Family Systems and Global Humanitarian Mental Health by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030032166
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Why Human Security Matters

Human security recognises the widespread and cross-cutting issues that threaten the viability of not only states but the people and communities that comprise them. Its point of departure is grounded in the fact the traditional concept of security goes beyond that of threats to people, communities and states posed by crime, war or terrorism.

As an approach, human security reflects the fact that while one of the main goals of every state’s foreign and domestic policy is to achieve or to enhance its security, the insecurity that citizens can experience from, inter alia, persistent poverty, famine, disease, gender, race and other forms of inequity can feed directly into perpetuating and creating a less secure state – economically, socially, culturally and defensively.

As Gomez and Gasper elaborate (Gomez & Gasper, 2013), the human security approach was introduced in 1994 via the global Human Development Report (HDR) where the focus was on the two (2) main components of human security: “freedom from fear” and “freedom from want”. These were inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and are central to the four human freedoms Roosevelt referred to in a famous speech in 1941 (Gomez & Gasper, 2013). In the 1990s, the freedom “to live in dignity” was also added with the increasing focus on not just identifying threats but analysing the root causes underpinning these threats.

Thus, in the context of the SIDS of the English-speaking Caribbean, a common and consistent threat is vulnerability to external economic events. However, a human security would advocate for undertaking the relevant analyses to determine what the causal factors are that sustain this vulnerability and seek to identify the main groups affected with a view towards having them and also to develop and implement possible solutions.

Essentially then the concept sought to expand the parameters of security analysis and policy from one mainly focused on the security of states and its attendant issues to one where there was an equally significant focus on the quality of people’s lives. In sum, human security, as an approach, sought to better understand what generally made one less “secure”; made one less able to access education; less able to be physically secure; less subjected to crime, victimisation and aggression; less vulnerable to all forms of discrimination; less able to be denied medical care; and so forth. Consequently, as noted by Gomez and Gasper (Gomez & Gasper, 2013), the seven (7) fundamental elements of human security were initially identified as:Economic

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