Until recently, most scholars thought of security as the military protection of state interests. From this perspective, the greatest threat to states was foreign attack. Today, the security problem is viewed much more broadly. The new security agenda also includes human security, or protection against threats to the vital aspects of human lives. It encompasses threats arising from poverty, crime, civil conflicts, the flow of people across state borders, and globalized diseases.
1. The idea of human security
a) Realists remain focused on traditional military threats, while liberals have long recognized that problems like famine and disease cost more lives than do wars. Constructivists see human security as an evolving and strengthening norm in global politics.
b) Human security still receives less funding than military security. The major states remain reluctant to devote substantial resources to this cause.
c) Many UN agencies are actively involved in the pursuit of human security.
2. Poverty and economic development
Poverty poses one of the greatest threats to human security.
a) Global dimensions of poverty
- The picture of poverty in the Global South is complicated. By some estimates, the number of the world’s poor is declining, economic development in only one country—China—masks growing poverty elsewhere.
- Income alone may be an insufficient measure of poverty. It can be useful to incorporate measures of longevity, standard of living, and knowledge.
b) International institutions and global poverty
- How poverty is measured has a significant impact on global efforts to combat poverty.
- Institutions like the UN, the IMF, and the World Bank are actively involved in efforts to measure and develop solutions to poverty.
c) Debt Relief
- Many LDCs have accumulated mountains of debt that they cannot repay without perpetuating their impoverishment.
- The Debt Initiative for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries has helped several indebted countries to defeat poverty at home, although overall progress has been slow.
d) Foreign aid and foreign investment
- The US ranks poorly in terms of foreign aid to LDCs.
- The “Monterrey Consensus” identified key steps to promote economic development, such as building good government and fighting corruption.
- TNCs also have a role to play, as much needed investment must come from private sources.
e) Access to Markets
A key goal of developing countries is access to rich countries’ markets, especially for agricultural commodities that have been excluded because the EU and the US subsidize their own farmers.
3. Transnational crime
Transnational crime has grown and become more lucrative as globalization has spread.
a) Drug Trafficking
- The global drug trade is one of the world’s largest criminal activities. It is difficult to control because production can move even as some sources are eliminated and it is easy to corrupt poorly paid local officials across the developing world.
- In countries like Afghanistan, Colombia, and Peru poppies and coca are far more profitable for local farmers to produce.
- One of the biggest dangers associated with the drug trade is its linkage to terrorism.
b) Responses to drug trafficking
Because of the transnational nature of the drug trade, international cooperation is needed to slow the flow of drugs.
c) Money laundering
Money laundering is another criminal activity, essential to conducting other transnational crimes, that is facilitated by globalization.
4. The arms trade
The global arms trade has been growing since the end of the Cold War. Money spent on arms is unavailable for other social and economic needs.
a) The global arms trade
- A significant proportion of spending on arms involves the sale and purchase of weapons. Sales of conventional arms support a country’s exports and its domestic defense industries.
- The arms trade also fuels conflicts around the world.
b) The black market in weapons of mass destruction
A remarkable transnational network run by a Pakistani scientist named A. Q. Khan has provided vital information and technology to countries seeking WMD. The exposure of this network revealed a veritable nuclear black market and triggered several anti-proliferation actions by the UN and the US.
c) Responses to the global arms trade
- The global community has focused more on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction than on the illicit movement of small conventional arms which fuels so much conflict in the developing world.
- NGOs have actively lobbied to regulate the small arms trade.
5. Refugees and migrants
The UN office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is the international body responsible for providing humanitarian assistance to refugee populations around the world.
a) Refugees
- There are numerous global treaties to protect the status of refugees.
- Between 1984 and 2004 the number of refugees almost doubled, placing a great strain on the system and causing “asylum fatigue” in many states.
- Many refugees are Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) who do not receive the same protections as international refugees.
b) Illegal migration
- Illegal immigrants often leave their home country for economic reasons. Countries are under no legal obligation to grant asylum to these migrants.
