishes ‘ysecuritymechanisms [y] around the random element in a population of living beingsso as to optimize a state of life’ (ibid., 246). Biopolitics maintains homeostasis,not through a disciplinary technology of drilling or training but by establishingan aggregate ‘ya technology of security’ (ibid.).8 Security in this contextrelates to improving the collective resilience of a given population against thecontingent and uncertain nature of existence. To achieve such security requirescomplex systems of public coordination and centralization of the kind andscale that did not arise in relation to the proceeding, but still essential, morelocalized institution-based disciplinary technologies of power.This short overview of biopolitics provides a grounding from which human

security can be approached as a technology that makes it possible both toenvisage, and author, a biopolitics of global governance. To appreciate thegovernmental significance of human security it is also necessary, however, toexamine in more depth the origins of human security. If, as is commonly argued,human security represents the merging of development and security (King andMurray, 2001), it remains to explore each of these component parts in turn.

Developing Humans

Within the various assumptions and practices that constitute ‘development’ itis possible to recognize a biopolitics of life operating at the international level.That is, those varied economic, educational, health and political interventionsaimed at improving the resilience and well-being of people whose existenceis defined by the contingencies of ‘underdevelopment’. While developmentprogrammes contain individualizing disciplinary elements, typically in theform of projects, they also seek to strengthen the resilience of collectivitiesand populations. Towards this end, development draws widely on regulatorymechanisms, risk management techniques and compensatory programmesthat act at the aggregate level of economic and social life. In particular,development is a biopolitical security mechanism associated with populationsunderstood as essentially self-reproducing in relation to their basic social andwelfare needs (Duffield, 2005).

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The type of development that constitutes the present foundation of humansecurity is more accurately defined as ‘sustainable development’. A populardefinition is that of the 1987 World Commission on Environment andDevelopment: sustainable development is a ‘ydevelopment that meets theneeds of the present without compromising the ability of future generationsto meet their own needs’ (quoted by Adams, 1993, 208). In bringing togetherthe domains of development and the environment, the idea of sustainabledevelopment grew to become the developmental leitmotif of the 1980s. Despitebeing widely criticized for its lack of conceptual rigour, the phrase quicklyentered the rhetoric of politicians, UN agencies and NGOs.Under the banner of sustainable development, formal development practice

embraced a human, people-centred focus that not only prioritized thedevelopment of people ahead of states, it also decoupled human developmentfrom any direct or mechanical connection with economic growth. The movetowards sustainable development was a move away from an earlier dominanceof state-led modernization strategies based on the primacy of economic growthand assumptions that the underdeveloped world would, after passing throughvarious stages, eventually resemble the developed. Rather than economicgrowth per se, a broader approach to development emerged based on aggregateimprovements in health, education, employment and social inclusion as anessential precursor for the realization of market opportunity. The UNDP,for example, launched its annual Human Development Report in 1990,dedicating it to ‘yending the mismeasure of human progress by economicgrowth alone’ (UNDP, 1996, iii). The introduction of the Human DevelopmentIndex, in particular, with its composite measure of population welfare thatincludes per capita income, life expectancy and educational attainment, wasseen as part of the ‘yparadigm shift’ towards the emerging consensus that‘ydevelopment progress — both nationally and internationally — must bepeople-centred, equitably distributed and environmentally and sociallysustainable’ (ibid.).Sustainable development defines the type of ‘development’ that is securitized

in human security. In promoting diversity and choice, sustainable developmentis a biopolitics of life. It is concerned with relations and institutions able toact in a regulatory manner on populations as a whole to maintain theirequilibrium. This includes, for example, educational measures aimed atenabling the poor to understand the contingencies of their existence and tomanage better, and compensate for, the risks involved. In bringing togetherpreviously unconnected environmental and developmental actors, as abiopolitical assemblage, sustainable development created the possibility fornew forms of coordination and centralization. As an assemblage it brought innon-state actors and multilateral agencies and saw mandates change as well asnew ways of interacting emerge. In short, sustainable development forged new

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means of coordination and centralization that have the human being ratherthan the state as the referent object of development.

Discovering Internal War

How conflict has been understood in the post-Cold War period is central tounderstanding the concept of ‘security’ within human security. It defines thenature of the threat that a developmental biopolitics defends populationsagainst. Reflecting the move from states to people already rehearsed insustainable development, conflict similarly moves its locus from wars betweenstates to conflicts within them. As with sustainable development, population isalso the terrain on which such conflicts are fought. This is both in terms oflivelihood systems and social networks being the object of attack and attritionas well as providing sites of resistance and counter-attack. Both developmentand security within human security take life as the referent object.A new international consensus on the changed nature of war emerged in the

