Human Security in South Asia

Concept, Environment and Development

Adluri Subramanyam Raju

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367355128
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000651560
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Development Economics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book delves into the theory and praxis of human security in South Asia. Home to almost a quarter of the world's population and fast emerging markets, South Asia holds social, geopolitical and economic significance in the current global context.

The chapters in the volume:

• examine the challenges to human security through an exploration of environmental issues including water availability, electric waste, environmental governance and climate change;
• explore key themes such as development, displacement and migration, the role of civil society, sustainable development and poverty; and
• discuss developmental issues in South Asia and provide a holistic picture of non-military security issues.

Bringing together scholars from varied disciplines, this comprehensive volume will be useful for researchers, teachers and students of international relations, human rights, political science, development studies, human geography and demography, defense and strategic studies, migration and diaspora studies, and South Asian studies.

Part I

Human security in South Asia

Conceptual issues

1
Human security

A conceptual framework

Adluri Subramanyam Raju

Introduction

Human security: a conceptual understanding

Human security is concerned with people, and hence, there is a pressing need to focus on the humanistic aspect of the security debate. According to Haq,

the defining difference between the economic growth and the human development schools is that the first focuses exclusively on the expansion of only one choice – income – while the second embraces the enlargement of all human choices – whether economic, social, cultural, or political.¹

The concept of security is extended from the military to the political, the economic, the environment or human security. In other words, human security does not mean that issues related to the military can be ignored. They are equally important in protecting people from violence and restoring democracy. For instance, the state has to protect its people from terrorist activities. The fight against terrorism will reinforce a focus on state security and defence of borders, and thus, one cannot ignore military preparedness against non-state belligerents. The state is expected to maintain the security of its borders as well as the security of the individuals. It is the state’s obligation, apart from protecting people from external conflicts, to ensure that its people enjoy their rights and live with a sense of dignity without any fear. The state has to re-orient its policies to address the problems of human beings. Thus, the absence of a bipolar world order and the quest for a new international system initiated a debate on an alternative approach to security, that is, comprehensive security, combining traditional and non-traditional dimensions. Human and state security should be treated on par since both are equally important. Both are interlinked and cannot be separated.

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Canadian approaches to human security

In the past seven decades, the scholars and policy-making community in South Asia constructed and debated the issue of security from a military point of view. South Asian states have focused more on defence related issues than on human-related issues. As a result, majority of people are not able to afford to have food resulting in hunger and starvation, in access to clean water, primary health care, deprivation of basic needs, increasing poverty, unemployment, violation of human rights by the individuals, organizations and state. The governments of respective states in South Asia are concerned less with these issues, and they are unable to address them adequately.

Human security is a vast and complicated concept. One of the greatest tasks that researchers and policy makers often have is trying to define the concept. This is primarily because “human security is not a coherent concept or school of thought. Rather, there are different, and sometimes competing, conceptions of human security that may reflect different sociological/ cultural and geostrategic orientations”.² It must be remembered that human security has been defined by scholars trying to give it more shape and conceptual meaning instead of a vast all-encompassing concept as otherwise portrayed, hence argued to be meaningless.³ Largely, however, we may come to accept two leading inclinations towards the definition of human security.

The UNDP Human Development Report, 1993, indicated for the first time in an official document that the individual must be placed at the centre of international affairs. The report expressly states that “the concept of security must change from and exclusive emphasis on national security to a much greater stress on people’s security, from security through armaments to security from human development, from territorial security to food, employment and environmental security”.⁴

In the 1994 UNDP Report, human security is referred to as

first safety from such chronic threats as hunger, disease and repression. And second, it means protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the patterns of daily life – whether in homes, in jobs or in communities. Such threats can exist at all levels of national income and development.⁵

Furthermore, it maintains that

The world can never be at peace unless people have security in their daily lives. Future conflicts may often be within nations rather than between them-with their origins buried deep in growing socio-economic deprivation and disparities. The search for security in such a milieu lies in development, not in arms.⁶

According to the UNDP,

Human security is a universal concern. It is relevant to people everywhere, in rich nations and poor… . The components of human security as interdependent. When the security of people is endangered anywhere in the world, all nations are likely to get involved… . Human security is easier to ensure through early prevention than later intervention … is people-centered … concerned with how people live and breathe in a society, how freely they exercise their many choices, how much access they have to market and social opportunities – and whether they live in conflict or in peace.⁷

The core concept of human security strives to ensure for the individual “safety from chronic threats as hunger, disease and repression. And second, it means protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the patterns of daily life – whether in homes, in jobs or in communities”.⁸

In 2005 Kofi Annan stated that the UN’s three key goals were security, development and human rights. He structured this report around three pillars of an emerging human security concept: freedom from want (a shared vision of development), freedom from fear (a vision of collective security) and freedom to live in dignity (under the rule of law, human rights and democracy).⁹

The Canadian approach was, however, a bit different and was summed by then Canadian foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy as “[h]uman security includes security against economic privation, an acceptable quality of life, and a guarantee of fundamental human rights”.¹⁰ And while the UNDP focused on freedom from want, freedom from fear and freedom to live in dignity, the Canadian model highlighted primarily the freedom from fear.¹¹

