The Utility of Human Security:
Sovereignty and Humanitarian
Intervention
NICHOLAS THOMAS & WILLIAM T. TOW*
Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong & International Relations and
Asian Politics Research Unit, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
‘Human security’ is a promising but still underdeveloped paradigmatic
approach to understanding contemporary security politics. We argue that
tension between those embracing the politics of development and those
supporting the human security paradigm has intensified because the transnational
dimensions embodied within the latter approach have been underassessed.
The idea of ‘threat’ also needs to be identified with more
precision for the human security concept to accrue analytical credibility.
We focus on how transnational behaviour addresses the central human
security problems of vulnerability and immediacy. Human security’s utility
for confronting crisis is also evaluated via the application of two case
studies of humanitarian intervention: the 1994 multinational operation in
Haiti and the 1999 intervention in East Timor. We conclude that, while
general security politics includes both domestic and international issues,
human security allows us to transcend sovereign prerogatives and to
address emerging transregional threats more effectively.
Introduction
Put bluntly, our accepted definition of the limits of national security as coinciding with
national borders is obsolete.1
What is needed today … is not so much territorial security – the security of the state – but
human security, the security of the people in their everyday lives.2
T
HE END OF THE COLD WAR generated a major re-evaluation of normative
and policy assumptions as these apply to international relations
(IR). In particular, new attempts were undertaken to explain what made
people ‘secure’. Historically, security was understood in terms of threats to
state sovereignty and territory. Alternative explanations of security politics
were introduced throughout much of the 1990s, spanning such concerns as
Security Dialogue © 2002 PRIO. SAGE Publications, Vol. 33(2): 177–192. ISSN: 0967-0106 [026877]
178 Security Dialogue vol. 33, no. 2, June 2002
access to basic foodstuffs, the quality of the global environment and the
economic welfare of populations inhabiting developing countries. These alternative
explanations of security generated discussion about how far the security
paradigm could be widened and about what is the most appropriate way
to achieve this expansion. As one respected observer has noted, security politics
was focusing increasingly on the problem of how to neutralize ‘threats
without enemies’.3 Put somewhat differently, the term ‘human security’ has
been developed as an idea that can be contrasted with ‘national security’ and
that can direct attention to an emerging and wider spectrum of security issues.
The human security orientation was perhaps initially embraced in a landmark
1994 United Nations Human Development Report (HDR) entitled New
Dimensions of Human Security.4 This report offered a model that incorporated
seven broad categories of the security problematique – economic, environmental,
personal, community, health, political and food. Although primarily
an analysis of development crises facing the post-Cold War world, it also
adopted a key postulate that, if applied, would have major implications for
security politics: A ‘secure state’ untroubled by contested territorial boundaries
could still be inhabited by insecure people. International security politics,
the report clearly implied, must widen its focus and include not only ‘the
security of borders [but] also ... the security of peoples lives’. Another seminal
document, prepared by the UN Commission on Global Governance the following
year (1995), argued that recent episodes of humanitarian intervention
in the Balkans, Africa and elsewhere by collective security entities (i.e. NATO
and the UN) necessitated a widening of the security concept to recognize the
‘unrelenting human costs of violent conflicts’ within boundaries.5 ‘Human
security’, then, emanates from the challenge of reconciling internal developmental
and external threat components.
In this article, we argue that if the term ‘human security’ were defined more
narrowly, it would accrue greater analytical and policy value. This is because
it would then represent a distinct class of security problems – separate from
those embraced by traditional national security criteria – that have become
more urgent in recent years. Our proposed definitional approach to human
security has three interlocking features. First, it entails recognizing that transnational
threats to international norms arising from inadequacies in internal
state systems make individuals and groups within states more vulnerable.
