Human Security Discourse Research Articles

“Fortress Europe is an insult to the values of the EU”: The legitimation of migrant acceptance in the human security speech acts of Members of the European Parliament

AbstractScholars agree that securitized discourses mainly drive migration policy. However, to fully understand the migration discourse, it is necessary to look also at the discourse legitimating the acceptance of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. Namely, how Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) legitimate the potential acceptance of migrants in EU plenary debates within the human security speech acts that prevail in the European Parliament plenary debates. By exploring legitimation categories, I show that human security discourse might remain part of the exclusion process, similarly to other security concepts and discursive strategies. In other words, the results show that in human security speech acts, MEPs evoke the “language of exclusion practices” containing the victimhood trope and building the “hierarchy of vulnerability.” Moreover, MEPs' efforts to legitimize immigration in this way might be counterproductive. In particular, the article discusses whether attempts to elicit grand emotions such as pity or shame helps to attract the audience.

Police soldiers, elite squads, and militia: militarized masculinities and public security discourses in Rio de Janeiro (1995–2018)

ABSTRACT This article investigates how gender representations were mobilized within security discourses by state authorities in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 1995 to 2018. First, we present the state of the art of the feminist international relations debate on gender performativity and militarized masculinities. Then, we analyze political statements and speeches by state authorities, offering new insights into the gendered nature of approaches to security policies in Rio de Janeiro. Our findings suggest that performances of militarized masculinity were crucial elements of public security discourses during the period analyzed. Significantly, we distinguish three main phases of public security policies, characterized by different performances of masculinity: (1) the mid-1990s until the mid-2000s, characterized by the representation of law enforcement agents as “police soldiers”; (2) the period of the Unidade de Polícia Pacificadora (UPP) program (2008–2014), characterized by the duality of a more feminine, human rights-centered security discourse and the continuation of the masculine militaristic logic, embodied by “elite squad” units; and (3) a return to the masculine war logic in public security during the federal intervention (2018). We contend that these performances of militarized masculinity contributed to the maintenance of a war logic as a central element of public security throughout Brazil’s democratic period, undercutting non-military approaches to governance and demanding tolerance of authoritarian measures and human rights abuses.

Genocide in the human security discourse and rhetoric of Sudan's Darfur : an Asantean view

Genocide is horrible. It is an abomination of the human species, which is totally unacceptable. This is a common denominator among international lawyers, political scientists and other scholars and practitioners with an interest in the study of conflict and its implications on human existence. It is an obscenity, the evil of our time that all people must work to eradicate and this, in itself, is enough to explain why the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide is obligatory to all states, including those who are no party to other related international legal instruments such as the Rome Statute of 2002. Thus, genocide is operationally referred to as the general practice of mass extra-judicial executions. To this end, this article seeks to achieve the following two central objectives: (1) interrogate the historical (and/or rhetorical) use of the term ‘genocide’ to refer to the security situation in Darfur region of Sudan during the year 2009 and (2) determine if genocide did take place in Darfur or it was simply a rhetoric. This is informed by the fact that this has been a matter of disagreement among policy makers, academics, political commentators and diplomats. Using the blend of Afrocentric perspective and interdisciplinary critical discourse analysis in its broadest form, we base our argument on the past developments about the Darfur conflict. The major finding of this article partly confirms the Euro-American claim of the occurrence of genocide in Darfur around the year 2009.

When militarisation endangered both human and state security: The Zimbabwean experience, 2000–2008

ABSTRACT This article uses the case of Zimbabwe to explore how militarisation endangers both human and state security. While militarisation in Zimbabwe manifested itself in several ways, this study focuses on prioritising military solutions to most of the real or perceived security problems in the country between 2000 and 2008. Using data collected through review of available literature and interviews with officials in the public and private sectors, the article argues that the military-style operations were a threat to order and national security in both the short term and long run because they undermined human security. This is the case despite the fact that the military-style operations, similar to other manifestations of militarisation in Zimbabwe, were mooted and implemented framed in human and state security discourses. The article concludes that the prioritisation of military solutions to every security problem works to safeguard the governing elite but worsens instead of addressing the citizens’ problems with far-reaching implications for human and state security. For human security to be realised, Zimbabwe needs to discontinue militarised governance and capacitate responsible government ministries and departments.

