III
In a world where war, terrorism and humanitarian crises
can seem all-pervasive, the Human Security Report offers a
rare message of hope.
Drawing on research from around the world, this far-
ranging study reveals that for more than three decades
positive changes have been quietly taking place.
Over the past 30 years the collapse of some 60 dic-
tatorships has freed countless millions of people from re-
pressive rule. The number of democracies has soared, in-
terstate wars have become increasingly rare, and all wars
have become less deadly.
In the early 1990s the number of civil wars began to
drop as well—a decline that has continued to this day.
And it’s not just wars that are in decline—notwith-
standing Rwanda, Srebrenica and Darfur—the number
of genocides and other mass killings is also dramatically
down worldwide.
The fact that wars have been getting less frequent and
less deadly is good news for the developing world, where
most armed conflicts now take place.
The Human Security Report argues that peace and de-
velopment are two sides of the same coin—that equitable
development helps build security, while war is ‘develop-
ment in reverse’.
F O R E W O R D
Building inclusive democracies and creating more ef-
fective development strategies are both highly effective
long-term security policies. But as the Report shows, the
big decline in warfare in the 1990s is due primarily to the
dramatic UN-led post–Cold War upsurge in peacekeeping,
peacebuilding and conflict prevention. It turns out that co-
operative multilateral security strategies are far more effec-
tive than the UN’s critics allow.
The Human Security Report 2005 tracks and examines
the extraordinary changes in global security that have
taken place since the end of World War II. The data are
revelatory, the analyses are compelling , and the case for a
new approach to secur ing peace is persuasive.
That new approach is ‘human security’.
Human security privileges people over states, reconcil-
iation over revenge, diplomacy over deterrence, and multi-
lateral engagement over coercive unilateralism.
But human security’s aspirations and reality do not
always coincide. Hundreds of millions of people continue
to live in countries wracked by violence and poverty. And
human security policies—from preventive diplomacy to
post-conflict peacebuilding—are frequently underfunded,
lacking in political support and .awed in execution.
The Human Security Report provides the data and anal-
ysis that show how extraordinary progress has been made
despite these limitations.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
June 21, 2005
