Student Network for Human Security (SNHS) Blog

The unending search for security always passes by the police

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 12:19:27 +0900

“Our position has been to develop a solution that bridges between having nothing and having Afghan National Police, and this program does that,” said the senior NATO official. “So it’s a good development and especially so since it has consensus within the Afghan government and the ownership that come with that,” he said.

This interesting article of the NYT on the difficulty of consolidating a police corp in Afghanistan. I am sure some statistic about the police could serve as a proxy for human security. But not so sure... Best wishes for this summer!

Emergency to remain or forever?

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 06:04:04 +0900

THAILAND - The political situation was back to normal - but it was necessary for the government to maintain the state of emergency for a time yet due to fears of fresh unrest, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said yesterday.

Once again, security means to give extraordinary powers to the government, and rather that freedom from fear, fear is the source of power, of legitimacy. The whole news here. Via the indispensable human security daily news. UPDATE (July 7): As predicted, the state of emergency is far from coming to an end.

Eagerness for lessons

Fri, 28 May 2010 00:55:53 +0900

Louise Arbour, head of the International Crisis Group (ICG), says the Sri Lanka model consists of three parts: what she dubs “scorched-earth tactics” (full operational freedom for the army, no negotiations with terrorists, no ceasefires to let them regroup); next, ignoring differences between combatants and non-combatants (the new ICG report documents many such examples); lastly, the dismissal of international and media concerns.

And there are some interested on learning from this success story...

Johan Galtung

Tue, 25 May 2010 09:50:06 +0900

Considered the father of Peace studies, this interview is a good introduction to professor Galtung's life and work. Via Peace and Collaborative Development Network:

The question of values - and a list of categories

Mon, 24 May 2010 08:20:43 +0900

From the recent article in the NYT about the G.D.P.:

The question is: How many measures beyond G.D.P. — how many dials on a new dashboard — will you need? Stiglitz and his fellow academics ultimately concluded that assessing a population’s quality of life will require metrics from at least seven categories: health, education, environment, employment, material well-being, interpersonal connectedness and political engagement. They also decided that any nation that was serious about progress should start measuring its “equity” — that is, the distribution of material wealth and other social goods — as well as its economic and environmental sustainability. “Too often, particularly I think in an American context, everybody says, ‘We want policies that reflect our values,’ but nobody says what those values are,” Stiglitz told me. The opportunity to choose a new set of indicators, he added, is tantamount to saying that we should not only have a conversation about recasting G.D.P. We should also, in the aftermath of an extraordinary economic collapse, talk about what the goals of a society really are.

I feel like reading about the "vital core", don't you? The open option suggested by the authors of the "Human Security Now" report fits the necessity of context in order to determine the values to protect. It cannot be done a priori, heavily depending on the people who will live - suffer - the consequences. However, it is not clear for me the role of the categories. Is not any list arbitrary? Do we need them? Umberto Eco may say yes, but I have my doubts. Good day!