early 1990s. Not only had hopes of a new era of post-Cold War peace beenconfounded by the persistence of conflict in many developing countries, thevery nature of conflict was said to have altered. It became accepted that today’swars, unlike the past, were increasingly ‘ywithin States rather than betweenStates’. These wars were ‘yoften of a religious or ethnic character and ofteninvolving unusual violence and cruelty’ largely directed against civilians(Boutros-Ghali, 1995, 7). Emerging at the same time as the idea of humansecurity, this ‘changing nature of conflict’ refrain has since become anestablished truth recycled ad nauseam in policy documents, academic worksand the media. It holds that these new wars, unlike the past, are largely civilconflicts in which warring parties not only show no restraint regarding humanlife and cultural institutions but also deliberately target essential infrastructuresand livelihood systems for criminal gain (International Alert, 1999; Collier,2000; DFID et al., 2003). While the accuracy of this ‘changing nature ofconflict’ motif is questionable,9 it is essential for establishing the problematic ofhuman security. The changing nature of conflict theme sees organized violenceas ‘ydevelopment in reverse’ (Collier, 2000, ix). Conflict destroys developmentbecause, as argued above, development is portrayed as a biopolitical conditionof socio-economic homeostasis. By wrecking infrastructures and livelihoodsystems, tipping them into disequilibrium and increasing the risk of enduringcycles of violence and displacement, conflict becomes redefined as a terminalthreat to sustainable development.However, by strengthening coping mechanisms and subsistence strategies,

sustainable development is also seen as a bulwark against the dangerousenticements and alternative rewards that illegitimate indigenous leaders can

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present to impoverished and alienated peoples (Carnegie Commission, 1997,ix). It is not just poverty, however, that draws people towards aggressiveleaders but, crucially, a sense of resentment derived from exclusion. It is thebelief ‘yamong millions of people within society that they have ‘‘no stake inthe system’’ ’; indeed, the more acute the sense of grievance ‘ythe more likelyit is that a large number of people will be susceptible to the siren voices ofextremists, and believe they have more to gain from war than peace’(Saferworld, 1999, 69). It is a sense of alienation and the legitimate desire forchange among groups that the technologies of sustainable development seek toharness and empower in order to improve the self-management of contingencyand risk.During the 1990s, the proposition that poor countries have a higher risk of

falling into conflict than rich ones (because the resulting social exclusion can beexploited by violent and criminal leaders) coalesced into a policy consensus (seeCollier, 2000). If sustainable development brought the issue of collective self-reproduction centre-stage, the rediscovery of internal war during the 1990sproblematized the nature of the state in the developing world. Weak and failingstates existing in zones of crisis can be captured by unsuitable rulers. Theperception of these rulers as the illegitimate enemies of development, togetherwith concerns that disaffected people are liable to be drawn to them, establishesan interventionist dynamic. A range of conflict resolution and socialreconstruction strategies emerge from this dynamic that are geared for thesovereign separation of such leaders from the led while acting governmentallyon collectivities and populations to strengthen their resilience and civility(DAC, 1997). We will now examine the distinct institutional dimensionsattaching to the development and security inflections of human security.

An Unstable Assemblage of Global Governance

As an organizing concept, human security emerged in the mid-1990s and beganto develop considerable institutional depth. Two early documents of enduringinfluence to human security are UN Secretary General Boutros Ghali’s 1992Agenda for Peace (1995, 42–43), and the UNDP’s Human Development Report(1994). With respect to the security dimension of human security, the Agendafor Peace was one of the first systematic elaborations of the idea that the post-Cold War period was defined by threats to people’s well-being rather thaninter-state conflict. In what is now a well-established human security approach,the Agenda argues that the referent object of security is the individual ratherthan the state and that this broadens the definition of security to includewider environmental, health, demographic, economic and political issues(Boutros-Ghali, 1995, 42–43). Boutros-Ghali calls for these issues to be

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addressed through an extensive international division of labour that includesnot only states but also UN agencies, NGOs and civil society groups workingwithin ‘yan integrated approach to human security’ (ibid., 44).If the Agenda has shaped the security dimension of human security, the

UNDP’s Human Development Report has had equivalent influence with regardto the development dimension. The UNDP presents human security as beingconstituted by ‘freedom from want’ and ‘freedom from fear’. That is, safetyfrom chronic threats such as hunger and disease, together with protection fromdamaging disruptions ‘yin the patterns of daily life’ (UNDP, 1994, 23). TheUNDP divides life’s contingencies into seven interconnected areas of security:economic, food, health, environment, personal, community and political.While critics have argued that this list is descriptive and lacks an explanationfor how these areas are related, the UNDP’s initiative has, nonetheless, beeninfluential. King and Murray, for example, have described the project as a‘yunifying event’ in terms of launching human security as an assemblage thatfused security and development (King and Murray, 2001, 589). The UNDP hasstimulated others to suggest more rigorous ways of measuring human securitythrough new and cross-cutting data sets (ibid.; Mack, 2002) as well asencouraging more inclusive definitions (Thomas, 2001).More recently, two events have defined how human security as a biopolitical

assemblage has taken shape. The first was the publication at the end of 2001 ofthe International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty’s reportThe Responsibility to Protect. The second event was the 2003 release of theCommission of Human Security’s Human Security Now. These two reportsreflect, in a practical sense, how, until recently, the governance networks ofhuman security were being constructed in two complementary but differentways. The Responsibility to Protect sees human security at the heart of aredefinition of the nature of sovereignty in respect of the state and theinternational community. It moves the earlier juridically based idea of‘humanitarian intervention’ as requiring authorization under the UN charter,onto the terrain of moral duty (Warner, 2003).Evident in The Responsibility to Protect is the fact that, while implying a

universal ethic, human security (like human rights) has been re-inscribed withinthe juridico-political architecture of the nation-state. The proposition thathuman security prioritizes people rather than states is more accuratelyunderstood in terms of effective states prioritizing populations living withinineffective ones.10 This distinction between effective and ineffective states onthe terrain of population is central to The Responsibility to Protect. In aninterconnected and globalized world ‘yin which security depends on aframework of stable sovereign entities’ the existence of failed states who eitherharbour those that are dangerous to others, or are only able to maintain order‘yby means of gross human rights violations, can constitute a risk to people

