Human Security in C21st Theo Farrell, CSI Lecture 9, 2011

Course re-cap  Security studies after the Cold War  Humanitarian intervention: why, when and how  Global terrorism: the bad guys  America unipolarity and rising China  Nuclear proliferation: Iran and Indo-Pak  The Iraq Wars: American RMA  COIN and Afghanistan: tough going

The Golden 80s

Whose security?  Referent object?  Rise of the state  Buzan (neorealist): states  Booth (critical theorist): people

Booth: states and security  Too unreliable  Illogical  Too diverse

Biggest killers: the 2 Ps  Extreme poverty  Preventable disease

Key stats  World pop = 8 billion by 2025  3 billion live on $2 per day or less  850 m under-nourished  14 m die from hunger each year  HIV/AIDS: 40 m – approx 3 m deaths  Malaria: 225 m per year – 800,000 deaths

Human security is a child who did not die, a disease that did not spread, a job that was not cut, an ethnic tension that did not explode in violence, a dissident who was not silenced. Human security is not a concern with weapons – it is a concern with human life and dignity. UNDP Human Development Report 1994

Paradigm shift

For most people today, a feeling of insecurity arises more from worries about daily life than from the dread of a cataclysmic world event. UNDP Human Development Report 2007

Characteristics of Human Security 1. Universal concern 2. Interdependent issues 3. Early action 4. People-centric UNDP Human Development Report 1994

Major threats to Human Security 1. Population growth 2. Economic disparities 3. Migration pressures 4. Environmental degradation 5. Drug trafficking 6. International terrorism UNDP Human Development Report 1994

Human security means protecting fundamental freedoms — freedoms that are the essence of life...It means protecting people from critical (severe) and pervasive (widespread) threats and situations…It means creating political, social, environmental, economic, military and cultural systems that together give people the building blocks of survival, livelihood and dignity. Commission on Human Security, 2003

Millennium Development Goals, Extreme poverty: halve 2. Primary education: universal 3. Gender equality: in education 4. Child Mortality: reduce by 2/3 5. Maternal morbidity: reduce by ¾ 6. HIV/AIDS, Malaria: reverse spread 7. Environmental sustainability: improve slums for 100 m 8. Global partnership for development: focus on poorest states

The conflict trap  Average interstate war = 6 months  Average civil war = 6 years  Experience of civil war doubles risk of another conflict  Civil war reduces economic growth by 2.3% per year  Civil war = mass population movements and collapse of public health systems

Conflict-poverty trap

War and poverty 1. Low-income and civil war: halve income = double risk of war 2. Slow growth: weak economy = weak state 3. Dependency on primary commodity exports: diamonds, oil, etc

“A flagrant grievance is to a rebel movement what an image is to a business.” Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion (2007)

Collier’s 4 instruments 1. Aid 2. Military intervention 3. Laws 4. Trade

“Useful idiots”

Problems with trade barriers  Discourage competition and retard growth  Key source of corruption  Foreign currency: more aid = less exports  Bottom-billion need to diversity exports into labor-using manufacturing and services  Need temporary protection from Asia

Human security is normatively attractive, but analytically weak. Dr. Edward Newman

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

Applying the human security approach

GS Afghanistan case 2009 ‘Serious and individual threat’ to a person arising from a situation of armed conflict. EC Qualification Directive, Article 15 (c)

Tests for asylum from conflict 1. Conflict severity 2. Individual risk to applicant

Tests for conflict severity 1. Battle deaths: 1,000 mark 2. Civilian casualties: data reliability and indirect? 3. Population displacement 4. State failure: essential services

Conflict severity DRC, 2000 Chad, 2000 Somalia, 2007 Sudan, 2007 Afghan, 2008 Total killed36, ,7183,378 Displaced317 k54 k k k3.1 m Child mortality 17.9%20.5%14.2%10.9%20% Child under- weight 31.1%28.1%35.6%31%45%

AIT ruling in GS case, 2009 “The food supply problem cannot be shown to be connected otherwise than very remotely to indiscriminate violence.” Mass displacement and state failure “may provide reinforcing evidence when looking at the severity of an armed conflict [but] they are not necessarily independent tests of conflict severity.”

Fighting for Human Security?