By Hallie Jones
The notion or concept of “Human Security” is extremely difficult to define. The term is vague, broad, and often times a serious point of contention amongst its most ardent proponents, according to both Paris and McDonald’s articles. Human Security can include elements such as economic security, food security, health security, environmental security, personal security, community security, and political security (Paris, p. 90). With such an extensive list of priorities, policymakers and academics must contend with the question of how to address all areas of concern without allowing one area preference over another. Indeed, attempts to narrow the concept have resulted in exclusion of, or hierarchical ordering of, specific normative values over others.
Likewise, the notion of human security is so encompassing that it could potentially support all hypothesis and their corresponding null hypothesis. This perplexes scholars who in turn lack the clear focus and direction necessary to construct well developed theoretical debates from the foundational basis of Human Security (Paris, p. 93). Consequently, developing Human Security as a theoretical framework for analysis of the international system seems highly improbable. Rather, Human Security appears to resemble a campaign for normative standards that was constructed to be vague intentionally.
When Human Security is placed in the context of international relations as an organizational apparatus or political tool, it appears to be effective. The ambiguity of the term provides common ground on which middle-power states (Canada, Norway, Switzerland, Chile, etc…) can jointly predicate their foreign policy objectives. These middle-power states can invoke the Human Security “campaign” to assemble coalitions thus allowing them to respond to various international actions and political developments with a unified voice.
Not only does it initiate strength through numbers and cooperation, but it contributes the additional boost of rallying around a “moral” platform thus providing legitimacy to those specific governments, a global appearance of benevolence, and forces the standards to be raised for opponents by coercion and pressuring through public relations, “soft power”. A narrowing of the concept would pose additional barriers to this type of coalition building by reducing or shrinking their available area of common ground, and is therefore seen as counterproductive to accomplishing various Human Security advancements.
Liberalism does, can, and should accommodate the notion of human security within its theoretical framework. According to class discussion, Human Security falls under the rubric of Liberal Cosmopolitanism, which is preoccupied with a normative agenda focused on ethics and morality. According to Liberal Cosmopolitanism, the western developed countries, or the global north, have an obligation to repay to the south third world for years of exploitation of its natural resources.
This line of reasoning holds the notion of mutual reciprocity as a truism, believing that the north supports its living standards through the oppression of the third world and as such should accept a reduction in its quality or standards of living in order to allow the south to catch up. The relationship is inversely proportionate; northern standards of living increase as southern standards of living decrease. (more…)
