VIII

Human security is a relatively new concept, now

widely used to describe the complex of interrelated

threats associated with civil war, genocide and the

displacement of populations.

Human security and national security should be—

and often are—mutually reinforcing. But secure states

do not automatically mean secure peoples. Protecting

citizens from foreign attack may be a necessary condi-

tion for the security of individuals, but it is certainly

not a sufficient one. Indeed, during the last 100 years

far more people have been killed by their own govern-

ments than by foreign armies.

A new approach to security is needed because the

analytic frameworks that have traditionally explained

wars between states—and prescribed policies to pre-

vent them—are largely irrelevant to violent conflicts

within states. The latter now make up more than 95%

of armed conflicts.

All proponents of human security agree that its

primary goal is the protection of individuals. However,

consensus breaks down over precisely what threats

individuals should be protected from. Proponents of

the ‘narrow’ concept of human security focus on vio-

lent threats to individuals or, as UN Secretary-General

Kofi Annan puts it, ‘the protection of communities and

individuals from internal violence’.

Proponents of the ‘broad’ concept of human se-

curity argue that the threat agenda should include

hunger, disease and natural disasters because these

kill far more people than war, genocide and terrorism

combined. Human security policy, they argue, should

seek to protect people from these threats as well as

from violence. In its broadest formulations the human

security agenda also encompasses economic insecu-

rity and ‘threats to human dignity’.

The broader view of human security has many

adherents—and it is easy to see why. Few would dis-

pute the desirability of protecting people from malnu-

trition, disease and natural disasters as well as from

violence. Moreover there is considerable evidence to

suggest that all of these societal threats are interre-

lated in the mostly poor countries in which they are

concentrated.

While still subject to lively debate, the two ap-

proaches to human security are complementary rath-

er than contradictory.

For both pragmatic and methodological reasons,

however, the Human Security Report uses the narrow

concept.

The pragmatic rationale is simple. There are al-

ready several annual reports that describe and anal-

yse trends in global poverty, disease, malnutrition and

ecological devastation: the threats embraced by the

broad concept of human security. There would be little

point in duplicating the data and analysis that such

reports provide. But no annual publication maps the

trends in the incidence, severity, causes and conse-

quences of global violence as comprehensively as the

Human Security Report.

The methodological rationale is also simple.

A concept that lumps together threats as diverse

as genocide and affronts to personal dignity may

be useful for advocacy, but it has limited utility for

policy analysis. It is no accident that the broad con-

ception of human security articulated by the U N

Development Programme in its much-cited 1994

Human Development Report has rarely been used to

guide research programs.

Scholarly debate is a normal part of the evolution

of new concepts, but it is of little interest to policy-

makers. The policy community is, however, increas-

ingly using the concept of human security because it

speaks to the interrelatedness of security, develop-

ment and the protection of civilians.

WHAT IS HUMAN SECURITY.

The traditional goal of ‘national security’ has been the defence of the state from external threats.

The focus of human security, by contrast, is the protection of individiuals.