- Illegal immigrants often take low-paying jobs and remit a significant portion of their earnings to their families back home.
c) Immigration and demography
Many developed countries are experiencing an aging of their populations. Immigration is the only solution to the negative consequences of this trend.
6. Globalized diseases
Globalized diseases are not new. Plague epidemics spread from Asia to Europe in the fourteenth century, wiping out one-third of Europe’s population.
a) Contemporary epidemics and pandemics
Endemic and epidemic diseases, especially HIV/AIDS, disproportionately afflict the global South, devastating their societies and economies.
b) SARS, polio and avian influenza
- SARS, polio, and avian influenza are diseases that have been aided by globalization.
- The 2002-03 SARS epidemic spread rapidly from China to Asia, Europe, and Canada. The economic consequences were steep, particularly for the tourism and travel industries.
- Polio was virtually wiped out by 2003, but travelers from Nigeria (where an immunization campaign had been halted) spread the disease out of the country, resulting in reinfection in 22 formerly polio-free countries.
- Avian influenza poses another serious threat. A global response has been hampered by the failure of some countries to provide accurate information about cases within their borders.
c) Doctors Without Borders
- Doctors Without Borders is the best known of humanitarian NGOs that specialize in providing medical care to the developing world.
- Its volunteers provide a range of services, including medical care to civilians in war zones.
d) Medical tourism
- Globalization has also created a private market in medical care.
- Countries in the developing world, like India, establish medical services to serve clients from the developed world where medical care is expensive or where there are long waiting periods for treatment.
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Q1 What is human security?
A1 The idea of human security rests on the belief that there are a variety of interdependent threats to human well-being and survival beyond the traditional concern with foreign aggression that informs military security. A variety of UN agencies deal with these other threats ranging from poverty to crime and disease, and the idea of human security owes much to Canadian effort to publicize the concept and to economist Jeffrey Sachs who played a key role in getting the United Nations to adopt the eight Millennium Goals that consist of targets to be met by 2015 in areas as diverse as achieving universal primary education and improving maternal health care to reducing children's mortality and promoting gender equality.
Q2 What are the dimensions of global poverty, and what approaches exist to alleviating it?
A2 Despite growing global wealth, some 2.8 billion people survive on less than $700 a year, and population growth in many poor countries wipes out gains in economic growth. Although poverty (defined as earning $1 or less a day) has declined dramatically in recent decades, much the decline is in China and India. By contrast, poverty has actually increased in some regions such as sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe. Moreover, income measures fail to capture issues of longevity, low standard of living, and inadequate education. International institutions like the World Bank and IMF are leading the effort to achieve the UN Millennium Goals. The IMF provides low-interest loans to poor countries that design economic and social programs to overcome poverty. The World Bank also provide loans for development projects as well as microcredit to help impoverished individuals purchase inexpensive items like mobile phones and start small businesses. Both agencies are also involved in fighting HIV/AIDS and in reducing the debt burdens of poor countries that in some cases eats up all the income from exports. In 2005 the world's richest countries meeting as the G8 in Scotland agreed to forgive $40 billion in debt owed by 18 of the world's poorest countries. Foreign aid from rich countries is also used to alleviate global poverty though few rich countries have achieved the foreign-aid target of 0.7 percent of GDP. Much of the foreign investment needed to jumpstart economic development must come from private sources such as transnational corporations and from exports of commodities and agricultural products to rich countries. The latter, however, continue to maintain barriers to imports from the developing world and continue to provide their own farmers with subsidies that make of agricultural products from poor countries uncompetitive. The issue of agricultural subsidies was a major factor in the failure to date of the Doha Round of global trade negotiations.
Q3 What threats does transnational crime pose, and what efforts are being made to cope with it?
