Dyson College of Arts and Sciences
Issue link: http://dysoncollege.uberflip.com/i/128987
as disasters, economic instability, and epidemics. This alternative doctrine was first expressed in the United Nations Development Programme's 1994 Human Development Report, which is worth quoting at length: The concept of security has for too long been interpreted narrowly: as security of territory from external aggression, or as protection of national interests…. It has been related more to nation-states than to people. … Forgotten were the legitimate concerns of ordinary people who sought security in their daily lives. … Will they and their families have enough to eat? Will they lose their jobs? Will their streets and neighborhoods be safe from crime? Will they be tortured by a repressive state? Will they become a victim of violence because of their gender? Will their religion or ethnic origin target them for persecution? Instead, UNDP described an alternative. First, their new notion of security would be universal. Systems and institutions of security would be designed to be "relevant to people everywhere, in rich nations and poor." Second, rather than hardening and militarizing social divisions, Human Security would recognize the interdependence of peoples and the global interconnectedness nature of threats. Human Security would be founded upon efforts to build and maintain a cosmopolitan social contract, a sense of shared risk, responsibility, and solidarity across social divisions. Third, security and risk management could not simply be reactive; "Human security is easier to ensure through early prevention." This would require recognition of the embodied and socially embedded nature of security—considering whether crises occur because of social dysfunction. Fourth, Human Security would be people-centered, rooted in the diversity of human experience. This would require institutions and analysts to make an extra effort to listen to those most vulnerable and least often heard, including ethnic minorities, women, children, the homeless, and persons with disabilities or chronic disease. This implied an interdisciplinary openness to all the dimensions of how humans experience instability: social, psychological, economic, political, even philosophical, existential, and spiritual. For when we ask "why bad things happen," this is a question of the human condition, not just of policing or damage to the bottom line. In this sense, resilience could be seen in part as a kind Durkheimian effort at meaningmaking, at working out social trauma through reconciliation, contemplation, normbuilding, rehabilitation, and renewal. This could involve artists, clergy, intellectuals, and journalists as much as police and military institutions. While it has faced the criticism of being vague and difficult to operationalize, since the UNDP report, a variety of scholars, policymakers, and institutions have tried to flesh out, systematize, and institutionalize Human Security, applying it to a wide variety of contexts. In reflecting on this burgeoning field of analysis and practice, the late US Army colonel Shannon Beebe and Mary Kaldor of the London School of Economics outlined six key ways in which Human Security differed from and offered a useful alternative to traditional conceptions of security: • The primacy of human rights • A focus on building legitimate political authority • The importance of effective multilateral action • The focus on a "Bottom-up Approach," rather than imposing solutions from afar • Maintaining a regional focus, instead of a myopic fixation with one country • Ensuring clear civilian, rather than military, command 29