Shastry Njeru
4 September 2008
opinion
The nexus between aid, security and development is now beyond doubt. In fact, security is a precondition for development. The often cited 'no development without security, no security without development' captures this interconnectivity (Dochas 2007). Iraq, despite huge avalanche of aid for reconstruction, is a good example of the importance of security. Sadly, aid has become one of the casualties in the 'war on terror'. It has been rapidly securitised. Self-interest and political motives determine the priorities of aid.
Since the start of the 'war on terror', when United States (US) President Bush claimed that anybody was either a friend or an enemy, aid has become one of the weapons in their arsenal. War on terror has brought back the state as the sole referent in security. International aid as known today originated during the Cold War at a time when the US felt that the whole continent of Europe would be converted into a socialist camp and pumped billions of dollars through the Marshal Plan to jumpstart the war damaged economies. Enter 9/11, the good intentions of aid were set aside for the political priorities and self-interest.
US President George Bush said on 20 September 2001: 'We will direct every resource at our command to the disruption of the global terror network'. Relief became a reward for useful intelligence information. Aid was not only a weapon on the battlefield but also used in diplomatic negotiations with poor countries. In 2003, the US threatened poor UN Security Council members like Angola, Cameroon and Guinea with a reduction of international aid. In the post 9/11 era Africa continued to need security and aid as much as before to overcome its 'tremendous economic, social and political' (Mohiddin 2007) challenges. Yet Africa did not have 'capable and intelligent states' (Kauzya 2007) able to provide much needed security which is a precondition for development and peace. Any form of aid creates an asymmetrical relationship between the donor and the recipients vitiating the spirit and letter of the Paris Declaration. This relationship fosters ineffective aid. In fact, it does harm by feeding into existing conflicts thereby perpetuating conditions of insecurity that hinder meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
SECURITY
Before the Cold War, security was interpreted in militaristic terms as defence of the state involving structured violence manifest in state warfare (Fourie and Schonteich 2004). Security was the ability of the state to defend national interests against both national and external enemies (AFRODAD 2005). This traditional notion of security was concerned with 'security of territory from external aggression, or as protection of national interests in foreign policy...' (UNDP 1994). Because it concentrated on nation-state and attached 'disproportionate attention to security of the state' (Regehr and Whelan 2004), 'legitimate concerns of ordinary people who sought security in their daily lives' (UNDP 1994) were overlooked.
But at the end of the Cold War non military threats became conspicuous confusing and muddling the adversary (Elizabeth 2004). In this regard the concept of deterrence ceased to apply. The Westphalian concepts of the state security and statism were sublimed by globalisation creating what is called 'networked governance', 'new multilateralism', 'decentred governance' or 'polycentrism' (Scholte 2004) outside the realm of the traditional state authority. As the world entered into the 'twilight of sovereignty' (Wriston 1992) or 'beyond sovereignty' (Soroos 1986), the irrelevance of the state as the sole referent in security matters brought to the fore the human person as academics and organisations withdrew from definitions which ignored the individual and other forms of security, which are very vital for peace (AFRODAD 2005).
The 1994 human development report of the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) officially coined the human security concept. It says the intention of human security is '... to capture the post Cold War peace dividend and redirect those resources towards the development agenda' (Axworthy 1999, p. 2). With the hindsight, the global community increasingly focused on the fate of humans in conflict situations: victims, women, children, child soldiers, refugees, epidemics, etc. Human security has become a call on nation states to remember that sovereignty should not be viewed as control, but responsibility to 'protect individuals and provide their welfare' so that they have 'secure existence in life and dignity' (Wallensteen 2007). Despite US's attempt to recapture the concept of security back to the state security after 9/11, for now the vogue definition of security is human security. This definition captures what they may view as legitimate threats to their lives, 'disease, hunger, unemployment, crime, social conflicts, political repression, and environmental hazards' (UNDP 1994). In the extended form, such security includes widening of range of people's choices and ability for people to exercise these choices freely and safely. The UNDP report provides a schema of values of security which are summed up as economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community and political security (UNDP 1994). Any failure to meet these needs may lead to security problems.
SECURITY THREATS
A cursory view of the checklist of the African security items forming the continent's agenda reveals a variety of threats ranging from climate change, HIV and Aids, small arms and criminality, trafficking of human cargo, to civil wars. The threat of external aggression has significantly diminished with the end of the cold war. Even the terrorist threat is well at the bottom of the agenda list save for the countries which stood in the path of international terrorism so to speak or deemed by the US to be breeding ground for terrorists. For the majority of African states the terrorist threat remains a speculative issue, strategically remote and linked to particular grievances and conflicts (Regehr and Whelan 2004). The immediate and attending threats are those affecting the human person-the human security threats.
One of the profound security threats in Africa is climate change. The phenomenon has been viewed as 'driver of human conflict' (Brown, Hammil and Mcleman 2007). Since global warming is a 'threat to international peace and security' (Brown et al 2007) it cannot be ignored. As such climate change has been regarded as the mother of all security problems threatening water, food security and increasing forced migration, triggering conflicts. The enormity of the threat forced the Pentagon to institute scenario studies to consider the abrupt implications of climate change on international security implications. Further, the British government has branded climate change as the greatest threat than international terrorism to the extent that foreign secretary Margaret Beckett made 'climate security' as a central plank to Britain foreign policy.
In spite of the threat of terrorism, the US has conceived climate change as a 'threat multiplier' making existing food insecurity and water scarcity more complex and intractable. Making a presentation at the African Union summit in 2007, the Ugandan President Museveni regarded climate change as 'an act of aggression' by developing world and demanded compensation and Kaire Mbuende resonated the same when he said that the greenhouse emission tantamount 'to low intensity biological and chemical warfare'. Even the UN Security Council has come to accept the threat paused by climate change and agreed that even Darfur crisis was a product of climate change and environmental degradation.
HIV and AIDS are real security threats to Africa (Elizabeth 2004). Hadingham (2000) argues, in terms of the post Cold War human security regime, HIV/Aids poses a 'pervasive and non violent threat to the existence of individuals, as the virus significantly shortens life expectancy'. HIV /Aids has direct and indirect human security implications, 'so immense that they do not constitute one human security issue among many, but rank amongst the gravest human security challenges the twenty first century confronts' (Elbe 2006). The pandemic causes 'at the simplest level premature and unnecessary loss of life' becoming 'perhaps the greatest insecurity of human life'. In numerical terms, the Aids pandemic is amongst the worst to have ever threatened humankind (Elbe 2006). It has become indirect threat to human security affecting the economic security, food security, personal security, political security, political security and healthy security (Elbe 2006). Using the threats posed by the global Aids pandemic as a case study, the analytical breadth of the human security concept 'emerges not so much as a liability, but on the contrary, as a distinctive asset over the narrower conception of national security' (Elbe 2006).
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