A3 From transnational gangs in Central America to criminal groups in Russia, Japan, China and the United States, crime endangers citizens, limits economic growth, and reduces human welfare. Transnational drug trafficking constitutes the world's most profitable criminal enterprise. Cocaine production in Latin America and opium production in Asia undermine the fabric of local as well as foreign societies. Potential rewards from illicit drugs are so high that law enforcement and judicial systems are corrupted by drug cartels, and some countries like Colombia and Afghanistan are virtual "narco-states." Drug cartels sometimes cooperate with terrorists who provide physical protection in return for funds to purchase arms. American efforts to fight drug trafficking are global in scope. However, the fight has been comprised at times by the involvement of American allies in drug trafficking and the failure of the United States to deal with the "demand side" of the drug trade at home. Globalization has also facilitated money laundering, the means by which drug traffickers and other criminals hide their illegal profits. Both the UN and US have sought to reduce money laundering and have provided funds to train local law enforcement officers in a variety of countries.
Q4 What impact does the global arms trade have on human security, and what efforts have been made to deal with it?
A4 The global arms trade fuels arms races and conflicts around the world, arms rebels and terrorists, and creates dependence of arms purchasers on those who sell them arms. The vast sums involved in the arms trade, especially in the developing world, are not available for economic and social welfare even though they may sustain defense industries in the countries that sell arms. The United States is the largest source of legal arms sales, and Russia is second. China is especially careless as to whom it sells arms, and it has provided them to some of the world's most unsavory regimes such as the Sudanese government that is responsible for genocide in Darfur. One of the most dangerous aspects of the arms trade is the illegal sale of components for weapons of mass destruction. President George W. Bush's Proliferation Security Initiative for interdicting such material is one response to this threat which became evident after the discovery of the sale of nuclear technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea by the transnational enterprise of Pakistan's Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan. As a result of this discovery, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1540 to ban the trade in WMD, which, it is feared, may give terrorists access to such weapons. The global trade in small arms, both legal and illegal, fuel violence in many countries, especially in the developing world, that constitutes a danger to their stability, and NGOs have begun a lobbying effort to limit such sales.
Q5 What problems do flows of refugees and immigrants pose for human security?
A5 Huge numbers of refugees have fled across international borders or to other regions in their own countries to escape violence or natural catastrophe, especially in recent decades. According to international law, refugees who fear political persecution cannot be sent home, but sometimes this injunction is ignored as it was in the case of many Vietnamese refugees in the 1990s. However, those fleeing for economic reasons enjoy no such right, and internally displaced persons do not enjoy the legal protection of international refugees. Flows of refugees place enormous economic and social burdens on the countries to which they flee as well as on international agencies with scarce financial resources. One of the most explosive manifestations of this issue are the camps of Palestinian refugees that have been established in the West Bank and Gaza as well as nearby countries like Lebanon. Illegal immigration is a different problem, involving mainly the flight of people seeking a better life. In the case of Western societies with aging populations, such immigrants provide needed workers in jobs that residents refuse to take while overpopulation at home, but, at the same time, they may be unable or unwilling to assimilate and so create new tensions for these countries. The issue has become a heated one in Europe where many of the new immigrants are Muslin and in the United States where illegal immigration from Mexico has become a highly divisive political issue. The remittances that immigrants send home are an important source of income for a number of poor countries like Mexico and the Philippines.
Q6 What threats to global diseases pose for human security, and what efforts have been made to cope with them?
A6 The threat of globalized diseases is not new, and plague epidemics beginning in the 14th century depopulated Europe and precipitated economic decline. In the 20th century, the Spanish influenza spread around the world during World War I, ultimately costing more lives among war-weary populations than the war itself. Today, a variety of infectious diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis take a terrible toll in the developing world, but HIV/AIDS is currently the deadliest global pandemic. Although global in scope, the disease has been brought under control in developed countries by the availability of new but expensive drugs. Increasingly, therefore, HIV/AIDS is a disease of the poor, especially in sub-Saharan Africa where poverty, inadequate health care, male dominance, and migrant workers contribute to the disease's spread. As a result, economic development has been slowed or brought to a halt in those societies that are worst afflicted by the disease. In addition to national health agencies, the World Health Organizations works to control such diseases. The WHO played a key role in bring SARS under control after the epidemic first appeared in China in 2002. If avian influenza, which many observers fear may become as deadly as the Spanish flu did, spreads, the WHO will again have a critical role to play. A number of NGOs like Doctors Without Borders also play an important role in alleviating sickness and disease in the developing world. |