Second, it asserts that states and individuals confronting such vulnerabilities
often cannot address them effectively on their own. This leads to the third
component of our approach: these states and people require some form of international
intervention to gain freedom from fear and want (the fundamental
objective of human security). This approach imposes constraints on state sovereignty
through the mobilization of international civil society to safeguard international
norms ‘and the sharing of power between state and non-state actors
in a globalising world’.6
Nicholas Thomas & William T. Tow The Utility of Human Security 179
This approach is also conceptually distinct from those traditionally applied to
national security, human development and other aspects of IR. It involves focusing
on those events that transcend state borders in terms of their impact on
different societies and diverse individuals. Within a given state, events or problems
such as those relating to food distribution, gender discrimination and basic
shelter are usually contained and resolved within the state’s sovereign boundaries
and are thus best viewed as development problems. An event or crisis
becomes a truly human security problem, however, when the ramifications of
not overcoming it cross a state’s borders and assume a truly international significance,
affecting other societies and individuals. This is particularly so when
that event is ‘non-linear’ – where causes and effects beyond the immediate area
of the threat must be considered and where the postures and resources of a single
state are inadequate to resolve the problem at hand. Cross-border terrorism,
pollution, refugees and genocide are all clear examples of threats that undermine
international peace and security. In this context, the ‘levels of analysis’
question of where human security is best conceptualized – international society,
the state or the individual – is rendered less central to the human security paradigm
than many of its investigators have claimed. ‘Peacebuilding’ operations
rationalized on both traditional and human security grounds are materializing
more often at the non-state level in the post-Cold War environment, rendering
efforts to demarcate a unique human security paradigm more difficult.7 We see
our task here as assessing how the evolution of human security might proceed in
ways that coexist with more traditional approaches, rather than advocating the
former outlook’s complete revision.
To test our argument in the following pages, we will initially examine how
human security represents a departure from the traditional perspectives of
security studies. Transnational behaviour addressing the problems of the
vulnerability and immediacy of human security will then be discussed. We
underscore the relevance of a more confined approach to human security
through an examination of two case studies on humanitarian intervention, in
Haiti and East Timor, where a potential or real threat required peacebuilding
action by the international community. The article will conclude with some
observations about the future utility of the human security paradigm for the
study of international security politics.
Developing the ‘Human Security’ Paradigm:
Prioritizing Threats Beyond the State
In terms of human security, the problem of ‘threat’ is not necessarily
constrained within the confines of state conflict. To the extent that they were
180 Security Dialogue vol. 33, no. 2, June 2002
considered at all after World War II, human security factors were couched
within the ongoing debate between ‘orthodox’ or ‘alternative’ development
theorists. This tendency still emerges in some contemporary investigations.
(Harvard University’s Project on Human Security, for example, defines
human security as ‘the expected number of years of life spent outside the state
of generalized poverty’.8 This fairly specialized basis of measurement tends to
omit critical referents of transnational human security – such as political prisoners,
refugees and victims of environmental or pandemic tragedies – that,
again, transcend individual sovereign boundaries and agendas.) Other analysts,
however, became more prepared to contest the idea of security as the
exclusive domain of those concerned with sovereign or territorial threats.
Calls were increasingly made for a broader, more integrative security purview.
This would encompass the ‘governance and protection of political
communities with broader goals of individual welfare and invulnerability’
against such unstructured threats as environmental degradation, human
rights violations or forced migration.9 Such a widened view of security
required a new set of norms addressing the plights of victims who were either
trapped in the numerous limited conflicts that emerged during the 1990s or
suffered owing to other civil and natural disasters. This broader focus on security
competed with the predictable rationalist views that dominated the era of
Soviet–US geostrategic competition.
‘New’ sets of security concerns included a formidable array of non-military
factors resulting from globalization.10 A view developed that the time and
space in which actions took place had been reduced – that an event in one part
of the world could have a much more immediate effect on distant states, societies
or individuals than was previously possible.11 Foreign policy planners
from various ‘middle power’ states in the UN, such as Canada and Norway,
quickly seized upon this ‘human security’ rubric and equated it with ‘humanitarian’
issues of IR. The acceleration of UN involvement in humanitarian
interventions throughout the 1990s was a watershed in expanding the security
paradigm, as was the increased interest taken by the UN Secretary-General in
building up that organization’s humanitarian infrastructure. As the United
Nations expanded its collaboration with private sector humanitarian organizations,
the old bloc politics of the Cold War evolved within a few short years (at
least in an institutional sense) into what analysts labelled ‘embedded humani-
tarianism’.12
This trend, in turn, spawned greater efforts to conceptualize and implement
a more precise ‘human security’ concept. This imperative was underscored by
the need for states to ensure that their citizens were made as secure as possible.
Even when states were not securing their citizens, it was the responsibility
of other international actors to enforce compliance with humanitarian norms.13
The humanitarian-based international norms underwriting the human security
approach also fostered the belief that the international community was
Nicholas Thomas & William T. Tow The Utility of Human Security 181
responsible for safeguarding individual rights where individual states failed
to do so.14
When Is a Threat a Human Security Threat?