Looking for the positive in diversity

Mon, 10 May 2010 10:26:45 +0900

I forgot to tell you las time the objective of my upcoming academic excursion: a more concrete idea about what the positive side of security is - if such a thing does in fat exist. As a keen reader of this blog would have noted - is there any? - a good part of the news posted here has to be with either the changing role of traditional security, or the nature challenge of new threats and old security apparatuses. However, there are some scholars that maintain that security is more than just "the absence of threats," or, in other commonly used words, living more than just surviving. My first encounters with that idea have not get me convinced, but I admit that reaching to the bottom of this matter is key to give the concept more robustness. The "human" side of the concept well deserves it. I found an insightful introduction to the issue in this paper by a Rhonda Powell, but I have several doubts about her position - wait for them in the paper I plan to submit this term. So, then, lets keep the review going on: + Truong (2009) "Feminist Knowledge and Human Security" The author offers this time a deeper insight on the work of feminists about care, further elaborating on the links to human security. There is an especial emphasis on epistemology, and the kind of knowledge that is considered when studying the proposed problems. From the feminist side, there is a constant plea for a more inclusive construction of knowledge. Truong says "[T]he assumption that a standard of impartiality (strong objectivity) enables one to judge some perspectives as better than others contradicts the situated knowledge claim - which purports that all knowledge is partial." Therefore, the author links the context to subjective views of it, granting an importance that is not observed by the orthodoxy of social sciences. There are at least to implications from this posture: first, methodologically, it is argued that human security is due to go beyond objective analysis and inform indexes with qualitative views of the situation. This view, shared by many other authors, may not totally forbid attempts to measure the concept, but it will restrict any idea of stand-alone factor as those of the HDI. Second, a less considered consequence of the insertion of subjectivity is how it hinders the possible quality of the concept as a policy tool. Following the dictum, there is no reason to consider human security less partial than other analyses, and so any recommendation on any issue - poverty, conflict, any - product of a human security study can be as wrong as any other analysis. This a fact that has been already observed in the field of vulnerability studies, close to human security, where the same situation occurs. If we add serous doubts about the methodological improvements in the assessment of causalities brought by the concept, one wonders if the focus should not be reoriented. The ethics of care also have some implications about identity that are well-worth examining. Close to more traditional - may I say Aristotelean - ideas of identity, Engster brings forward a 'rational theory of obligation' that bases provision of security to someone that is not from one's immediate group out of interdependence. Accounts grounded in more emotive principles give more importance to affinity or sympathy as engines of care. The author uses the umbrella term of "relational ontology". Let me observe that care seems to be more related to protection than empowerment or fear, so the kind of identity here serves as a boundary element to move from the threat to its absence, but does it relate to a security community? It seems to me that the model so far proposed is too focused on protection and less on empowerment, and somehow disconnected of the nature of the threats.

Notes for a summer exertion

Fri, 07 May 2010 11:16:28 +0900

Hi, there! Hope that the news section on the right had somehow filled the absence of posts. Next month, I plan to concentrate in the theoretical section of my research while I exchange ideas some where in Europe - if volcanoes allow us. Thus, there are tons of papers I must read before leaving, so I thought it would be a nice opportunity to use this space. Here is the first try: + Gasper & Truong (2008) "Development Ethics through the lenses of Caring, Gender, and Human Security" And Gasper & Truong (2005) "Deepening Development Ethics: From Economism to Human Development to Human Security" Both papers attempt to establish a common ground to enhance human security through development ethics, partly based in the latter characteristics, and partly in the holes on human development theory that human security has the opportunity to cover. From this composed view, the authors provide the following description of the concept:

‘human security’ is a return to the substantive agenda of basic human needs, but better grounded in an ethnography of the risks and pressures, hopes and fears, of ordinary lives rather than only an abstracted accounting of deficiencies or an elevated language of opportunities.