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everywhere’. Indeed, there is no longer such a thing ‘yas a humanitariancatastrophe occurring ‘‘in a faraway country of which we know little’’ ’ (ICISS,2001, 5). When a state is unable or unwilling to ensure the human security of itscitizens, the Commission argues ‘ythe principle of non-interference yields tothe international responsibility to protect’ (ibid., ix). It is striking that while thesecurity of people rather than the state is prioritized, in practical terms, theCommission remains wedded to reinstating the state:

ya cohesive and peaceful international system is far more likely to beachieved through the cooperation of effective states confident in their placein the world, than in an environment of fragile, collapsed, fragmenting orgenerally chaotic state entities (ibid, 8).

Human Security Now, unlike The Responsibility to Protect, largely takes themoral case for intervention for granted. The report relates to developmentand is more concerned with the ‘consolidation’ of global populations. In thisrespect, Human Security Now is more in keeping with the UNDP, not leastin holding a similar holistic and interdependent view of human security. Itsdivision of the contingencies of population, however, is more dynamic andintegrated with conflict and its effects (also see Mack, 2002). It signals forspecial consideration, for example, human security in relation to conflict andpost-conflict recovery; the protection of people on the move; economicinsecurity; basic health needs; and non-inflammatory education.The Commission defines human security as the protection of the vital core of

human life through ‘yprotecting fundamental freedoms — freedoms that arethe essence of life’ (CHS, 2003, 3). Rather than presenting a particularlynew definition, or set of innovative ideas for the measurement of humansecurity the emphasis within Human Security Now is to encourage the complexand extensive forms of coordination and centralization necessary for thebiopolitical regulation of global populations. Important here is ensuringprotection through the building of a comprehensive international infrastruc-ture that shields people’s lives from menacing threats. This requires workinginstitutions at every level of society, including police systems, the environment,health care, education, social safety nets, diplomatic engagements and conflictearly warning systems (ibid., 132). In achieving this ambitious aim, it is notedthat there already exist numerous loose networks of actors including UNagencies, NGOs, civil society groups, and private companies that are currentlyoperating such agendas independently of each other. Rather than inventingsomething new, the main task is to bring these numerous separate initiativesinto a coherent global strategy:

To overcome persistent inequality and insecurities, the efforts, practices andsuccesses of all these groups should be linking in national, regional and

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global alliances. The goal of these alliances could be to create a kind ofhorizontal, cross-border source of legitimacy that complements that oftraditional vertical and compartmentalised structures of institutions andstates (ibid, 142).

Human Security Now argues for a biopolitics of human population basedupon global forms of coordination and centralization largely formed from theintegration of existing aid networks, programmes and data sets. It sees suchregulatory networks as collectively having the ability and legitimacy to supportthe efforts of weak and ineffective states. This is an ambitious and expansiveview of human security as an assemblage of global governance.11

Taken together, The Responsibility to Protect and Human Security Nowpresent two interconnected trajectories to human security’s institutionalframework. The security component of human security is largely concernedwith a responsibility to protect, based on the distinction between effective andineffective states. Primacy is given to issues of global circulation, for example,how disasters or conflicts in one region have the ability, through populationdisplacement, shadow economies or terrorist networks, to impact on otherregions or countries. In contrast, while accepting the risks of global circulation,the development side is more concerned with local consolidation: improvingthe resilience of global populations through better coordination andbiopolitical regulation (Chen et al., 2003). Prior to the war on terrorism, intheory at least, the relation between development and security was that of‘equal but different’ (UN, 1998). Post 9/11 developments, however, haveproblematized the unstable and emerging human security assemblage. Thescales have tipped in favour of addressing security concerns associated withglobal circulation. This shift has had significant and complex ramifications forNGOs who have adapted to the altered political landscape with varyingdegrees of success.

The New Global Danger

Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are withus, or you are with the terrorists (President Bush, September 18, 2001).

