Development and Human Security

Abstract

Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Simon Fraser University. This article has benefited from comments and suggestions from Robert O. Matthews and Richard Sandbrook. Research was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.IN AN ARTICLE THAT APPEARED IN THIS JOURNAL, Cranford Pratt examined competing rationales for Canadian development assistance - humane internationalism and international realism.(1) He argued that the cosmopolitan and solidarity-based ethos (that is, an ethical obligation to help those less fortunate) that should underpin human security has been eroded in favour of realist-based strategic and self-interest considerations. As Pratt noted, the two rationales were not necessarily opposed, and, indeed, could and should be mutually reinforcing. However, although the rhetoric of solidarity and compassion is used in the evolving discourse over human security, in reality, donors give greater priority to self-interest in the formulation of aid policies.Although Pratt's work focuses primarily on debates over human security and foreign aid policy in Canada, the themes he develops - the tension between competing rationales and motives among the major aid donors and the gaps between rhetoric and reality in their aid programmes - are applicable to broader debates over 'development' and 'security' that have evolved in the post-cold war era. This article applies those insights to a critical examination of evolving discourses on broadening and deepening the concept of security by linking it with development. It highlights the problems of, and prospects for, institutionalizing a more effective approach to human security.I argue that the institutional structure of contemporary world politics has become increasingly discordant with challenges faced by the world's most vulnerable populations and impedes efforts at institutionalizing a more effective approach to human security. Those efforts have to contend with institutions, largely constructed in the aftermath of World War II, that embody a state-centric view of security, defined as the defence of a particular set of values against external threats, and inform a culture of conventional development reflected in the practices of the major donors. Evolving discourses on extending the concept of security by linking it with such issues as poverty, inequality, deprivation, and environmental degradation encapsulated in the notion of human security are plagued by ambiguity. However, the real problems stem not from ambiguity per se, but from the way the present international institutional structure enables and even reinforces particular interpretations of human security even as it constrains and marginalizes others.(2)Discourses of extended security have been interpreted by the major aid donors in such a way as to preserve the legitimacy of the existing structures, institutions, and processes of the global political economy, to avoid any meaningful reform, and to distract attention away from the contradictions of contemporary neoliberal globalization that may be complicit in the generation of insecurities for vulnerable individuals and groups worldwide.(3) Ethical concerns about the abatement of harm and reduction of vulnerabilities are to a large extent given less priority and/or are relegated to the realm of humanitarian relief. This ignores the possibility that long-term reform of those very structures may be necessary to address some of the sources of insecurity. The result is a 'moral deficit' in contemporary global governance that is evident in the inability or unwillingness to respond effectively to evolving patterns of insecurity and deprivation in Africa and other regions of the world.SECURITY AND DEVELOPMENT: THE EARLY PERIODTraditionally, security meant the preservation and defence of a status quo - the political independence and territorial integrity of states - against external military threats. …