Student Network for Human Security (SNHS) Blog

Thanks to Norihito

American Society of International Law(ASIL) has launched an interesting project for the Presidential Campaign.

It has three component: (1) a collection of the candidates' policy statements and speeches on topics related to international law; (2) candidate responses to an ASIL survey on their views on international law and U.S. foreign policy; and (3) a selection of ASIL Executive Committee members' views on what the “big” international law issues are for the next administration.

It is interesting not only from the perspective of Int'l Law, but also of US foreign policy in general, I suppose.

The following invitation for any of our readers who may be interested. Complete info can be found here.

This symposium will be held in conjunction with the WHO-led 10th meeting of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health (SDH) to be held in Kobe from January 16-18, 2008. SDH, which includes income level, position in society, education, labor environment, etc., are considered central factors in solving health-related problems caused by social inequality. The Japanese government, which will serve as host to the upcoming G8 Summit in Toyako, Hokkaido next July and co-host of The 4th Tokyo International Conference on Africa's Development (TICAD IV) next May in Yokohama, has been earnestly tackling global health issues in recent years. The key pillar of this effort has been the concept of “Human Security.” This concept is deeply related to SDH and will be one of the main topics of this symposium.

There is lot of action these days around Human Security in Japan so please do not hesitate to attend to any of the following events.

(If you want to sponsor any event here or even want to feedback the event of your interest, this place is for you)

Human Security in Asia: Challenges and Perspectives
Thursday, January 17, 2008 / 10:00-17:40
Place: Waseda University
(Thanks Mami)

Building Peace - Japan and UN
日　　時：２００８年１月２４日（木）　９：４５～１７：００
(More info in the extended entry, Japanese)
(Thanks Nori)

International Workshop on Environmental and Health Risks for Sustainability in Arid Regions
Date: January 28th, 2008
Place: Aoba Memorial Hall, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan
(Thanks Defi)

Workshop on Environment and Development in Asia
Date: Jan 29, 2008
Place 環境科学研究科　大講義室
(Thanks Defi)

Japan's Foreign Policy for the Promotion of Human Rights and Democracy: Challenges and Prospects
Date: Friday, February 1, 2008, 13:00-17:10 (Registration starts from 12:30)
Place: Tokyo (follow the link)
(Thanks Nori)

NGOによる民主化支援セミナー
参加者募集要項
2008年2月2日（土曜日）　9時45分～17時15分
Place: Tokyo (follow the link)
(Thanks Nori)

A brief report of what is going on around Human Security this month:

1. The fourth Friends of Human Security Meeting on 15 May at UN NYHQ (jointly chaired by Japan and Mexico)

2. The first UN General Assembly Thematic Debate on Human Security on 22 May at UN NYHQ
http://www.un.org/ga/president/62/ThematicDebates/humansecurity.shtml

For this meeting the Friend of Human Security prepared a comprehensive compendium of human security related initiatives and activities by its members and UN agencies. It is available in all the official languages.
http://www.un.org/Docs/journal/asp/ws.asp?m=A/62/695

Hopefully, we would be there!

The Global Environmental Change and Human Security (GECHS) project is pleased to announce:

CALL FOR PAPERS AND POSTERS

To the GECHS Synthesis Conference: “HUMAN SECURITY IN AN ERA OF GLOBAL CHANGE” June 22-24, 2009, University of Oslo, Norway

Please see attachment to view the call for papers and posters. The deadline for submitting
abstracts is January 15, 2009.

For submission instructions please visit the Conference web page: www.iss.uio.no/gechs

We apologies for cross-postings.