The war on terrorism has had an acute impact upon human security as anevolving assemblage of global governance. The predominance of securityconcerns, especially homeland security, means that issues of global circulation— of people, weapons, networks, illicit commodities, money, information, andso on — emanating from, and flowing through, the world’s conflict zones, nowinfluence the consolidating biopolitical function of development. That is,security considerations increasingly direct developmental resources toward

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measures, regions and sub-populations deemed critical in relation to thedangers and uncertainties of global interdependence.While greater interdependence and interconnection are often celebrated, it is

increasingly appreciated that the globalization sword can cut both ways. Aninterdependent world has more uncertainties and hence increased risk (Beck,1992). Inequalities visited on the South can ‘boomerang’ on the North (George,1992). While globalization and ‘network society’ have generated undreamtflows of wealth, they have also widened old disparities and encouraged newforms of exclusion, all of which foment illicit, criminal and destabilizing formsof global circulation (Castells, 1998). As President Bush’s National SecurityStrategy sees it, the fruits of liberal-democracy are under threat from a newglobal danger. In today’s radically interconnected world, in which bordersare increasingly porous, enemies are no longer the massed armies of opposingstate encampments but their opposite: transnational global terrorist networks‘yorganized to penetrate open societies and to turn the power of moderntechnologies against us’ (Bush, 2002, v). Securing freedom necessitatesstopping the spread of terrorist networks through closing home bases,preventing new sanctuaries from forming, and stemming the proliferation ofweapons, funds and recruits.In achieving security, addressing weak or the so-called ‘failed states’ has been

identified as pivotal. Whereas, such states were treated with relative neglectduring the 1990s (Newburg, 1999) they are now the subject of rafts of policyinitiatives. The ‘yhighest item on the agenda’, stated one DFID interviewee,‘yis how we link development and security, particularly in the context offailing states’. A speech by Hilary Benn, the Secretary of State for InternationalDevelopment suggested that ‘yone of the main reasons why it is proving sohard to achieve Millennium Development Goals is the concentration of thepoorest in crisis states’ (Benn, 2004, 2). DFID is working with the FCO, MoDand the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit to improve Britain’s ability to respondby devising an integrated approach that ‘ycombines development pro-grammes with diplomatic engagement and security interventions. The commongoal is reducing the risk of state crises’ (ibid, 3). With respect to the UN, 2005is the year that it will respond to Kofi Annan’s High Level Panel on howto address state failure under the UN Charter and thus discourage theunilateralism of recent years. According to Benn, this is a chance for the UN toidentify state crises and work with the World Bank and other agencies in orderto act ‘ydecisively when human security is at risk’ (ibid, 4).The newfound concern over failed states indicates that the war on terror is

not simply a military campaign. It is a multidimensional conflict that alsoengages with questions of poverty, development and internal conflict. TheNational Security Strategy, together with the OECD (DAC, 2003) and the EU(Solana, 2003), all highlight development assistance as a strategic tool in the

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war against terrorism. The Development Assistance Committee’s (DAC’s)Lenson Terrorism report, for example, illustrates that while the regional contain-ment of the effects of poverty and conflict remains important, current policyhas broadened to address issues of leakage and interpenetration. Insurgentpopulations, shadow economies and violent networks are the new globaldanger in a world ‘yof increasingly open borders in which the internal andexternal aspects of security are indissolubly linked’ (ibid., 5). In an echo ofthe 1990s ‘the poor are attracted to violent leaders’ argument, the Lens onTerrorism sees terrorist insurgency as stemming from a sense of anger arisingfrom exclusion, injustice and helplessness. In this situation, terrorist leaders,who may themselves be motivated by grievances and resentment, ‘yfeed onthese factors and exploit them, gathering support for their organizations’(DAC, 2003, 11). The package of developmental measures designed foroffsetting alienation involves a complex set of biopolitical interventions withthe ultimate goal of building ‘ythe capacity of communities to resist extremereligious and political ideologies based on violence’ (ibid., 8). Education andjob opportunities become key, reflecting the concern that the new globaldanger no longer necessarily lies with the abject poor, who are fixed in theirmisery: instead, it pulses from those mobile sub-populations capable ofbridging and circulating between the dichotomies of North/South; modern/traditional; and national/international.

NGOs and the Subordination of Development

Some advocates of human security are keen to assert the complementaritiesand even indivisibility of ‘their’ security and ‘ours’. The authors of A HumanSecurity Doctrine for Europe, for example, suggest that Europe’s military forces‘yneed to be able to address the real security needs of people in situations ofsevere insecurity in order to make the world a safer place for Europeans’(SGESC, 2004, 7). The ‘ywhole point of a human security approach’, theauthors argue, ‘is that Europeans cannot be secure while others in the worldlive in severe insecurity’ (ibid., 10). Similarly, to assert the inextricable linkbetween security and development has become something of a cliche: ‘nodevelopment without security and no security without development’.Other observers, however, stress that there are also severe tensions between

the promotion of homeland security and the furthering of human security inthe poorest countries. References to the merits of ‘enlightened self-interest’often gloss over real tensions between domestically oriented security prioritiesand Southern-oriented development priorities. The worry is that ‘their’ securityand development are becoming important only insofar as they are a meanstowards ‘ours’. Areas where the causal links are less apparent are liable to fallby the wayside. For many NGO staff interviewed, the war on terror has