Conceptual Evolution and Fundamental Challenges in Transition from Cold War Security Discourse and Emergence of Human Security Discourse in the Age of Globalization

It is widely accepted that human security is one of the latest, most critical topics in the political science literature and international relations. This concept proposes that the origin or goal of security provision must be human beings. In fact, human security has the concept of 'the human' embedded at the heart of it.With a more extensive interpretation, human security has extended the scope of security and has assessed social and economic issues within this framework. Understanding human security requires the comprehension of its conceptual evolution process. As such, the main issue covered in the current study was understanding the nature of conceptual evolutions of human security in two periods before and after the Cold War. To realize this issue, we evaluated some of the most important international efforts and documents related to the concept and derived the significant factors and subcategories in two periods. Despite following the evolutionary process of human security and becoming one of the most important security discourses, this concept still deals with serious challenges in conceptual and functional areas. Therefore, the second and main question of the present study was: what is the nature of key challenges of human security discourse at national and international levels? To answer this question, we used the exploratory approach and a descriptive-analytical method to explain the most important challenges facing human security in conceptual and functional dimensions.

Human security in EU strategy: reflecting on the experience of EUPM in Bosnia and Herzegovina and EULEX in Kosovo

ABSTRACTIn the early 2000s, the EU incrementally appeared to have espoused a distinguishing human security discourse. This was bound not only to inform its crisis management operations but also to shape its global role. Today, the Union seems to move toward a global strategy blueprint and an ensuing public discourse. Human security is no longer mentioned as a grand objective, though it has not been moved to the background. It is cited as an end of one just component of EU global strategy. This article tries to map out how relevant EU texts speak about human security and highlights benchmarks in the cases of the European Union Police Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo. By focusing on the mandate and effects of these civilian missions, it finds that the Union has refrained from operationalising a human security perspective to direct them. Although it has not taken steps to internalize and turn human security into an overarching driver of its engagement, elements of human security advancement might be recorded.

Usos políticos del concepto de seguridad humana: securitización de la violación de derechos humanos y del subdesarrollo en el escenario internacional

En este artículo se hace una revisión documental sobre algunos usos políticos del concepto ‘seguridad humana’ en el escenario internacional. El artículo muestra cómo esos usos en el escenario internacional se concretaron en procesos de securitización en torno a la violación de derechos humanos y el subdesarrollo en algunos contextos. Se explora cómo se formaron discursos de seguridad humana claramente diferenciables, lo que confirma el carácter equívoco de los conceptos en la política y cómo, si se estudian los usos que determinados actores les dieron en contextos específicos, se pueden conocer sus significados.

Reflecting on criminalizing male violence against women under human rights and human security discourses: a feminist legal and policy analysis

Abstract Violence against women is an established issue of concern under international law as well as in the international security domain. More in general, it is contended that issues related to gender-based violence need to be countered with strategies aimed at fighting sexual hierarchies and structural discrimination affecting women at different levels and in different contexts. Despite this, international legal and policy responses to male violence against women are increasingly turning to criminal law enforcement with a strict focus on perpetrators’ individual accountability. The article critically analyzes this trend within the two international legal and policy frameworks that in the past decades have most consistently integrated the issue of violence against women, that is, human security and human rights. The article contends that the increasing focus on criminalization that has emerged in both these frameworks risks obfuscating and downsizing the collective and “public” dimension of States’ responsibility with regards the social phenomenon of violence. Indeed, criminalization strategies allow States to circumvent their duty to work on the social, political and economic structural dimensions at the root of this severe form of violation women’s human rights.