Kind regards,

Linda Sygna
Executive Officer

Global Environmental Change and Human Security (GECHS) Project
Department of Sociology and Human Geography
University of Oslo
PO Box 1096 Blindern
0317 Oslo, Norway

Tel: + 47 228 44 386
Fax: + 47 228 55 253
Email: linda.sygna@sgeo.uio.no
GECHS Synthesis Conference email: gechs-conference@sosgeo.uio.no
GECHS Synthesis Conference web page: www.iss.uio.no/gechs
GECHS homepage: www.gechs.org

_______________________________________________
The Global Environmental Change and Human Security (GECHS) project is a core project of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Change (IHDP). Our research focuses on the way diverse social processes such as globalization, poverty, disease, and conflict, combine with environmental change to affect human well-being.

The Center for Global Development is a think-tank located in Washington D.C., with prolific work in the areas of improving international aid, poverty reduction strategies and health - among others.

Continuing with year-end indexes, the CGD has just made public its Commitment to Development Index, ranking 22 high-income countries according to how consistent are their actions related to the pleas of support LDC around the world. Then, the evaluation does not relies merely on aid efforts, but takes a wider view including rates on trade, investment, migration, environment, security and technology.

Japan has usually been at the bottom of the chart, well behind western peers, although with the inclusion of South Korea to the group of countries this year, the situation changed. Criticism points principally at the small share of income that is used in ODA, as well as the high barriers to exports from developing countries. The authors coincide with DARA report on the issue of refugees and NGO weakness - the latter in terms of small amount of private charitable giving attributable to tax policy. Conversely, it is to be revised whether valuation of parameters such as security and environment overlook country's historical developments that may condemned it to low scores.

On the theoretical ground of security, let's observe that the parameter of security seems to make exclusive reference to violence issues - or freedom from fear. However, other researchers in the CGD sustain security connections with global poverty and disease, among others.

In a recent post, Owen blog recalls and amplifies Alanna Shaikh list of some situations on which NGO can unintentionally do harm to the community it’s trying to serve. A summary to invite you to read the original post:

1. Initiate projects with little chance of success.
2. Make communities outsider-dependents.
3. Destabilize community power structures (reinforcing inequitable existent power structures or creating internal tensions)
4. Build and leave without money for maintenance or staff.
5. Take the best people out of the country's system (so they do good in your project but then become unwelcome in the government)
6. Getting personally too influential, so leaders become accountable to the organization, not to the population.

The author claims that these are equally applicable to donors as well as multilateral organizations.

What do you think?

THE 24TH CONFERENCE OF THE JAPAN ASSOCIATION FOR INTERNATIONAL HEALTH is about human security!

You are all very welcome to participate in the meeting. The call of abstracts is until May 15th, and the meeting coincides with Tohoku region festivals. A great opportunity - Please pass the news.

A couple of weeks ago, the APEC forum had a meeting in Japan to talk about growth strategies. Here by the conclusions, via the Japan Times:

• Contribute to improving quality of growth in the global economy.

• Have an action plan and followup mechanisms in the growth strategy.

• Work on structural reforms complementing efforts of the Group of 20 major economies.

• Promote job creation, development of smaller businesses and entrepreneurship, and create new economic opportunities for women.

• Promote energy efficiency and improve research and development on the environment.

• Contribute to countering terrorism and pandemic diseases.

Besides saying almost nothing particular about growth, it includes - out of the blue - gender, environment, terrorism, and pandemics. It seems that this post-cold war deconstruction of security, helped by chaos theory and 'holisticity', is just making a hodge-podge out of political agendas. Hope it is just the transition....

Tohoku University’s Human Security Summer School
International Post-Graduate Program in Human Security

Introduction

The idea of a human security has been around already for more than fifteen years. Following the rather basic principle of keeping people on the center of attention, different society stakeholders accepted the challenge of giving human security a try. Since then, a considerable mass of general reports, discussions, criticisms, rebuttals, empirical research, case studies, etc., have been made public, shedding light over many possible ways to put the idea into practice. Most of the authors of these works acknowledge that the starting point was rather flexible/ambiguous and, in consequence, it is evident that making sense of the multiple views converging under the ‘human security’ umbrella is a daunting task. Yet, symptoms of exhaustion on the initial supporters of the concept, as well as new trends on the academic circles, are signaling the emergence of a second generation of studies, and it is precisely efforts consolidating the experience so far the ones that will make the difference framing the future of security at local, national, and global levels.