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brought about the elevation of security and the relegation of development.Compared to the ‘soft’ security of development, the ‘yaggressive assertion ofthe hard security agenda works against human security’.12 As the Commissionfor Human Security argues, current approaches to conflict ‘yfocus oncoercive, short-term strategies aimed at stopping attacks by cutting offfinancial, political or military support and apprehending possible perpetrators’,rather than ‘yaddressing the underlying causes related to inequality, exclusionand marginalization, and aggression by states as well as people’ (CHS, 2003,23–24). The focus on circulation as opposed to consolidation, with its threatsto institutional independence arising from politically directed aid, is of concernto many UN agencies, NGOs and aid organizations. International issues‘yhave been redefined much more in terms of national self-interest promotedthrough force. Now the top priorities are about terrorists, illegal asylum anddrugs’ (NGO Interview).The ‘massive politicization of development and humanitarian assistance’

that was frequently raised by interviewees, has invited comparisons with theCold War. The reappearance is noted, for example, of the use of officialassistance, including arms sales and trade concessions, to reward politicalallegiance. (Christian Aid, 2004; also see BOND, 2003; CHS, 2003; Cosgrave,2004). What Christian Aid has dubbed ‘the new Cold War’ is not, however,simply ‘yterrorism replacing communism as the bogey’ (Cosgrave, 2004, 15).During the Cold War, erstwhile Third World states were part of competingsuperpower geopolitical alliances. While cooperative borderland states,especially strategically located ones, are currently being reappraised inassistance terms, the alliance is essentially biopolitical. Instead of being rangedoutwards towards other states and political blocs, it is directed inwards atpolicing the flows and contingencies of population. While the war on terrorismhas renewed international interest in effective states, these transitional entitiesare aided with global developmental technologies to regulate life in the interestsof global security.

Human Rights and Political Space

While poverty reduction is still central to development assistance, the threatof global terrorism has produced a shift of emphasis towards transitionalpopulations living in strategic regions. It is their frustration and alienationthat underpin terrorism. While reducing absolute income poverty remainsimportant, ‘yapproaches to inequality and exclusion should be givenincreased priority’ (DAC, 2003, 8). This is no longer the poverty focus thatgained ground in relation to sustainable development during the 1990s.Poverty reduction then was concerned with improving the position of the

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poorest members of society. As the NGO members of the Global Security andDevelopment Network have argued in a joint statement to DAC, despiteflagging the importance of poverty reduction, the Lens on Terrorism can beinterpreted as ‘ythe redirection of aid away from poverty reduction andtowards a counter-terrorism and security agenda’ (BOND, 2003, 1; also seeChristian Aid, 2004; Woods, 2004).For many aid agencies, the war on terrorism has reversed the progress made

during the 1990s in affirming human rights. In particular, the threat ofterrorism has given states the opportunity to derogate from existing humanrights treaties on the grounds of security (Cosgrave, 2004). Not only has thepractice of detention without trial reappeared in countries such as the USAand Britain, many members of the global ‘coalition of the willing’ have usedexisting legislation or passed new national security laws which, critics argue,have used terrorism as pretext for repressing legitimate internal opposition.Human rights organizations have raised such concerns, for example, in relationto India, China, Thailand, Pakistan, Nepal, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Afghani-stan, South Africa, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania (ibid., 27–35). Thisrepressive climate has had a widespread impact on those aid agencies workingin relation to civil society and the legitimate expression of opinion. Accordingto some NGO respondents, there has been:

ya restriction of the political space from governments down to the groundthat we can operate in [y]. A hard security agenda has closed downchannels that were previously open to us. This concerns everything from keyplayers in resolving conflict being thrown in jail on trumped up terroristcharges to resources not being available for certain activities.9/11 has changed how we can work with certain groups because some of thepeople we work with are classified as terrorists and that classificationcomplicates our activities greatly.

The reversal of human rights is also matched by the curtailment of what aidagencies call ‘humanitarian space’ (FIFC, 2004). During the 1990s, the militarydoctrine among leading states was to support civilian humanitarian agenciesand to only become directly involved in humanitarian activities as a last resort.Since Kosovo, and especially Afghanistan, this situation has changed (Doniniet al., 2004). Aid generally, and aid related to social reconstruction inparticular, has been redefined in directly political terms. In Afghanistan as wellas Iraq, social reconstruction and support for transitional state entities is meantto turn these countries into stable democracies. This places tremendousresponsibilities upon aid agencies and draws them directly into a politicalprocess. At the same time, due to widespread insecurity, the military hasbecome directly involved in activities labelled as ‘humanitarian’. Theseactivities include repairing essential infrastructure and delivering supplies. As

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some agencies argue, however, such undertakings ‘yare more properlydescribed as military intervention in pursuit of a political goal’ (Christian Aid,2004, 23).At the operational level, the most obvious casualty has been the neutrality of

aid organizations. In many respects, the war on terrorism is weakening what,in the past, has been the main strength of NGOs: a legitimacy and authorityderived from the support of the partners and communities with whom theywork. Non-governmental organizations are acutely concerned that, from theperspective of local populations, they have become indistinguishable from theoccupying forces (Vaux, 2004). Whether or not the perceived proximitybetween NGOs and occupying forces is real or imagined, such perceptions canbe highly damaging for NGOs. Among the NGOs interviewed, the fear ofbeing tarred with the same brush as ‘the occupiers’ requires a calculation as to‘ywhether one activity or one engagement [in co-operation with Westernforces] will jeopardize our overall credibility in the eyes of local people’. Thisnew security environment challenges established assumptions. For example,‘ythe notion that if we make ourselves look like the good guys then we will beOK. Being the good guys is not so easy nowadays’. This ‘ylack of distinctionby locals in terms of who is on the ground doing what is deeply problematic forus’. The bombing of the Baghdad headquarters of the UN and ICRC inAugust 2003 are graphic illustrations of the new situation that aid agencies findthemselves in. Many have begun to ask whether the benefits that aid workersbring is ‘ynow outweighed by the price that they are being asked to pay’(Foley, 2004). Through the ambushing of convoys, rocketing of premises andthe booby-trapping of vehicles, over 40 aid workers have been murdered inAfghanistan in the past year alone. Currently, whole swathes of Afghanistanand Iraq are no-go areas for NGOs and many have already left Iraq where, asthe murder of CARE International head Margaret Hassan has shown, thesituation is currently ‘ybeyond the security threshold’ (NGO Interview).