There are two elements to comment about in this depiction. First, the contextual sense entailed by human security is given top importance. Through the paper, the authors underscore this characteristic under the light of its substantive content, opposed to a reductionist understanding of the human, and the consequent necessity of deep understanding of the populations studies. This characteristic helps the authors to bridge feminist theory and the ethics of care, a branch of ethics that also supports situated ethics, and situated knowledge, as necessary to reference the principles of caring. Some values derived from the ethics of care cited in the article are attentiveness, responsiveness and responsibility, which authors relate to citizenship, though it would be interesting to explore how those transform security in a positive endeavor. The other element that is key in the description of the concept is the importance conferred to "hopes and fears", which I associate to the subjective side of security and perception. This element is present in many sections of the paper, supporting criticisms to human development as "the danger that thinking can be displaced by counting", or them importance of highlight ethics and perceptions as well as objectives in initiatives as the MDGs. Authors affirm that human security requires an methodological broadening, in order to include emotive dimensions, and propose the arts and the humanities as possible sources. In this sense, it will be interesting to explore the recent advances in perception that have been discussed in economics, or the experience of criminology addressing fear. There are several references in the works about identity that are still to be threaded together in a more harmonic way. Concepts as ontological security, the conception of self, belonging are part of the complements that ethics has to offer to an over protective vision of security. However, it has not being considered how do the threats define the individual or the community, and the possible positive or negative consequences of this definition, something already observed by some authors from security studies (Civilizing, Booth). An additional question that emerges with the issue of identity is the boundary of what should be considered security. Some concern is express about the problem of co-option of human security by the psychic insecurities of the rich, but not discussed whether the psychic insecurities are relevant at all. This problem of levels is somehow considered while explaining how feminist bridge from the personal to the political, but a critical appreciation of this transition is well deserved. It is not very clear the authors' position regarding democracy. On the one hand they straightly criticize Sen's maxim about famines and democracies, noting that the latter does not increase sympathy nor willingness to help, elements that the authors regard as important as the information flow behind Sen's stand. Nonetheless, on the other hand, the authors keep supporting democracy in the rest of the paper. Most probably, their position is one of "necessary but not sufficient", though it will be interesting to contrast the position with views as the one of Kaldor (2008), who does not conceive democracy as a requisite for human security as long as there is political stability. Finally, I have some concerns about the tensions among academic disciplines that emerge through the analysis proposed from the development ethics perspective. As it is expected, the authors have to deal with the broad range of expertise that contributes to development studies: economics, international relations, politics, sociology, and so. Research in the field does not even fix in just one discipline, and mixed theories are common - and appreciated. However, when issues like the people-centeredness or context specificity of human security are at stake, I think it is vital to leave clear the deep ontological differences that condition the knowledge produced. In other words, I have problems to lambaste distorted visions of the "human" derived from theories that have as referent "the state", or other entities, without pointing out the initial limitations the starting point ensues. For example, it is somehow problematic when the argumentation jumps from the contextual requirements of caring - i.e. personal encounters - to care as a moral orientation for global social justice, without a more elaborated quilting in the middle. again an issue of level, now from the outer realms to the micro-politics of the population of the selected context. More elaboration in this boundaries will be of help to better understand the positive side of (human) security.

Free Migration as a solution to poverty

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 11:18:00 +0900

This made a lot of sense to me. Via Owen abroad

Happy 2010

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 09:31:48 +0900

Sunset in Manila, Philippines (Thanks to Eric) Best wishes for you all in the new year. あけましておめでとう！今年もよろしく！

A year lost

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:36:24 +0900

There have been plenty of criticisms to Obama's Nobel Price of Peace, but I was not totally convinced. Something in his attitude seemed to deserve it, somehow. But his remarks on the award ceremony finally dissuaded me. Call me sensitive, but I did not expect a discussion about the existence of evil. In a seemingly more benevolent analysis, Brooks from the NYT call him a "Christian Realist". Please, judge yourselves.

Any human security analysis on drugs so far?

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:54:56 +0900

Although APEC has been including drug trafficking inside its human security agenda, I haven't heard of any researcher on human security dealing with this hot issue. Besides, if it is difficult to do so in the countries where the problem is a daily reality, much more here in Japan where a pop star with milligrams of a forbidden substance has been in the news for months. Anyway, in what I personally believe would be the better possible human-security outcome, the argument seems to be is leaning towards some form of decriminalization. Much has been heard about U.S. administration stance in this respect, but there are many other changes going on around the globe. If you want to read a little bit more about the trend, here are some links: + Portugal's experience + Final Report of the Latin American Comission on Drugs and Democracy + Virtually legal - special from the Economist It seems that some of the contents from the Economist are going to be blocked after some time... Hurry up!