This September the Japan Association of Human Security Studies (JAHSS) is to be launched, an organization that epitomizes this new generation of efforts around the concept. It involves many renowned scholars and institutions that have experimented with human security since its early proposition, who agree on the necessity of promoting exchanges between concerned actors and, in this way, preparing the new generation of researchers to move ahead of the curve in the study and application of the concept. Tohoku University’s Human Security organizes this year’s Summer School as a prelude to the JAHSS, its first annual conference and the creation of its electronic peer-reviewed journal, offering the opportunity to meet first-hand experiences of leading scholars about the challenges of engaging with human security studies.

Date

September 12th, 13th and 14th (Monday to Wednesday).

Venue

Tohoku University, Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Ecollab. Access: http://www.kankyo.tohoku.ac.jp/map.html

Program

Monday 12h: Climate change as a human security issue
13:00 to 14:30 – Professor Des Gasper, ‘Climate change and human security’
14:40 to 16:20 – Professor Hiroshi Ohta, ‘The Interlinkage of Climate Security and Human Security: The Convergence on Policy Requirements’ (tentative title).
16:30 to 18:00 – Panel discussion.

Tuesday 13th: How do we study human security?
10:20 to 10:30 – Opening remarks, Professor Dinil Pushpalal, Representative coordinator of the International Post-Graduate Program in Human Security of Tohoku University.
10:30 to 12:00 – Professor Des Gasper, ‘The Idea of Human Security’.
13:00 to 14:30 – Professor Michio Umegaki. ‘Human Security for empirical research’.
14:40 to 16:20 – Panel discussion.

Wednesday 14th: Migration: a threat or a solution?
10:30 to 12:00 – Professor Des Gasper, ‘Migration and human security’
13:00 to 14:30 – Professor Tatsuo Harada, ‘Human or Public: The Referents of Security in Discourses on Migrants in Japan’.
14:40 to 16:20 – Panel discussion.

Short bio of the presenters:

Des Gasper: Professor of Human Development, Development Ethics and Public Policy, at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS-EUR), The Netherlands. His areas of interest include: ethics of development; international migration; theories of human development, human security, human needs and well-being; policy discourse analysis; climate change.

Hiroshi Ohta: Professor, School of International Liberal Studies, Faculty of International Research and Education, Waseda University. His interests are International Relations, Global Environmental Politics, and Japanese Foreign Policy.

Michio Umegaki taught at Georgetown University, Department of Government before joining Keio University in 1990. His research topics include: US-Japanese relations, Japanese foreign policy and politics. After joining Keio, he found himself deeply involved in the affairs of Southeast Asia, with critical views toward development economics. He has completed long term research in northern Thailand on families who are victims of AIDs; another on the families of Agent Orange victims in Vietnam; and still another, which is currently in progress, on the impact of agrochemicals on the environment and health.

Tatsuo Harada: Professor of International Political, Economy at the College of International Studies, Chubu University; research associate at the York Centre for International and Security Studies (YCISS), York University (2003); project director at the Chubu Centre for Human Security Studies (CHS) (2006-2008); head of Department of International Relations, Chubu University (2009). He won the second NIRA Okita Commemorative Award for Policy Research by the National Institute of Research Advancement as a contributor to the book: Yoichi, Mine; Sachiko, Hatanaka (Eds.): Zouo kara Wakai e [From Hatred to Accommodation] (Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 2000). He focuses on post-development studies, human security and migration.

