Human Security - Relationship With Humanitarian Action

Relationship With Humanitarian Action

In several senses there is a natural fit between human security concepts and humanitarian principles. The concern with the protection of people or individuals is a core humanitarian value as well as of human security. In this sense it shares human security’s merging of development and security and the casting of the protection of life as the referent object.

Human security and humanitarian action also shared a similar process of evolution. The rise of the human security discourse in the 1990s paralleled an equally rapid expansion in humanitarian roles and a broadening in the objectives of humanitarianism that was labeled the ‘new humanitarianism’. Humanitarian assistance, once encompassing a narrow set of emergency based life saving interventions conducted by a small group of relatively independent actors, became ‘an organising principle for intervention in internal conflicts, a tool for peacebuilding and the starting-point for addressing poverty, as well as a palliative in times of conflict and crisis.’ It also merged with development concerns such as the promotion of social justice and societal cohesion.

The human security discourse was also used as a tool to resist aid policies becoming hijacked by narrow security concerns. States, such as the Republic of Ireland, promoted the Human Security concept as a way to ensure a more balanced approach to security and development issues both nationally and within the EU.

Despite the sense of a natural fit between human security concepts and humanitarian principles they have enjoyed a difficult relationship. Human security perspectives have the potential to interfere with the traditionally apolitical nature of humanitarianism in conflict situations, leading to a blurring of the boundaries between politico-military interventions and those designed primarily to reduce suffering. In another sense the emphasis on human security has legitimised the idea of armed international intervention as a "moral duty" if states are deemed incapable or unwilling of protecting their citizens. Similarly the adoption of 'holistic' security and development strategies within UN Inegrated peacekeeping missions is viewed by some as having the potential to compromise humanitarian principles.

Authors such as White and Cliffe drew attention to the way in which the 'broadening of aid objectives from pure survival support towards rehabilitation, development and/ or peace-building' led to the 'dilution of commitment to core humanitarian principles'. Furthermore many humanitarian organisations have sought to develop rights-based approaches to assistance strategies which challenge the apolitical approach of traditional humanitarianism. Rights based approaches view poverty and vulnerability as rooted in power relations – specifically, the denial of power, which is itself related to the denial of human rights. Hence rights based approaches to humanitarian action relate the achievement of security for marginalized people to the realization of their human rights and often to broader social change. Multimandate humanitarian organisations that seek more inclusive and participatory forms of citizenship and governance and the achievement of broader social rights outcomes therefore risk enmeshing apolitical humanitarian responses in advocacy programmes that push for broader social changes.