Filling the void: the case for international economic criminal law

The jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (hereinafter: ICC) is limited to the most serious crimes of concern to the entire international community that threaten security, peace, and well-being of the world. This article argues that serious (transitional) economic offences should belong in this group. Ignoring these crimes, which often represent economic violence characteristic of transitional and post-conflict countries, can lead to another cycle of armed conflict and/or physical violence as well as to internal and external insecurity. Responses to globalization are having a significant effect on international law and institutions with a view to protecting economic and social human rights, human security, and human dignity. Sometimes, as in the case of Croatia, national states are not able to and/or unwilling to prosecute serious and systemic economic crimes, which in turn undermines individual and collective security. The same could be said for international criminal law. By ignoring these crimes and violations – unlike what international human rights law, supranational criminology, and transitional justice does – the core international criminal law no longer responds to the needs of societies and individuals. The Rechtsgut in need of protection by prosecuting serious economic crimes that fulfill the threshold of core crimes on an international level is comprised of the “security, peace and well-being of the world.” Therefore, one could argue that the International Criminal Court’s possible involvement in economic violence does have a legal base, without needing to amend the ICC’s Statute (hereinafter: ICCSt). Since one must be aware of the diversity that exists as to the criteria for international criminalization, this article is based on broader grounds in order to argue in favor of international criminalization of these economic crimes. The article therefore emphasizes the importance of connecting narratives of international criminal law, with discourses on international human rights law (based on Art. 21 of the ICCSt), human security, (supranational) criminology, transitional justice, and (economic) criminal law. In the line of (human) security discourse, this approach seeks to find arguments as to whether or not it is necessary to begin prosecuting serious (transitional) economic offences as crimes under international law. First, this article gives a brief overview of the failed experiment in Croatia concerning the prosecution of transitional economic crimes that served as incentive, based on the ICC’s complementarity principle.

Spanish

Despite general consensus around the fact that human development is rooted in the optimal relationship of the individual with the Estate, the environment, the Institutions and the cultural and political systems, to address such relationships from a security perspective have been more problematic. This paper is not intended to join the debate around the concept of Human Security itself, but to evaluate the ways in which it can become an effective instrument to protect the individual against the threats of this century. We argue that as a paradigm, the Human Security discourse has reinforced, rather than challenged, traditional political models in terms of security but it still is an instrument with the potential to broaden the conceptual framework to evaluate threats, prioritize policy making and identify the sources of vulnerability and resilience in conflict and transition. Finally, we review the conceptual scope of Human Security from the perspective of the capacity of human groups to assess, cope and mitigate threats and vulnerabilities, in different social contexts.

Dehumanizing R2P: Preventing Mass Atrocities without Human Security?

<p class="a"><span lang="EN-US">In 2005, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted the World Summit Outcome Document, including three key paragraphs articulating the international community’s responsibility to protect (R2P) civilians from mass atrocities, including war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. Some key controversies and shortcomings of the current R2P principle remain absent from the debate, namely the lack of a human-centered approach from which R2P can be more adequately understood and implemented. I will make three key arguments following from this gap. Firstly, the original articulation of R2P developed by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) in 2001 sought to locate itself largely within the human security discourse to overcome the bureaucratic and “national-interest” obstacles of P5 decision-making on international peace and security as it relates to mass atrocities. Secondly, the state-centric articulation of R2P adopted in the World Summit Outcome Document in 2005, endorsed by the United Nations Security Council in 2006, has reified the inherent problem associated with allowing the UN Security Council the exclusive right to make key global security decisions on egregious crimes perpetrated against civilians. Thirdly, without embedding R2P within the human security discourse, specifically understanding human beings as the referents of security, the principle offers very little significant normative or political progress on the protection of civilians, and will continue to fall short as a galvanizing call to action to prevent mass atrocities, and save civilian lives. </span></p>

