Page 15 - Empowerment and Protection - Conclusions Chapter

violence. Male and female gender experts’ experience in navigating diverse perspectives can be important resources and models for managing the subjectivity of human security.
Women’s rights advocates argue that women’s participation is not only important for a truly inclusive human security, but that human security, broadly speaking, is dependent upon women’s security and empowerment. Research suggests that women’s security and equality supports broad economic development, improves health for children, and is correlated with lower levels
of state violence. The participation of women
in politics, economic life, security forces, and peacekeeping supports the economic security of families, the effectiveness of police forces, lowers corruption, and is correlated with lower rates of state aggression.8 Women’s security can be strengthened by a focus on human security, and can be used as an indicator to assess overall human security.
Gender experts’ experience
in navigating diverse perspectives can be important resources and models for managing the subjectivity of human security accounts.
Scaling up human security
At a coordinating level, conflict prevention
efforts can benefit from using the human security framework. Human security’s broad focus can enable the mobilisation and integration of diverse sectors – government, health, food, economic development, natural resource management, etc. – that can work together to analyse root causes of conflict, identify overlapping goals and interests of stakeholders, and design multidimensional intervention strategies and public policies. By taking into account the diverse vulnerabilities and capacities of individuals and their communities, human security offers a deep and wide set of
analytical frames and intervention points with which to address root causes of conflict.
A key challenge for human security lies in ‘scaling up’ the types of intervention approaches presented in the preceding chapters. Human security is context dependent, which complicates efforts to mainstream it as a large scale approach. The example of the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States (the New Deal) provides a possibility of a global human security approach that remains context-driven by focusing on inclusive processes and building the relationship between the state and society.
The New Deal addresses the impact of prolonged conflict on development. Initiated by the g7+, a self-identified group of 19 conflict-affected, so-
called ‘fragile’ states, the New Deal establishes
new partnerships between donor states, fragile states, and civil society to create “country-led and country-owned transitions out of fragility.”9 While not explicitly endorsing a human security approach, the process embodies human security principles in several ways.10 The New Deal agreement commits signatories to ‘inclusive and participatory political dialogue’ and identifies civil society actors as primary partners in the process.11 It states that ‘people’s security’ is one of five primary peacebuilding and statebuilding goals (PSGs) that it seeks to achieve. It recognises that, “Constructive state-society relations [...] are at the heart of successful peacebuilding and statebuilding.”12
As a result, in several countries piloting the New Deal, civil society, governments, and international actors have come together to engage in new dialogues on how to create the political, economic, and security conditions for peace and stability. A practical example of how a people-centred approach has been applied in this process is the development of perception-based indicators, which reflect actual citizen experiences of, for instance, security, freedom and health, to measure the impact of state policies.
The successful implementation of this relatively new framework is challenging and still uncertain. There is limited evidence that the ‘peoples’ security’ goal has been implemented substantially. Some
civil society participants are calling for a more explicit focus on human security as a way to strengthen the agreement. This would promote more robust national dialogue, open up civilian and civil society space for greater participation in the
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