A Responsibility to Rethink?

Abstract

As Victor Hugo once wrote, not even armies can withstand an idea whose time has come. In the case of human security he may very well be right, but the emergence of differing conceptions of it has affected the trajectory of its development as an alternative security paradigm. security as a concept has immense appeal for scholars and practitioners interested in the creation of a more just world order. This appeal is derived from a combina- tion of material changes and challenges in the global system as well as an ideational shift towards international citizenship and governance. Increasing interConnectivities in global economic, social, and environmental systems have created impacts for citizens around the world and challenges for state regulation. There has been a corresponding reconceptualization of key con- cepts such as citizenship and sovereignty. In an increasingly interconnected world, what responsibilities do states and peoples have to each other? This article poses the question: how radical a transformation is the shift from national security to human security?At the core of the debate among proponents of human security is the perceived tension between the protection of individuals and addressing broader causes. I argue here that the concept of responsibility to protect (R2P) is commonly presented as a pragmatic move to human security into a more manageable concept, but the result of this betrays the deeper normative shift implied in the concept. By separating one of the many factors that contribute and lead to weak states, civil conflicts, and large-scale losses of life, the root causes remain relegated to the bottom of the priority list, conceptually and practically, condemning populations to perpetual conflict and thus insecurity. As a method for analyzing this problem, I will contrast the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty's (ICISS) report, responsibility to protect, which focuses on the definition, with the commission on human security's report, Human security now (HS now). I will analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each document and their fit in the broader debate on operationalizing human security. This analysis is broken down into an examination of the pragmatic rationale given for the focus, as well as a discussion of deeper conceptual shifts embedded in the human security concept.The significance of the Canadian version of human security has been enhanced through its official sanction at the 2005 world summit of the United Nations, by an April 2006 UN security council resolution (resolution 1674) and most recently by the establishment of an R2P centre in New York in February 2008. The most powerful countries in the world-with several exceptions, perhaps-are on the UN security council, and the passage of a resolution supporting R2P provokes the question: does this acceptance represent a significant shift in how security is conceptualized? What is entailed normatively and practically in R2P, and why would the conceptualization be preferable to HS now? These are questions fundamentally relevant to scholars of global order, conflict, and development. The question of how radical the notion of human security is, and the scale of normative and practical change necessary to implement a human security policy framework cuts to the core of the broad versus narrow debate surrounding this concept. In order to change the referent from the state to the individual, and away from Westphalian norms, it has been suggested that human security needs to be focused on direct physical threats to human security, both for methodological and policy-related reasons.1The two conceptions of security outlined in this chapter rest on competing rationale. It is hypothesized that focusing on the human security agenda will spur normative changes and this may spill over to other aspects of human insecurity.2 The focus for human security is pragmatic, focusing on operationalizing within a power politics framework, conceptual clarity, and military force. …