The European Union’s Human Security Discourse: Conceptualization and Justification

Human security has been central to “normative power” Europe, hence it is worth asking whether its conceptualization in EU foreign policy and foreign policy discourse is normatively defensible. Important challenges for human security lie in determining how compelling principles can be conceptualized, justified, and practiced for particular missions, and in how these norms relate to the broader legitimacy of missions. After reviewing the human security discourse in the EU and the somewhat sparse normative critiques of it, this article focuses on two principles articulated in the relevant policy discourse: “legitimate political authority” and a “bottom-up” approach. The first requires local consent and support for human security missions, whilst the second requires that missions address the actual insecurities and needs important to beneficiaries. The argument is that this human security approach suffers two problems regarding norm justification and legitimacy. First, there is a tendency to conceptualize human security as an objective norm, whereas the concept only makes sense when understood subjectively through a discursive process between security providers and beneficiaries. These conceptual characteristics are elucidated by considering the debts of human security thinking to the “capabilities approach” to welfare and development. Second legitimizing human security intervention by consent is unhelpful, since what is actually needed is emerging and ongoing discursive political interaction and co-agency with local communities. Since the appropriate procedures for conceptualizing and for legitimizing human missions are procedurally related, adopting an interpretive and discursive approach to human security is recommended for EU security policy.

Human (In)Security and Social Identity Group: The Case of Jihadi Terrorism in Africa

This paper examines the link between human insecurity and social identity groups. It is argued that pervasive insecurity, necessitated by a weak and fragile state system and coupled by weak governance, encourages individuals to identify with radical Islamic groups. One way to address this problem is by promoting a stronger human security discourse in addressing the root causes of terrorism.

Debating Human Security in China: Towards Discursive Power?

While the concept of human security is sometimes dismissed in China as an irrelevant and alien “Western” concept, it has been the subject of serious academic debate – particularly in the mid-2000s, when a series of crises led to a rethinking of the nature of security in and for China. But like other theories and concepts which have been largely developed outside China, human security has been “Sinicised” to reflect Chinese contexts and preferences. In the process, the emphasis on the individual human being that is normally at the heart of human security discourses is typically replaced by a focus on the collective humankind, and Chinese analyses are often packaged together with broader understandings of non-traditional security. This results in a Chinese version of the concept where the state remains a key referent point and actor – indeed, the state is the key guarantor of human security, not a threat to it. And it is this Chinese definition, so the argument goes, that Chinese practices should be judged against, and not supposed universal definitions that in reality only reflect the history and values (and interests) of Western states.

The European Union's human security discourse: where are we now?

The language of human security has been prominent in the European Union's (EU) official discourse for a number of years. However, whilst it has been promoted as a new approach for the EU in the development of its security and defence policy, the aim of this article is to assess the extent to which it actually features in the EU's contemporary strategic discourse and practice. It seeks to uncover where and how the concept is spoken within the EU's institutional milieu, how it is understood by the relevant policy-makers in the EU and the implication of this across key areas of human security practice. It is argued in the article that human security has not been embedded as the driving strategic concept for Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) in an era of crisis and change in Europe and beyond and that the prospects for this materialising in the near future are rather thin.

Beyond the poverty of national security: toward a critical human security perspective in educational policy

This article examines the intersecting logics of human capital and national security underpinning the corporate school reform movement in the United States. Taking a 2012 policy report by the Council on Foreign Relations as an entry point, it suggests that these logics are incoherent not only on their own narrow instrumental terms, but also more importantly in terms of progressive ideals of human and educational flourishing. The article proceeds to draw on discussions within the fields of international relations and critical security studies in order to think through what it might mean to reframe educational policy within the terms of human security rather than human capital and national security. It further explores both the possibilities and distinct limitations of extant human security discourses and policies in relation to global neoliberal governance and biopolitics. The article concludes by advocating for a critical human security framework in educational policy along three conceptual lines: (1) A Human beyond Human Capital; (2) Symbiotic Parallelism; and (3) Altersecurity. Ultimately, it suggests that human security for educational flourishing might offer insight into transcending the idea of security altogether.