The deep question

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 17:09:12 +0900

Something that is clear from the discussions behind any of the issues treated through human security is that a reconsideration of what is external and what is domestic is necessary. Some of today's challenges do not distinguish among borders, and thus solutions of individual nations would not be enough to face them. In a sense, what it is required to us, citizens of the third millennium, is to be able to take and enforce global domestic decisions. This formulation may seem either paradoxical or trivial, but I want to remark is that human security urge us to think in a domestic way, even if it is at planetary scale, with the unavoidable problem of finding a way to make political units weaken their restraints. These two issues, taken separately, have different academic traditions behind, but to be faced together requires new approaches. An interesting example we would see in the coming weeks is the Australian proposal for the design of a future agreement on CO2 emissions. International agreement are usually toothless, and those supposed to be binding take ages to be punished. So the delegation proposed that agreements should consist of regulations to be approved by each country congress, and thus to be designed globally but enforced locally. A similar debate was going on around financial institutions during the peak of the crisis. Pundits were discussing whether it would be better to have a central regulation to prevent future devastating bubbles, or if it was better to trust on the different strategies design by each country. So far, the latter has been favored, not only for the difficulty of coordination, but also because, thinking in an evolutionary way, many strategies guarantee that someone would find the best answer when it becomes necessary. Nevertheless, domestic decisions entail their own problems, which are easy to envision by following the internal debates of any country. That is why I found last Monday column of David Brooks in the NYT very appealing. In reviewing the discussion about the health system in the U.S., he emphasizes the dilemma between "vitality or security". He goes further to describe the situation as a "brutal choice", the choice of whether we prefer to care about the most vulnerable or economic progress. The domestic question is heavily influenced by values, which finally decide what we admit as a threat for us. Those of us who work on security believe that such discussion will not affect us. In any case, we are by the side of threats, aren't we? But you can see that even with all the evidence, the question of value would have to be sorted - either at the local or the global scale. And certainly that is something human security experts have asked themselves less about. Have you?

Long break - summer 2009

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:36:20 +0900

Hi there! The summer vacation was over a month ago but, fortunately, I had the opportunity to go to Philippines during October for fieldwork. So, please wait for some news about human security in the rim of fire. By now, there may be many of you wondering about the changes going on in Japan, so here is an interesting comment from our friends of the AJISS: The End of LDP Rule and its Meaning. Also, one of our professors just mailed me the following group in Zotero, maybe some of you would like to join - New Approaches to Human Security in the Asia-Pacific. See you soon,

Holy Punishment

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:35:38 +0900

From the NYT Do you remember the weirdest reaction to the swine flu pandemic? A hint, it was not Afghanistan decision to isolate the only pig in the country that lived in the zoo. But you are hot: it was Egypt decision to kill all the pigs in the country to avoid the spread of the disease. A draconian measure of religious discriminatory nuance - pigs in the Muslim country belong to Christians - had some unintended consequences: tons of organic waste that pigs were fed of are now filling the streets. I wonder if I am being impious...

Embracing a new apocaplypse

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 16:38:56 +0900

Following the trend on climate change from a previous post, some additional info about the trending topic and its effects. The BBC published in its web page an interesting article about the way Climate Change is displacing other environmental problems out of the agenda. Fortunately, water issues are still as relevant as Climate for the green hooligans, but is a shame that issues as desertification or fisheries receive less attention. Although, to be honest, it is possible that pop-altruism concentrated in their new apocalypse, gives time to less passionate discussions on the other problems that, sooner or later, would re-emerge. But, why apocalypse? Climate change is so pressing that it justifies any available mean of persuasion. If not, just ask the editorialist of the NYT:

One can only hope that these arguments turn the tide in the Senate. Mr. Kerry, Mr. Warner and like- minded military leaders must keep pressing their case, with help from the Pentagon and the White House. National security is hardly the only reason to address global warming, but at this point anything that advances the cause is welcome.

Trying to be optimistic, climate change can bring along a longly deserved change in the profile of world armies. Just last week, under the stress of the flooding that affected Taiwan, President Ma publicly said that

“now our enemy is not necessarily the people across the Taiwan Strait but nature,” Then, an order for 60 American-made Blackhawk helicopters was cut by 15, and the savings used to buy disaster relief aircraft.(from the NYT)

45 instead of 60 may seem a minimum digression from the previous plan but, if we add this gesture to the document published in America two weeks ago, it could be speculated about the seeds of a trend. Human security is about how to change the mentality of the guys with guns too. See you,