Question

Analyse the non-traditional notion of security as a notion of human security.

Hint:

To capture the core of Human Security, remember that it shifts the target of protection from borders to bodies. It focuses on two core ideas: Freedom from Fear (protecting against violence) and Freedom from Want (protecting against poverty and disease). Mnemonic: F-F.

Answer 1

Step 1: Shifting the Paradigm from State Security to Human Security:
The traditional notion of security focuses primarily on state sovereignty, territorial integrity, and military defense against foreign invasion. The referent object of security in this classical view is the sovereign state. In contrast, the non-traditional notion of security shifts the focus directly to the protection of individual human beings. This perspective, known as human security, asserts that the ultimate purpose of national security is to safeguard citizens, not just physical borders. It recognizes that states themselves can sometimes pose a threat to their own people through tyranny, genocide, or developmental neglect.

Step 2: Core Conceptions --- "Freedom from Fear" versus "Freedom from Want":
Human security is conceptually broad and is broadly divided into two main schools of thought:
• Freedom from Fear (Narrow Definition): This focuses on protecting individuals from direct physical violence, militarized threats, state-sponsored terror, and armed conflict. It advocates for international intervention (responsibility to protect) during humanitarian crises like genocides or civil wars.
• Freedom from Want (Broad Definition): This expands security to encompass protection against structural violence, including hunger, poverty, disease, environmental disasters, and developmental neglect. It argues that a person cannot be secure if they are starving, lacks access to clean water, or is dying from preventable diseases.

Step 3: Key Threat 1 --- Global Poverty and Economic Inequality:
Human security identifies global economic imbalances as a primary threat to survival:
• Persistent poverty leads to malnutrition, high infant mortality, and low life expectancy in the Global South.
• Population growth in developing countries, combined with resource depletion and a lack of economic opportunities, drives political instability, crime, and civil unrest. This directly undermines local and international peace.

Step 4: Key Threat 2 --- Epidemics, Pandemics, and Health Security:
Global health crises demonstrate that traditional military defenses are ineffective against micro-biological threats:
• Highly infectious diseases (such as HIV/AIDS, Ebola, SARS, and COVID-19) travel across international borders regardless of a country's military strength.
• Pandemics disrupt global supply chains, cripple national healthcare systems, and cause severe economic recessions, proving that health security is a core pillar of human security.

Step 5: Key Threat 3 --- Environmental Degradation and Climate Change:
The health of the global biosphere is directly linked to human survival:
• Anthropogenic climate change causes global warming, rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and desertification.
• These ecological changes threaten food security, submerge low-lying coastal areas, and create millions of "environmental refugees." This resource scarcity can trigger "water wars" and land conflicts between communities.

Step 6: Key Threat 4 --- Human Rights Violations and Forced Migration:
State-led violence and civil wars drive humanitarian crises:
• Internal displacement and cross-border refugee movements (such as the Syrian refugee crisis or the Rohingya crisis) place immense political and economic pressure on neighboring host nations.
• Human security calls for international, cooperative efforts to manage migration, protect basic human rights, and eliminate human trafficking and modern slavery.