Page 17 - Empowerment and Protection - Conclusions Chapter

The concept of human security, if superficially understood, may expand the reach of traditional military-based strategies to areas originally considered outside its scope, including development, education, food security, etc.
This unintended consequence can be avoided
by emphasising human security as a process of inclusive dialogue that involves citizens and non- state actors in identifying sources of insecurity
and policies to address them. Emphasising the multidimensionality of human security threats and the importance of preventive action is another important way to build shared understanding
that the task of providing security is often a civilian one. Human security should result in the democratisation of security policymaking, not the securitisation of development.
Human security should result in the democratisation of security, not the securitisation of development.
A complex and sensitive question for human security advocates is the role of the military
and security forces in ensuring human security. A human security approach should proactively identify principles of military engagement to provide guidance to states on this security tactic. Current guidance on civil-military interaction and cooperation needs to be expanded to inform military and broader security sector relations
to civil society beyond humanitarian and aid sectors.16 However, such an attempt should also go further and analyse the impact of militarised state protection strategies on other sources of human security, including rule of law, citizen empowerment, and such types of security as community security, health, and food security. Precisely because a national security strategy that includes military engagement is a dominant traditional state approach to security, human security proponents need to engage directly in discussions about the effects of military force on people’s experiences of security in a variety of contexts.
Where national security strategies undermine rule of law, human security advocates should highlight the short- and long-term risks of such an approach. On the other hand, actors such as the DCAF warn that: “Encouraging good governance with lower military spending may actually, in some cases, leave a state prey to lawlessness and anarchy. Of course, the
goal is to contribute to the construction of strong and legitimate states, but the potential dilemmas or unanticipated consequences that human security policies may trigger must be recognised.”17 A
state must be capable as well as responsive. This is a difficult balance that must be engaged and addressed.
Other critiques of human security argue that
the focus on the individual disempowers rather
than empowers because it doesn’t sufficiently acknowledge the international political, economic, and military factors that shape or coerce state policy, particularly in weak states directly influenced by the international community. One critique argues that: “Through pathologising the weak or underdeveloped state and recasting sovereignty in terms of responsibility, international institutions and states have potentially greater freedom to intervene in or regulate weak or failing states.... the citizens
in weak or unstable states may arguably have even less freedom or power than under the old pluralist security framework.”18 Related critiques have been that human security gives legitimacy to military interventions conducted by powerful international actors.
While some of this critique has been addressed through the explicit recognition by the UN
that human security does not compromise
state sovereignty, it is an important point that international institutions often lack accountability to citizens of nation states, though their influence on them may be significant. To avoid diminishing state accountability to citizens, international interventions should support the transformation of citizen-state relationship and seek to support locally owned institutions such as Zimbabwe’s local peace committees that mediate social relationships. International actors should support human security as a process of local dialogue
and relationship-building to fully respect the principle of empowerment. Approaches that seek to achieve these objectives, such as SCR 1325 and the New Deal, address the democratic deficit in many multilateral institutions and processes by
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