If traditional explanations of security give way to more egalitarian and less
state-centric notions of today’s security challenges, it still remains all too easy
for policymakers ‘to force new problems into familiar categories’.15 Human
security can certainly be applied to meeting urgent threats emanating from external
sources, but it has also been concerned with overcoming vulnerabilities
of individuals incurred at other levels (e.g. domestic politics). Its most fundamental
application is to concentrate upon enhancing the physical security and
economic welfare of all the world’s human inhabitants, notwithstanding their
sovereign status or individual identity.
If the human security concept is to be analytically useful, it must meet a fundamental
criterion relative to threat definition: it must provide tangible threat
parameters against which relative security environments and situations can be
measured. The seven criteria stipulated in the aforementioned 1994 HDR represented
an initial effort to establish such parameters since these focused on
how to decrease the vulnerability of international actors. Although targeted at
the level of the individual, the report acknowledged that vulnerability also
encompassed societies and states. Yet the implied breadth of this application
may have devalued the human security aspect by broadening the idea beyond
measurable limits. Recent human security research has tended to project
human security as either a general label for assessing non-military threats or
as a descriptive itinerary of challenges to individuals’ quality of life.16 Reconciling
the concepts of threat entertained by the traditional security and human
security paradigms remains problematic as long as the latter approach is subject
to vague and logistically inconsistent applications.
The approach to ‘threat’ thus underscores the tension between earmarking
the individual as the key unit of analysis and retaining the state as the central
actor or referent within the human security paradigm. This tension is only
partially resolved by assuming that the state is not unitary. It can be viewed at
the domestic level as comprised of a coalition of interests (the state, the society
and the individual) that is responsive to a particular human security issue
only when a dominant political majority agrees. In a majority of cases, this
dominance will emanate from the state, but it can be influenced by opinions
held by other domestic actors given the state’s resource capacity. In addition,
any subset of this coalition may develop transborder relations with subsets in
other countries to influence public policy.
182 Security Dialogue vol. 33, no. 2, June 2002
The causes and effects beyond the immediate area of threat must also be
considered in a human security context. Environmental crises are illustrative.
‘Environmental decline occasionally leads directly to conflict.... Generally,
however, its impact on nations’ security is felt in the downward pull on
economic performance and, therefore, on political stability.’17 Yet it is very
difficult to measure the cumulative effects that other, non-environmental
factors have had in either creating a new threat or in generating spillover
effects relative to existing ones. In dealing with an event from a security
perspective, limits must be placed on the analysis lest the human security
paradigm become too amorphous and therefore questionable. Rather than
attempt to measure the relative value of each factor that constitutes a human
security threat, it is more useful to demonstrate how these factors might
operate separately or in tandem during specific crises.
A related and key problem that emerges in human security is the status
accorded to state sovereignty. Most important here is the imperative to apply
an objective evaluation to the process of threat intensification – how rapidly a
threat materializes and how serious it will be to populations that transcend
national borders. Richard Matthew and George Shambaugh have pinpointed
what are perhaps the two most critical factors that exacerbate human security
threats in our time: (1) the increased rate and degree of unfettered human
mobility; and (2) transnational access to goods, services and technology on a
global scale, compromised only by corporate interaction or ‘globalization’.18
These factors can be critical in a human security context because they may
compromise a state’s natural propensity to provide maximum security for its
own citizens.
Implementing Threat Responses
Clearly, there are too many and too diverse a range of human security issues
for them all to be resolved through the application of a single macro-strategy.
The primary considerations for prioritizing one human security challenge over
another, however, appear to be those of extreme vulnerability and imminent
danger. Three broad categories clearly relate to these considerations: (1) victims
of war and internal conflict; (2) persons who barely subsist and are thus
courting ‘socio-economic disaster’; and (3) victims of natural disasters.19 These
categories, either by themselves or in combination, generate urgent and compelling
humanitarian emergencies that demand attention.
Responding effectively to human security contingencies involves demarcating
between ‘general’ and ‘specific’ threats.20 General threats in a human security
context are those that are broadly based and recurrent, such as hunger or
disease. They tend to increase the vulnerability of a greater number of individuals
over time but may be less urgent in terms of demanding action by
states or other referent groups than specific threats, such as a single terrorist
Nicholas Thomas & William T. Tow The Utility of Human Security 183
act or a particular natural disaster. However, their modification or resolution
may benefit more individuals on a transnational basis. Specific threats are single
actions that have an immediate effect on the safety or welfare of victims
and demand immediate remedy. The puzzle confronting policymakers with
regard to how to prioritize between general and specific threats lies in the calculation
of trade-offs: does a specific threat, if left unresolved, have such
immediate and overwhelming ramifications as to outweigh the implications of
relegating a general threat competing for attention and resources to the back-
burner?
