International Security: A Very Short Introduction by Christopher S. Browning

Author:Christopher S. Browning [Browning, Christopher S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780199668533
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2013-01-15T07:00:00+00:00

6. Princess Diana with a landmine victim in Angola

In contrast, more expansive definitions of human security suggest that this focus on conflict results in a problematically narrow understanding of the threats that cause human insecurity and suffering. Although violent conflicts and their effects are important, far more people’s lives are blighted by poverty, hunger, disease, and natural disasters. The figures can be startling. For example, more than three and a half billion people live on less than $2 a day, while according to UNICEF 22,000 children die of poverty daily and around a quarter of all children in developing countries are underweight. Meanwhile, infectious diseases continue to devastate vulnerable populations. For instance, in 2007 UNAIDS estimated two million people were dying from HIV/AIDS annually, with a further two and a half million being infected. The figures point to vast swathes of the global population whose lives are characterized by vulnerability. More expansive definitions therefore emphasize that human security is not just about ‘freedom from fear’, but also ‘freedom from want’.

This approach to human security was most notably outlined by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in its 1994 Human Development Report quoted at the start of the chapter. For the UNDP human security was related to all those things that contribute to human dignity. To this extent, the UNDP suggested human security was affected by a broad range of economic, environmental, political, social, health, and personal factors. From this perspective human security concerns things like having a secure and stable income, the ability to access educational and health services, and living in an unpolluted environment. This understanding of human security therefore entails a strong concern with questions of social justice, the need for a fairer distribution of resources, and the structural processes (Galtung’s ‘structural violence’—see Chapter 2) that allow such conditions of widespread poverty and disadvantage to prevail.

Importantly the international community has responded to this wider conception of human security. With much fanfare, in 2000 the UN established eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) comprising a set of commitments designed to help rectify the condition of the world’s poorest and most disadvantaged. These included commitments to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability, and develop a global partnership for development. Under each of these headings were a range of more specified goals, such as halving the number of people whose income is less than $1 a day, reducing child mortality by two-thirds, and reducing by three-quarters the maternal morbidity ratio. In most cases 1990 provided the base line figure with most of the goals targeted to be met by 2015.

According to a UN report released in 2012 progress has been mixed, varying between both issue and region. For instance, the goal of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger by 2015 seems to be on target for Eastern Asia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, whereas progress is deemed either insufficient,

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