Coherence and the DFID

The British government has raised the profile of development issues andincreased its spending, especially in relation to poverty reduction measures. Ithas also firmly aligned itself with America and the war on terrorism. Thegovernment’s efforts to place Britain at the forefront of both these struggleshave raised concerns about the degree to which these goals are, in fact,complementary. This concern was raised by a number of NGO staff consultedand relates to the issue of ‘coherence’.During the 1990s, coherence was the policy name given to the search for

increased impact to be realized by getting ‘aid’ and ‘political’ actors to work

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together, formulate joint strategies and harmonize their activities (Macrae andLeader, 2000). At the time, it was a mobilizing concept enabling UN agencies,NGOs, diplomats and military actors to explore the changing boundaries ofdevelopment and security through news forms of coordination and centraliza-tion. In terms of the search for coherence among government departments, oneexample is Britain’s Global Conflict Prevention Pool (DFID et al., 2003).Bringing together the resources and personnel of DFID, FCO and MOD, theinitiative represents security-driven centralization that blurs departmentalboundaries between aid, diplomatic and military actors. Predating the war onterrorism, the idea originated in 2000 as part of a government review of conflictin relation to its ‘joined up government’ initiative. In the case of conflict theintention was to maximize its prevention and management by ensuring that‘yeach department’s work supports and complements the others’ (ibid., 6).13

DFID, FCO and MoD now share a Public Sector Agreement (PSA) target withthe Treasury. Progress towards this target is ‘ydemonstrated by a reduction inthe number of people whose lives are affected by violent conflict and areduction in potential sources of conflict’ (ibid., 7). This is a biopolitical target.It necessitates DFID being able to act at the level of population in order toregulate, manage and compensate for the contingent factors that lead to violentconflict. At the same time, the PSA is a powerful tool of centralization,obliging previously separate departments to adopt common strategies,definitions and data sets.14

While several of the NGOs interviewed identified some positive aspects ofthese new interdepartmental initiatives, there was also a widespread perceptionthat these arrangements have seen DFID lose influence to the FCO and MOD.Similar concern has also been voiced from within government at an apparenterosion of the autonomy that DFID established when it became a separatedepartment from the FCO in 1997. Whether or not this appraisal is correct,what is clear is that the prominence given to security issues is complicated forDFID. Attempting to increase the coherence between development andsecurity involves tensions and trade-offs between competing agendas. Indeed,sometimes decisions have to be made between development and security.Obscuring the contentious nature of these decisions, the tendency is for humansecurity and development objectives to be conflated with those of globalsecurity and geopolitics.Within parts of DFID, as with many NGOs, there is ‘ya marked inclination

to assert that development is strictly about poverty reduction’. However, as adepartment of state, there is also a pragmatic acceptance of political reality.While conscious that the 2002 International Development Act aims to restrictBritish aid programmes to those that contribute to poverty reduction, there is arealization that there are security pressures on how the development budget isspent. For example, in terms of regional prioritization, it is thought that

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countries ‘ywill drop down the agenda’ where they are not deemed by theFCO to be of strategic interest or where DFID and the FCO do not sharecommon concerns. Some countries can be winners in this situation. The drivingforce for engagement in Somalia, for example, is largely counter-terrorism andmigration. In pure developmental terms, ‘ywith a population of only sevenmillion, Somalia is the bottom of the pile’. Such pragmatism is a mixture ofthreat-awareness regarding development as well as an appreciation of the newopportunities emerging:

yit is going to be a hard negotiation and we are going to have to devise redlines that we will have to insist are not crossed. We are going to have to betough in talking to other departments. Nonetheless, we have to confrontsecurity issues and we have to confront, not least intellectually, the factthat these issues are important for the people that we are supposed to behelping.

In this respect, DFID has no monopoly on development and there is nothingto prevent other departments, after the fashion of the military in Afghanistan,investing in a development function in countries which they regard as strategic.It is a case of, ‘yif DFID does not engage the security agenda developmentallythen others will’. For some, DFID is able to demonstrate that it has much tooffer within these negotiations; it has engaged with the anti-terrorist agendathrough ‘ymaking the ground less fertile for terrorist recruitment not least byreducing poverty and injustice’. The political prioritization of addressing statefailure, reflecting the ICISS’s Responsibility to Protect, also enhances theprospects of developing a more rigorous analysis to present to ministers whenrecommending action or inaction. At the same time, DFID has already brokennew ground as a development agency. In particular, by being ‘yprepared totackle security sector reform’, DFID sees itself as having ‘yshown thatdevelopment is as much about police and military reform as it is abouttraditional development concerns’.