Human securitization of water? A case study of the Indus Waters Basin

In the large and growing literature on hydropolitics, insecurity generated through water-related conflicts is most often conceptualized under a model of economic resource scarcity. Conflict is generally reduced to the question of who has water, who needs water and thus what cost, in economic, political or military terms, is appropriate to acquiring access to water. This article argues that while such analyses effectively chart the central resource-strategic relations involved in the geopolitics of water, they nonetheless disregard the deeper biological and cultural (that is social, ethnic, religious) significance of water in any water conflict. Such analyses, it claims, are too strongly linked to the traditional (as opposed to human) security discourse and therefore run the risk of misdiagnosing the complexity of the water resource challenge. To respond to this challenge the article will develop a human security ‘metrics’ for analysing water-based conflicts in human security terms. It will then compare an analysis of the Indus Waters Treaty based upon the human security approach with an analysis based on a ‘traditional’ security assessment of the treaty in order to assess the viability of the two approaches. Finally, the article will link the comparative assessments back to the water wars literature, drawing conclusions about its strengths and weaknesses and the possibility of a synthesis of traditional and human security in the analysis of water conflict.

Discourses of climate security

Global climate change has been increasingly defined as a security threat by a range of political actors and analysts. Yet as the range of voices articulating the need to conceive and approach climate change as a security issue has expanded, so too has the range of ways in which this link has been conceptualized. This article systematically maps different approaches to the relationship between climate change and security as climate security discourses, divided here between national, human, international and ecological security discourses. In exploring the contours of each, the articles asks how the referent object of security is conceptualised (whose security is at stake?); who are conceived as key agents of security (who is responsible for/able to respond to the threat?); how is the nature of the threat defined; and what responses are suggested for dealing with that threat? Systematically mapping these alternative discourses potentially provides a useful taxonomy of the climate change–security relationship in practice. But more importantly, it serves to illustrate how particular responses to climate change (and the actors articulating them) are enabled or constrained by the ways in which the relationship between security and climate change is understood. The article concludes by suggesting that the most powerful discourses of climate security are unlikely to inform a progressive or effective response to global climate change.

Some humans are more Human than Others: Troubling the ‘human’ in human security from a critical feminist perspective

This article develops critical feminist engagement with human security by interrogating the taken-for-granted category of the ‘human’ therein. Failure to reflectively deconstruct this category has contributed to human security’s reproduction of dominant norms and the emptiness of its apparent radical promise. The article shows how the ‘human’ has historically been constructed as an exclusionary – and fundamentally gendered – category, and examines its construction in human security discourse and the capabilities approach in which the latter is rooted, as well as its discursive effects. The article troubles the model of the autonomous, rational human subject who is the bearer of capabilities, which human security inherits from the liberal humanist tradition of thought, and which obscures the matrices of power through which individuals become socially differentiated. It then considers the implication of human security in demarcating differences as ‘morally relevant’, including its instrumentalization in the ‘war on terror’.

Human Security: Undermining Human Rights?

This article warns that the human security discourse and agenda could inadvertently undermine the international human rights regime. Insofar as human security identifies new threats to well-being, new victims of those threats, new duties of states, or new mechanisms for dealing with threats at the inter-state level, it adds to the established human rights regime. When it simply rephrases human rights principles without identifying new threats, victims, duty-bearers, or mechanisms, however, at best it complements human rights and at worst it undermines them. A narrow view of human security is a valuable addition to the international normative regime requiring state and international action against severe threats to human beings. By contrast, an overly broad view of human security ignores the human rights regime; by subsuming human rights under human security, it also undermines the primacy of civil and political rights as a strategic tool for citizens to fight for their rights against their own states.