Human Security: Threats, Prevention, and Global Responsibility

Posted on Jan 26, 2025 in Philosophy and ethics

Human Security

  • Human security is the combination of threats associated with war, genocide, and the displacement of populations. At a minimum, human security means freedom from violence and from the fear of violence.
  • Measuring human security
    • What variables to include?
      • Go to the Human Development Report, Freedom House
      • Pick four variables
      • Then choose five countries to compare
    • Considering relationships
      • Human insecurity (political violence) -> Human insecurity (underdevelopment)

Crisis Prevention of Human Insecurity

  • Culture of reaction vs. a culture of prevention.
  • Need to prevent human insecurity rather than react to violations of human security.
  • In order to prevent political violence, we need to focus on underdevelopment (attack the issue at the roots).

Weak and Failed States

  • Fail to provide the basic security that states are supposed to offer their citizens, i.e., they fail to offer a respite from the “state of nature” – little protection from crime, little opportunity for education, little economic opportunity, or access to healthcare.
  • Weak states may burden their neighbors with refugees.
  • May provide safe havens for terrorists, TCOs, international fugitives, etc.
  • Sudan and Afghanistan both hosted Osama bin Laden.
  • Change in the state systems.
  • Important security implications.
  • Weak states are primarily concerned with internal threats.
  • More fighting occurs in weak states.
    • Most intrastate conflict.
  • Problematic for the following reasons:
    1. Fail to provide basic security for their citizens.
      1. Little protection against crime.
      2. Little opportunity for education.
      3. Little economic opportunity.
      4. Little access to healthcare.
    2. Burden their neighbors with refugees.
    3. Safe havens for terrorists, TCOs, international fugitives.
    4. Bigger threat now than other strong states.
    5. Territory of chaos.
    6. Examples: Somalia, Sudan, and Afghanistan.

Rise of Intrastate Conflict

  • Intrastate conflict: internal conflicts fought between a government and a non-state group.
  • Intrastate conflicts have been the most prevalent form of armed conflict in the period 1950 to 2005, but they account for a relatively small share of total battle deaths in this period. Again, this is not surprising. Absent external military support, and often fought with small arms and light weapons and relatively few troops, these conflicts—particularly in recent years—have had relatively low fatality rates.
  • War is increasingly waged between rebels and states and not by one state against another state.
  • Intrastate conflicts are also the face of poverty. Nearly 73% of the roughly one billion people in the poorest countries have either lived or are living in a civil war.
  • These conflicts are usually based on identity politics and the fragmentation of the state.
  • Conflicts are usually caused by underlying and proximate causes. Underlying factors include weak states, widespread economic problems, and problematic group histories. Proximate factors include bad domestic problems, bad neighborhoods, bad neighbors, and bad leaders.

Islamic State/ISIS/ISIL

  • Who has capability: ISIS?
    • Social media.
    • Defensive weapons (Paris, Brussels).
    • Offensive capability (tool of terror, U.S. and the West).

Evolution of Sovereignty

  • Cause and consequence of intrastate conflict.
  • “The new identity politics arises out of the disintegration or erosion of modern state structures, especially in centralized, authoritarian states.”
  • Governments have lost what was often almost exclusive control of weaponry, capital, and information.

Responsibility to Protect (R2P)

  • The Responsibility to Protect (R2P or RtoP) is a global political commitment that was endorsed by all member states of the United Nations at the 2005 World Summit to prevent genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity.
  • 2000: Canada established an international commission.
    • The commission released a document that argued that an international consensus was developing around the idea that there is a positive duty for the international community to protect civilians “suffering serious harm as a result of internal war, insurgency, repression, or state failure” if the government of the state in question is either responsible for the suffering or incapable of addressing it.
  • 2005: World Summit Outcome Document included R2P.
  • Not a part of international law, but is regarded by many as an emerging norm.