Negotiating the new Security Terrain

By deepening a sense of crisis among NGOs, the war on terrorism has broughtto a head a longer-term shift. That is, from being outside the state during the1960s and 1970s, NGOS have progressively become more tied in with statepolicies and interventions. Once the champions of the ‘grass-roots’ and averseto ‘top down’ development to the point of monotony, some NGOs are findingthemselves ‘ysucked in whether we like it or not’ to the construction oftransitional state entities. In Afghanistan, for example, one NGO observed:‘ywe are tendering for contracts to run a piece of the government. That wouldhave been anathema to a humanitarian organization a while ago’. Coming to

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terms with the new security environment and reappraising relations with donorgovernments, transitional authorities and the armed forces, has acquiredsignificant urgency:

The sector has lost confidence. NGOs are really experiencing a crisis ofidentity about added-value and their specific role and contributions. We arereactive as a sector to push/pull factors from outside, be it military, theprivate sector or donor agendas. Until we get ourselves sorted and reallywork out what we are here to do and why, we stand no chance of resistingthose pressures.

As a framework for integrated action that focuses on the human impact ofconflict, one interviewee saw human security as being threatened not only bythe rise of a hard security agenda but also by the stance of certaindevelopmental agencies themselves. Motivated by what was seen as organiza-tional inflexibility and a fear of diluting humanitarian principles, it wassuggested that some agencies were ceding the ground to a hard security agendaby persisting in ‘ycompartmentalized’ approaches and by refusing to engagepragmatically in discussions about the interconnections between security anddevelopment: ‘ytrying to move away from a recognition of the politicalcomplexities seems to be extremely unhelpful’. While NGOs acknowledge thatthere is a relationship between security and development, they have been keento defend their organizational interests. An observer at a recent meeting on theissue commented that NGOs need to fully discuss the matter among themselvessince ‘yif there is a security and development nexus we need to think muchharder about how we should position ourselves.’Although the close affiliation between NGOs and Western states appears

contrary to the NGO ethos of autonomy and independence, many organiza-tions were either supportive or complicit with the initial stages of increasedgovernment/NGO interconnection during the 1990s. NGOs that now endorsethe ‘new Cold War’ position, for example, themselves encouraged moves forgreater coherence between aid and politics in the past (IDC, 1999). The issuethen was not that aid and politics were incompatible; it was that in many zonesof instability there was a lack of political interest and involvement by donorgovernments (Macrae and Leader, 2000). NGOs, for example, were an activepart of the 1998 Strategic Framework for Afghanistan. This was anexploratory UN programme based on the explicit attempt to integrate aidand politics (Duffield et al., 2002). Certain aspects of the coherence agendahold the promise of better channelling development resources towards povertyalleviation. Yet other initiatives currently pursued under the same banner (e.g.,at the EU level) are likely to see development subsumed under foreign policyobjectives (Woods, 2004). As one consultant put it, ‘ywhile NGOs werecomplicit with the aid and human security agenda of the 1990s, to a large

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extent driven by it, they are having second thoughts about being part of theglobal war on terror.’Many of the NGO staff consulted were concerned that their organizations

were unable to speak out directly on the publicly sensitive legal and politicaldimensions of the war on terror in general, and the occupation of Iraq inparticular. In the run up to the war, many agencies were divided between thosewanting to speak out and others, usually directors and senior managers, urgingcaution and restricting comment to humanitarian issues. The reasons for suchcaution are numerous. Apart from charity laws preventing political campaign-ing, NGOs have, over the past decade or so, been developing closer financial,contractual and programmatic ties with donor governments. Compared tomany European NGOs, British agencies generally describe themselves ashaving an amicable working relationship with government, including thesecondment of staff, and so on. While it has advantages in terms oforganizational positioning, however, self-censorship and proximity to govern-ment can create difficulties for maintaining an independent and campaigning‘non-governmental’ ethos. NGOs in receipt of significant donor funding mayassert their preparedness to ‘ybite the hand that feeds us’ but such incidentsare rare in practice.

Conclusion: The Changing Security Terrain

As a biopolitical technology of governance, the vision of human security thatbegan to hit its stride towards the end of the 1990s involved the securing ofSouthern populations through bringing together the existing practices,institutions and networks of sustainable development. It envisaged a horizontaland coordinated system of cross-border interventions, indeed — a new,multileveled global infrastructure — able to complement, or temporarilyreplace, the efforts of ineffective states. The war on terrorism hasproblematized this particular governmental model of human security. Ratherthan prioritizing the security of people living within ineffective states (a keymanoeuvre in human security) the security of ‘homeland’ populations hasmoved centre-stage. In a radically interdependent world, defending metro-politan livelihood systems and essential infrastructures, in short, its way of life,is premised upon securing the same in the global ‘borderland’. Compared toearlier more universalistic notions of human security, the particular specieslife to be secured is now more narrowly defined in terms of its potentialfor terrorism. This narrowing of objectives, and the loyalty test that itembodies, has deepened a sense of crisis among initially independent NGOs.The new security terrain that has emerged, however, contains winners as wellas losers.

