THE CONCEPT OF HUMAN SECURITY AND SECURITY STUDIES POLITICS ESSAY

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What role does the concept of human security have to our understanding of security studies? The concept of human security does not challenge the relevance of the state-centric arguments in so far as these concern the protection of the state from external military violence. However, the concept does show that state-centric realism is not a sufficient security argument in that it does not adequately address the security of people within states and therefore does not serve as the dominant understanding.

Feedback:The label human security came into currency in the mid-1990s, the origins of which are found in earlier human-centric arguments which proposed that people ought to be secure in their daily lives. The concept now serves several useful purposes, the most important being to highlight some critical issues, especially intra-state political violence that are not included in the state-centric paradigm. However, so far attempts at conceptually reconciling, or converging, the arguments about the security of the state and people are underdeveloped. From a practical perspective the concept of human security has been received inconsistently; some of the policy community adopts both; some of the policy community rejects it; some of the policy community misuses it to justify policies that have ulterior motives.

In what ways has the purpose of human security been conceptually significant?

Human security has put particular emphasis on the nexus between conflict and development, a concept which is very useful. The significance of the nexus between development and conflict is not just that it raises ethical issues about human suffering and inequalities, but that its frequent outcomes, so called state future, has dire local, regional, and global effects.

From a normative perspective the concept serves to highlight good global norms. Human security often serves as an umbrella norm. Developing good global norms is not only important for moral and ethical reasons but also because they serve to enhance state and international society.