Supporting materials (provisional list)

Climate change as a human security issue

Gasper, D., 2010. ‘Climate change and the language of human security’, Research Paper ISS Working Paper Series / General Series 505. (Available at: http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/19843/ )

Ohta, H., 2010. ‘The Interlinkage of Climate Security and Human Security: The Convergence on Policy Requirements’, paper prepared for FA65: Climate Change: The Implication for Security, ISA Annual Convention, New Orleans. (A previous version is available at: http://www.fasid.or.jp/daigakuin/sien/kaisetsu/gaiyo21/lecture02.html )

Ohta, H., 2010. ‘Japanese Climate Change Policy: Moving beyond the Kyoto Process’, in Hans G. Brauch et al., Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security: Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks. Berlin: Springer, 1381-1391.

Ohta, H., 2008. ‘A Small Leap forward: Regional Cooperation for Tackling the Problems of the Environment and Natural Resources in Northeast Asia’, in Timmermann, Martina and Tsuchiyama, Jituso (Eds.), Institutionalizing Northeast Asia: Regional Steps towards Global Governance. New York: United Nations University, 297-315.

How do we study human security?

Gasper, D., 2009. ‘Global Ethics and Human Security’, in Globalization and Security: an Encyclopedia, eds. H. Fagan & R. Munck.Praeger: Westport, CT. (A previous version is available at: http://publishing.eur.nl/ir/repub/asset/17953/3Global%20Ethics%20and%20Human%20Security-Jun09.doc.).

Gasper, D., 2010. ‘The Idea of Human Security’, In Karen O’Brien, Asuncion Lera St.Clair and Berit Kristoffersen (eds.) Climate Change, Ethics and Human Security. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 23-46. (A previous version is available at: www.unhistory.org/reviews/Garnet_HumanSecurity.pdf )

Umegaki, M ., Lynn Thiesmeyer, and Atsushi Watabe (eds.), 2009. Human Insecurity in East Asia. Tokyo: UNU. (The introduction is available at: http://archive.unu.edu/unupress/2009/humanInsecurityEastAsia.html )

Umegaki, M., 2010. ‘The “Uninvestigated”: Human Security Research for a Political Scientist’, Perspectives on Global Issues (online journal) 4(2). (Available at: http://www.perspectivesonglobalissues.com/archives/spring-2010/political-scientist/)

Migration: a threat or a solution?

Gasper, D. and Thanh-Dam Truong, 2010. ‘Movements Of The ‘We’: International and Transnational Migration and the Capabilities Approach’, Research Paper ISS Working Paper Series / General Series 495. (Available at: http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/22353/ )

Gasper, D., 2011. ‘International Migration, Well-being and Transnational Ethics’, in Thanh-Dam Truong & Des Gasper (eds.) Transnational Migration and Human Security. Dordretch: Springer, 259-71. (Abstract available at: http://www.springerlink.com/content/x70452723xv64654/ )

Harada, T. and Kenji Kimura, 2011. ‘Human or Public: The Referents of Security in Discourses on Migrants in Japan’, in Thanh-Dam Truong & Des Gasper (eds.) Transnational Migration and Human Security. Dordretch: Springer, 225-38. (Abstract available at: http://www.springerlink.com/content/p425650111160556/)

Organizers

The International Post-Graduate Program in Human Security of Tohoku University is supported by four schools: Graduate School of International Cultural Studies, Graduate School of Agricultural Science, Graduate School of Medicine, and Graduate School of Environmental Studies.

Language

English (no Japanese translation).

Participation & Accommodation

The Summer School is open to the public, and free of charge (with the possible exception of a reception on the first day to be confirmed), however, participants should arrange their own accommodation. On Monday we start from 1 pm in order to allow students coming from other regions to reach Sendai on the same day. Yet, for those interested, our city holds its famous Jozenjidori International Jazz Festival on the weekend just before the Summer School, a great opportunity to see other facet of Sendai and support the recovery of the region. The information is in the following web page: http://www.j-streetjazz.com/

Registration deadline & Contact

Please register before the 5th of September by email to the address below; include your name, position, affiliation, phone number and the days you plan to attend.

(Leave your info in a comment and we will contact you by email)