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In stressing the fragility of international borders and the growinginterconnectedness of livelihood systems and economic dependencies acrosshomeland and borderland populations (Blair, 2001), the war on terrorism hasboth sharpened the focus of the development/security complex and, in theinterests of better policing global circulation, created new possibilities forcoordination and centralization. OECD’s DAC, for example, has suggestedthat the new players in the war on terrorism include ‘yfinancial analysts,bankers, arms control and bio-chemical experts, educators, communicationsspecialists, development planners and religious leaders’ (DAC, 2003, 10). Thecollapse within political imagination of the national/international dichotomyalso makes it possible to envisage a further deepening of coherence between aidand politics. In this case, between the ‘home’ functions of government and it’s‘international’ departments. New data sets, the merging of existing ones,together with hybrid means of surveillance and bridging institutional forms,conjures the possibility of being able to act on populations globally. That is, asinterconnected networks of flows and circulatory dynamics linking homelandand borderland regions. New forms of coordination and centralization, forexample, could harmonize measures to better integrate homeland communitiesof immigrant origin with the apparatus of international migration and asylumcontrol, together with developmental initiatives to regenerate ineffective statesand support borderland populations. However, does this prospect of being ableto act upon homeland and borderland populations as a complex, inter-connected whole herald a new vision of human security, or does it signal aglobal biopolitical tyranny?

Notes

1 The research for this article was made possible by an ESRC Grant (RES-223-25-0035) within its

New Security Challenges programme.

2 Noteworthy examples include ‘The Human Security Network’ launched in 1999 at a foreign

ministerial level and involving the governments of Austria, Canada, Chile, Greece, Ireland,

Jordan, Mali, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Slovenia, Thailand and, as an observer

status, South Africa (www.humansecuritynetwork.org/). Also, the UNESCO Forum on Human

Security (www.unesco.org/securipax/) and the Human Security News Association bringing

together freelance journalists and web-builders (www.humansecurity.org.uk).

3 The universities of Harvard, Oxford and Tufts, for example, have established major institutes,

centres or programmes dedicated to human security.

4 For an extensive bibliography see Paris (2001).

5 Key official reports include, Boutros-Ghali, Boutros (1995); UNDP (1994); OECD (1998);

International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS, 2001); Collier et al.

(2003); Commission on Human Security (CHS, 2003). The Canadian-based Centre for Human

Security (www.ligi.uba.ca/) is in the process of producing an annual Human Security Report,

modelled on UNDP’s Human Development Report. The first report was due for publication in

Autumn 2004.

6 www.humansecurity-chs.org/

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7 The authors would like to thank the staff of Action Aid, Christian Aid, Conciliation Resources,

DFID, International Alert, Overseas Development Institute, Oxfam and Save the Children

Fund for their willingness to share their time and thoughts. All interviews were conducted on a

non-attributable basis.

8 In Society Must be Defended (2003, 253–261), Foucault expands this biopolitical analysis of

security to include the emergence of state racism during the nineteenth century and the

subsequent development of Nazism. The later being a paroxysmal expression of biopolitics

involving extreme forms of both disciplinary and regulatory power.

9 Several independent data sets, for example, suggest that, rather than being unusual, internal or

civil wars have formed the majority of all post-WWII conflicts (Mack, 2002, 15–20). Also see,

Monty Marshall, http://members.aol.com/CSPmgm/globcon2.htm.

10 A wide range of labels exists to distinguish between effective and ineffective states. ‘Failing’,

‘weak’ or ‘crisis’ states are usually described in terms of weak institutions and infrastructure,

absent or inadequate public services, non-recognition of human rights and predilections to

conflict (Maass and Mepham, 2004)..

11 Similarly ambitious visions of human security have recently been echoed in the European

context: ‘An effective human security approach requires coordination between intelligence,

foreign policy, trade policy, development policy and security policy initiatives of the [European]

member states, of the [European] Commission and the [European] Council, and of other

multilateral actors, including the United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF and regional

institutions’ (SGESC, 2004, 17).

12 The terms ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ security originate in the work of Joseph Nye (Nye, 2002). According

to Nye, hard power primarily relates to the exercise of assertive politico-military authority. Soft

power, on the other hand works through attraction and is voluntaristic in nature. People follow

because they wish to obtain or emulate what they desire. Human development, with its ideas of

empowerment and partnership, can be understood as soft power. The terms ‘hard’ and ‘soft’

power/security are currently in wide circulation among aid workers.

13 A field-level example of these new cross-departmental arrangements is the Provincial

Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Afghanistan. These began life in December 2002 as an

initiative of the American military. Britain deployed a PRT in Mazar-e-Sharif in Northern

Afghanistan in July 2003. A PRT combines military and civilian personnel. The non-military

staff are provided from the FCO and development expertise from DFID. These teams are

intended to work together ‘yin an interdisciplinary fashion as an expression of civil–military

integration’ (Watkins, 2003, 1).

14 Regarding the latter, owing to the limitations of existing data sets on global conflict, it is

presently difficult to demonstrate variations in the number of people ‘affected by violent

conflict’ together with its many ‘potential sources’. DFID is currently working with Institute of

Strategic Studies, Pretoria, to develop a data set that can quantify these wider human security

elements of conflict.

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