It can be noted that both these approaches are, however, emancipatory in nature. However, fundamentally, in the UNDP approach,

global society itself must be restructured to bring about a condition in which both direct and indirect threats will disappear. That restructuring should basically be a developmental one. Thus, the UNDP urges that a new human development paradigm must be evolved with an accent on equity, sustainability, and participation.¹²

For this “global governance should be democratized, with the developing world better represented in international institutions”.¹³

The Canadian approach, however, “cautions that human security is not directly translatable into policy imperatives. It is more “a shift in perspective or orientation … an alternative way of seeing the world”.¹⁴ Canada’s real concern is over the policy implications of the almost revolutionary agenda offered by the UNDP: “The very breadth of the UNDP approach … made it unwieldy as a policy instrument”¹⁵ and emphasizes on “improving democratic governance” and “strengthening the capacity of international organizations”.¹⁶

In this light, one may go on to understand poverty as a threat to human security, in both the Canadian and the UNDP approach. This is because poverty not only reduces the possibilities of individuals’ access to security in other components that encompass human security, it also removes those choices from them. Hence, poverty-stricken people would not only live with want; they would also live with fear and in all probability live without dignity. The UNDP approach calls for an overhaul of how global governance is undertaken and emphasizing on the cooperation of countries to ensure that citizens are able to live with security.

The Canadian approach says that “poverty and insecurity … are interlinked in a vicious cycle” and “[b]reaking the cycle requires measures to promote human development, through access to reliable employment, education and social services”.¹⁷ Human development and human security are “mutually reinforcing” and “development assistance” can complement “political, legal, and military initiatives in enhancing human security”.¹⁸

Caroline Thomas¹⁹ looks into the role of how global governance and economic policies have not helped in removing the human insecurity even with the hope of the ‘peace dividend’ and questions the interests that govern global governance institutions and results that they have yielded. It might be said that she clearly agrees in the requiring of an overhaul of global governance and insists on ‘redistribution’²⁰ as the strategy that should be at their core. That being the case, it might be said that poverty and governance as closely interlinked in an inversely proportional way. Good governance leading to less poverty, if governance is influenced by similar economic policies that look at redistribution of wealth from the north to the south.

Understanding the differences between Canadian and UNDP approaches, Bajpai proposes a definition for human security so as to assist in further research and global policy analysis and creation. His proposed definition is

Human security relates to the protection of the individual’s personal safety and freedom from direct and indirect threats of violence. The promotion of human development and good governance, and, when necessary, the collective use of sanctions and force are central to managing human security. States, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and other groups in civil society in combination are vital to the prospects of human security.²¹

He further goes on to suggest the creation of a Human Security Audit to create the Human Security Index.²² He also elaborates on what it should have and how it may be used. Besides him, there are other scholars who suggest a mechanism to measure human security.

Gary King and Christopher J. L. Murray developed a formulation to calculate human security and proposed several concepts that would assist in this task. Their basic premise started from the understanding of security as being based on the risk of severe deprivation and depending on the concept of poverty.²³ Understanding that poverty was being influenced by more than just income, they were also able to suggest the concept of generalized poverty. “Building on the concept of generalized poverty and the forward looking nature of our (their) conception of security”²⁴ was then used to define Years of Individual Human Security as the expected number of years of life spent outside the state of generalized poverty.²⁵ They also went on to develop methods to measure the Population Human Security and Domain-Specific measures.

Kofi Annan describes human security as follows:

Human Security in its broadest sense embraces far more than the absence of violent conflict. It encompasses human rights, good governance, access to education and health care and ensuring that each individual has opportunities and choices to fulfil his or her own potential. Every step in this direction is also a step towards reducing poverty, achieving economic growth and preventing conflict. Freedom from want, freedom from fear and the freedom of future generations to inherit a healthy natural environment-these are the interrelated building blocks of human and therefore national security.²⁶

Amartya Sen and Sadako Ogare define it as follows:

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 using processes that build on people’s strengths and aspirations. It means creating political, social, environmental, economic, military, and cultural systems that together give people the building blocks of survival, livelihood, and dignity.

The vital core of life is a set of elementary rights and freedoms people enjoy. What people consider to be ‘vital’ – what they consider to be ‘of the essence of life’ and ‘crucially important’ – varies across individuals and societies. That is why any concept of human security must be dynamic. And that is why we refrain from proposing an itemized list of what makes up human rights.²⁷

According to Tadjbakhsh,

to be secure in this sense entails, to be free from both fear (of physical, sexual or psychological abuse, violence, persecution, or death) and from want (of gainful employment, food, and health). Human security therefore deals with the capacity to identify threats, to avoid them when possible, and to mitigate their effects when they do occur. It means helping victims cope with the consequences of the widespread insecurity resulting from armed conflict, human rights violations and massive underdevelopment. This broadened use of the word “securi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Human security in South Asia: conceptual issues
• Part II Environmental issues and human security
• Part III State, development and displacement in South Asia