Business Daily (Nairobi)
Sam Makinda
3 July 2009
opinion
Two readers of this column recently wondered why I have not written on human security and urged me to explain the extent to which African states and the African Union have implemented the human security agenda.
This is my response to them, but I should add that I do not generally use the term human security in my academic analysis.
This is because for the past 30 years, I have argued that all security ought to be people-centred.
As we insist on the democratisation of every public space, it follows that public policies, including military and security policies, are expected to reflect the needs, aspirations, values and interests of the people.
It was the United Nations Development Programme that introduced the concept of human security in public discussions in 1994.
In its Human Development Report of that year, the UNDP said: "For most people today, a feeling of insecurity arises more from worries about daily life than from the dread of a cataclysmic event".
The UNDP went on: "Job security, income security, health security, environmental security, security from crime, these are the emerging concerns of human security all over the world".
Human security was redefined nine years later by the Commission on Human Security, which was chaired jointly by a former UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, and a Nobel laureate in economics, Professor Amartya Sen of Cambridge University.
In their report, Human Security Now, which was presented to the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, in 2003, they claimed that human security was the protection of "the vital core of all human lives in ways that enhance human freedoms and human fulfilment."
Military threatsThe Commission on Human Security also said human security "means creating political, social, environmental, economic, military and cultural systems that together give people the building blocks of survival, livelihood and dignity."
What these reports call human security is what I consider to be the essence of all security. I have always argued that all security should be concerned with the protection of the people as well as the preservation of their norms, rules, interests, institutions, values and resources, in the face of military and non-military threats.
If there is any security that does not take into account the people's needs, aspirations, and interests, it should be considered illegitimate and misguided. If all security is people-centred, we do not need the label "human" to qualify it.
Nonetheless, many academics, journalists and policy makers use the term human security.
The Commission on Human Security pointed out that "the founding documents of the African Union, the New Partnership for Africa's Development, and the Conference on Security, Stability, Development and Co-operation in Africa" suggested that Africa was keen to pursue human security.
Moreover, there is a network of several African non-governmental research organisations that calls itself the African Human Security Initiative and has been funded by the UK Department for International Development.
This network aims to measure the performance of African governments in promoting human security.
If we were to use the definitions of human security provided by the UNDP and the Commission on Human Security, we could conclude that many African states and the AU are yet to implement sustainable human security programmes.
Makinda is a Professor of terrorism and counter-terrorism studies, Murdoch University, Australia.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2009 Business Daily. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
