Ariel Ulrich, Blog Post #1

Human Security

    Security is often thought of as the power of a state to protect its borders, maintain independent control of its territory within those borders, have economic wealth, and military prowess. Something that is often forgotten in this definition is the importance of the preservation of vital interests of those the state is supposed to serve and be protecting. Over the past thirty or so years, a subsection of security has been coined, known as human security. This version of security is founded on the idea that it is most important to firstly, protect humanity from constant and persistent threats such as hunger, disease, and repression; and secondly, provide safety from dangers to the patterns of everyday life in homes and communities. This kind of thinking focuses on the well-being of the individual and not the state. Human security is vital to the preservation of life and should be the highest priority of every state, as without, who is left to govern? 

It seems pretty simple that everyone should have the basic human needs such as food that is both accessible and of good quality, water that is drinkable and usable, a job that allows a person to live their life with dignity, access to health resources, access to a quality education, and a safe environment in which to inhabit. And yet, humans across the globe face hardships that prevent access to what they need. Droughts, floods, conflict, disease, hunger, climate change, terrorism, pollution, poverty, and these are only some of the adversities. When facing and combating these challenges or human security as a whole is placed on a back burner, it spawns human insecurity. Human insecurity causes vulnerabilities in people as they are forced to migrate or change their lives in hopes of a better tomorrow, and this allows for these people to get taken advantage of. They become stuck in lives riddled with crime and choices that have no good outcome. There is a symbiotic relationship between underdevelopment and conflict. It is well known that conflict prevents development and growth, but it also works the other way round, that underdevelopment provokes violence and struggles. In Utopia, a book by Thomas More, it states “For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.” This shows just how much human security matters. If a state ignores the basic needs of its citizens then it is creating a nation-state that will fail. 

Now human security as an ideal is not without its flaws. Its definition implies that those states that are classified as weak or failing or underdeveloped, which is how areas of Africa, Asia, and The Middle East are often viewed, are threats to global security as a whole. It has been argued that rather than working in cooperation with one another, as suggested by J. Ann Tickner and other theorists, the West uses this as an excuse to allow its constant intervention and prevention of the states to govern themselves, thus forcing a form of colonialism. It is true that human security should not stop at borders, it is important to respect the autonomy of a state. 

Human security is essential to the safety and well being of mankind. If we are to continue on here on this planet and within a prospering community it is important to focus on the issues that threaten human security. We must find ways to better work together as members of mankind because these are global issues that don’t stop at borders and they will bring about our downfalls if we do not make human security our biggest priority. 

References

Dexter, H. (2013, March 19). PL7505 Brief Intro to Human Security. YouTube. Retrieved February 3, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5kH5VHCR4s

Lewis, G., & TEDxKish. (2015, June 11). Human Security. YouTube. Retrieved February 3, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWdg35jvNLA

More, T. (1984). Utopia (P. Turner, Ed.; P. Turner, Trans.). Penguin Books. 

Tickner, J. A. (1988). Hans Morgenthau's Principles of Political Realism: A Feminist Reformulation. Millennium Journal of International Studies, Vol. 17(No. 3), 429-440. 0305-8298