Page 4 - Empowerment and Protection - Conclusions Chapter

Poverty, political marginalisation, and insecurity
go hand in hand.
security. Some indigenous peoples (IP) leaders in Mindanao trace the loss of their traditional world view with greater intertribal conlict. In contrast, many Afghan respondents see cultural norms as
a source of insecurity and refer to ‘old ways of thinking’ and illiteracy as causes of discrimination and violence against minorities and women in particular. A housewife in Kabul describes the discrimination against girls and women, violence against women and the constant violations of women’s rights as “issues that originate from lack of opportunities for youth, elders’ way of thinking, and illiterate people.”
Symbolic disrespect of cultural norms is a source
of community insecurity. A respondent from
the West Bank recounts the humiliation he felt seeing a young Muslim woman remove her body covering, or jilbab, in public at an Israeli checkpoint. In Crimea, an elderly communist expresses his distress at demonstrations of Ukrainian nationalists at the graves of Russian veterans of World War II: “How could the state and the government allow the fascists to march by our holy places? Confrontation is brewing.” These stories demonstrate the ways that cultural humiliation can foster greater conlict and generate future insecurity. People’s experiences of security encompass both tangible and intangible dimensions.
Women's security
Women’s security emerges as a distinct problem with similar characteristics across the six diverse contexts featured. Direct violence against
women often exists within a larger cultural
context in which a lack of social respect and equality reduces women’s freedom of movement, economic and educational opportunities, political participation, and recourse to justice. In Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland, a women’s rights activist highlights the economic vulnerability of women in accessing pensions or in exercising their inheritance
rights, as well as the discrimination felt as “even innocent women are arrested in leisure centres for alleged loitering for prostitution.” In Mexico, the phenomenon of femicide, the deliberate murder of women, is one of the more extreme examples of the chilling security threats women face. Cultural norms in many societies inherently undermine women’s human security.
Traditional security providers – law enforcement, their communities, and their families – often do not address the speciic security threats faced
by women, and in too many cases contribute to women’s victimisation and deny them avenues
of recourse or self-protection. One woman in Afghanistan highlights the security dilemma she and other women face: “Those who are supposed to ensure our security like the government and police turn out to be the ones who jeopardise it.” In East Jerusalem, a Palestinian nurse explains that in cases of domestic violence, women are discouraged from going to the police, as the community tries
to protect men from Israeli arrest. Ensuring the security of the community can compromise the security of women. In these and other examples, women face human security threats that are uniquely related to their social inequality, exposing them to greater security threats and simultaneously limiting their sources of addressing them.
Human security and the state
While human security emphasises the security of the individual, people’s views of security conirm that the state plays a central role in providing their security. Many of those interviewed see provision of public goods and the rule of law as the state’s greatest contributions to their security, rather than referring to state military strength as protection. Rule of law and public goods affect political rights, cultural preservation, economic opportunity, environmental access, and health and food safety.
While citizens highlight the importance of the state as a main provider of security, they often do so in the context of describing the state’s failure to live up to its responsibilities. The state can foster insecurity indirectly, through its inability to provide necessary public services such as education, water, or policing against crime. It can also directly threaten civilian security through military campaigns, predatory policing, or discrimination against its own citizens. Inadequate policing or prosecutorial power, whether due to incompetence, corruption, or the
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