The essentials
Non-traditional security goes beyond military threats to states. It includes threats to the lives and well-being of people. Human security places the individual, rather than the state, at the centre. The UN Development Programme's Human Development Report of 1994 helped make the idea widely known.
There are different views of how broad human security should be. The narrow concept focuses on protecting people from violent threats such as war, genocide and terrorism. A broader concept also includes threats such as hunger, disease and natural disasters, captured in the phrase "freedom from want" alongside "freedom from fear". The broadest view also stresses freedom from indignity.
Key points
- Global poverty: unequal growth between and within countries leaves many people without basic needs, which is a source of insecurity.
- Health epidemics: diseases such as HIV/AIDS, SARS and avian flu spread across borders through travel and trade.
- Migration: refugees are people who flee their own country because of war, persecution or disaster; internally displaced persons are those who are forced to leave their homes but remain within their own country.
- Human rights: violations such as political repression and discrimination are seen as threats to human security.
- Terrorism: the use of political violence that deliberately targets civilians to create fear.
- Non-traditional threats usually require cooperation among states, international organisations and NGOs, because no state can handle them alone.
Exam tips
A frequent question asks you to distinguish a refugee from an internally displaced person. Also learn the three "freedoms" in the human security debate.
Common mistakes
- Calling every displaced person a refugee. A person who has not crossed an international border is internally displaced, not a refugee.