Human Security In World Affairs

This book is intended as an introductory text from senior undergraduate level up, to be used in courses on international studies and relations, political studies, history, human geography, anthropology and human ecology, futures studies, applied social studies, public health, and other fields. It represents in a coherent fashion the new subject of human security and sets it apart from more traditional models of security. Its approach is deliberately multidisciplinary and transcultural. In addition to a thorough overview of the human security concept, the chapters address problems and opportunities in international law, politics, international relations, human ecology, ethics, law enforcement, development aid, human rights, and public health. The reader is also introduced to specific human security regimes that address human rights violations, peace building and conflict resolution, as well as global environmental governance. The book encourages a vision of the future that acknowledges the certainty of change, extrapolates significant current trends, and questions the values, beliefs and ideals that tend to inform dominant notions of development. Because of its transdisciplinary approach, the book will appeal to a very wide range of interests at the post-secondary/tertiary level. It will be of particular interest to college and university undergraduate students as well as graduate students and researchers, and also to educators from various disciplines in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities.

Written by diplomatic practitioners, Human Security and the New Diplomacy is a straightforward account of challenges already overcome and the prospect for further progress. From the evolution of peace-keeping, to peacebuilding, humanitarian intervention, war-affected children, international humanitarian law, the International Criminal Court, the economic agendas of conflict, transnational crime, and the emergence of connectivity and a global civil society, the authors offer new insights into the importance of considering these issues as part of a single agenda. Human Security and the New Diplomacy is a case-study of a major Canadian foreign policy initiative and a detailed account of the first phase of the human security agenda. The story of Canada's leading role in promoting a humanitarian approach to international relations, it will be of interest to foreign policy specialists and students alike. Contributors include David Angell, Alan Bones, Michael Bonser, Terry Cormier, Patricia Fortier, Bob Fowler, Elissa Goldberg, Mark Gwozdecky, Sam Hanson, Paul Heinbecker, Eric Hoskins, Don Hubert, David Lee, Dan Livermore, Jennifer Loten, Rob McRae, Valerie Ooterveld, Victor Rakmil, Darryl Robinson, Jill Sinclair, Michael Small, Ross Snyder, Carmen Sorger, and Roman Waschuk.

Human security is about everyday realities of violent conflict and poverty, humanitarian crises, epidemic diseases, injustice and inequality. It is about freedom from fear and freedom from want. It is much different from state-related security with its emphasis on military force, territory and sovereignty. Human security places the security of individuals, communities and global humanity ahead of the security concerns of the state. How does human security relate to international security? Can human security still be advanced in a global climate of intrastate conflict, the war on terror and increasing nuclear tensions? This book challenges prevailing security thinking and explores basic standards of humanity. This multi-authored book deals with the origins and developments of human security as a concept and how it is used in policy practice. It presents new approaches by focusing on alternative discourses, the actors involved, and the new forms of governance that are required. It outlines the challenges human security faces in different parts of the world due to conflict, terrorism and new wars; globalisation and the resurgence of religion; development cooperation, environmental problems and the role of science. Facing the challenges, this book aims to raise human security out of the status of a contemporary ‘problématique’ by bringing it closer to a ‘résolutique’. 'I am convinced that this book provides an original contribution and a further impetus to developing well-grounded academic and policy responses to world-wide problems that so urgently require solutions.' M.S. Swaminathan, President Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs

Human security has been advanced as an alternative to traditional state-based conceptualizations of security, yet controversies about the use and abuse of the concept remain. Investigating innovations in the advancement of the human security agenda over the past decade, this book identifies themes and processes around which consensus for future policy action might be built. It considers the ongoing debates regarding the human security agenda, explores prospects and projects for the advancement of human security, addresses issues of human security as emerging forms of new multilateralisms and examines claims that human security is being undermined by US unilateralisms. This comprehensive volume explores the theoretical debate surrounding human security and details the implications for practical application. It will prove ideal for students of international relations, security studies and development studies.

This new book presents critical approaches towards Human Security, which has become one of the key areas for policy and academic debate within Security Studies and IR. The Human Security paradigm has had considerable significance for academics, policy-makers and practitioners. Under the rubric of Human Security, security policy practices seem to have transformed their goals and approaches, re-prioritising economic and social welfare issues that were marginal to the state-based geo-political rivalries of the Cold War era. Human Security has reflected and reinforced the reconceptualisation of international security, both broadening and deepening it, and, in so doing, it has helped extend and shape the space within which security concerns inform international policy practices. However, in its wider use, Human Security has become an amorphous and unclear political concept, seen by some as progressive and radical and by others as tainted by association with the imposition of neo-liberal practices and values on non-Western spaces or as legitimizing attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan. This book is concerned with critical perspectives towards Human Security, highlighting some of the tensions which can emerge between critical perspectives which discursively radicalise Human Security within frameworks of emancipatory possibility and those which attempt to deconstruct Human Security within the framework of an externally imposed attempt to regulate and order the globe on behalf of hegemonic power. The chapters gathered in this edited collection represent a range of critical approaches which bring together alternative understandings of human security. This book will be of great interest to students of human security studies and critical security studies, war and conflict studies and international relations.

This book, now available in paperback, traces the key evolutions in the development of the concept of human security, the various definitions and critiques, how it relates to other concepts, and what it implies for polities, politics, and policy. Human security is an important subject for the whole world, in particular Asia, as it deals with interactions among fields of social change, such as development, conflict resolution, human rights, and humanitarian assistance. In a globalizing world, in which threats become trans-national and states lose power, security can no longer be studied in a one-dimensional fashion. Written by authors who are experts in this field and with case studies from different regions (Afghanistan, Central Asia and South Asia) presented throughout, this book - now available in paperback - contributes to this new multidimensional conception of security, analyzes its strengths and weaknesses, and focuses on its implications for analysis and action.