For Whom, from What?

Abstract

Since its inception in the iggos, human security has become a significant, perhaps defining, aspect of Canadian foreign policy. is credited with propagating a unique approach to human security by exercising international leadership on multiple high-profile policy initiatives. Many observers have noted that human security provides the most consistent unifying framework for Canadian foreign and security policy in the post-Cold War era. Some have gone further, suggesting it is the pillar, political leitmotif, or ethical guide of global engagement over the past two decades.1 Though debates continue over the significance, efficacy, and desirability of incorporating human security into Canadian foreign policy - many in the pages of International Journal - there is general agreement that it has been central to post-Cold War global role, and that many foreign policy successes in that time have been prominently labelled human security achievements.The generally positive response to human security agenda does, however, obscure conceptual and practical challenges that attend how has defined and approached human security. Unlike holistic human security frameworks employed by other actors, the Canadian approach is characterized by a focus on the prevention of violent harms to foreign human subjects. By marginalizing the socioeconomic and intersubjective dimensions of human wellbeing that are central to holistic human security, the Canadian approach ignores the radical reconceptualization of security that forms the core of human security studies. Moreover, by emphasizing the definitive role of violence, the Canadian conceptualization privileges the state and its institutions because of the former's monopoly on the legitimate use of violence within modern politics. A definitional emphasis on violence results in a practical emphasis on states, displacing people from the analytical centre of human security. In practice, therefore, the Canadian approach retains a state-centrism and conceptual narrowness that undermine employing people as the referent objects of security analysis.Why does the Canadian approach abandon the radicalism of holistic human security, and what are the implications for conditions of human (in)security on the ground? Examining current Arctic policy, I argue that the Canadian approach supports elitist and state-centric security discourse and practice while minimizing the emancipatory potential inherent in holistic human security. It does this by viewing human security as a central plank of foreign, not domestic, policy, and by employing a violence-centric definition that excludes from the scope of its analysis the most pressing insecurities in the Canadian north. The result is the marginalization of hazards that most affect the people who actually inhabit the region in favour of statist, militarized representations of insecurity generated by southern Canadian policymakers. In the context of the Canadian Arctic, narrow human security also reproduces structural relations of dominance and subordination between the federal and territorial orders of government, while failing to mitigate - indeed, contributing to - conditions of insecurity for northern peoples and communities. Current Arctic policy thus exemplifies a preference for militarism and legalism similar to that found in the Canadian approach to human security.This article surveys the conceptual development of human security and its incorporation into Canadian foreign policy. It traces the narrowing of human security agenda from 1996-2006, providing a critical account of the factors behind the Canadian approach to human security.The implications of a narrow human security agenda are examined in light of three areas of federal policy: trade, climate change, and aboriginal governance. The conceptual and practical significance of narrow human security approach is then demonstrated by analyzing three central documents of the federal government's policy towards the Arctic: the Canada first defence strategy, Canada's northern strategy, and Canada's Arctic foreign policy. …