National policymaking elites frequently confront this dilemma. Adequate
transnational instruments for prioritizing and acting against the myriad of
human security problems now emerging in our world are often lacking
because states have yet to adapt effectively to an increasingly complex and
multilevel international security environment. In evaluating past responses to
crises that, in retrospect, can be identified as being of a human security nature,
illustrative approaches can be highlighted. ‘Peacekeeping’ (the act of instilling
confidence and cooperative behaviour among potentially adversarial parties
by non-military means), for example, emerges as a major catalyst for the
operationalization of the human security approach. Yet, to derive a comprehensive
picture of those security situations that evolve into interventions,
peacekeeping must be considered in tandem with more overt forms of peaceenforcement
behaviour. In this context, human security politics often dovetails
with more traditional (state-centric) responses to crises, as the latter are
frequently found in the area of humanitarian interventions.
Case Studies
For the purposes of this article, we will tailor our analysis to two specific
intervention episodes that can be viewed as ‘complex coercive contingency
operations’ undertaken to achieve human security goals.21 The US-led intervention
in Haiti in 1994 and the Australian-led East Timor operation in 1999
embody appropriate peacebuilding and enforcement characteristics. Both
were human security contingencies that involved elements of vulnerability
and immediate danger. Both also involved choices, for those who intervened,
between responding to general or to specific threats.
It should be recognized that peacebuilding operations are a comparatively
recent innovation compared with traditional state-centric peace-enforcement
or peacekeeping operations. Indeed, peacebuilding operations have largely
come into their own in the post-Cold War era with the recognition that states
no longer have the absolute capacity to create peace but need to rely upon
peaceful, secure societies as well. The problem is that an artificial division
184 Security Dialogue vol. 33, no. 2, June 2002
remains between the two forms of operation, hampering the generation of
enduring stability in insecure environments. The fact is that the more successful
operations, such as Uphold Democracy (Haiti) and UNTAET (East Timor),
have combined both facets – either simultaneously or in phases.
Haiti 1994
In 1994, the United States led a multinational effort to return ousted Haitian
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power.22 This operation had initially
evolved from a US determination to displace a military regime led by General
Raoul Cedras, who had previously ousted an elected civilian government
headed by Aristide in September 1991. Subsequent UN Security Council resolutions
had imposed economic sanctions against the Cedras regime. Haiti’s
already struggling economy was devastated, leading to a major humanitarian
crisis and prompting refugee flows to the USA and other regional countries. In
July 1994, UN Security Council Resolution 940 was passed, authorizing the
use of ‘all necessary means to facilitate the departure from Haiti of the military
leadership’ on humanitarian grounds.23 Following the deployment of a US-led
intervention force, Cedras left the country in mid-October, and Aristide
returned to power a month later. US forces handed over military operations in
Haiti to a UN force in March 1995.24
The intervention (code-named Operation Uphold Democracy) was, for its
time, an unusual combination of both peacekeeping and peacebuilding
phases. The first phase of the operation went largely as foreseen. Helped by
the abdication of Cedras immediately prior to the landing of the first peacekeepers,
the restoration of the Aristide regime was readily accomplished. The
second phase, to secure democracy in Haiti, was far more difficult – requiring
a long-term commitment that arguably only partially succeeded in meeting its
objectives.25 This phase attempted to build the capacity of Haiti’s economic,
social and legal institutions to provide for sustainable peace and development,
both domestically and regionally.26
Although undertaken at a time when human security was just being conceptually
born, the Haitian operation was based upon an operational configuration
that is now prevalent in the human security discourse. The operation’s
policy planners in the USA and the UN recognized that peace was not provided
solely by the state but was dependent upon social and economic actors
within civil society. From this starting point, Operation Uphold Democracy
implicitly acknowledged that the provision of sustainable security for the
Haitian population relied upon a myriad of actions that were interconnected
at both social and state levels. To build peace and security in Haiti necessitated
a multifaceted process that allowed the various participants a degree of
autonomous (but interdependent) sovereignty. The aim of the Haitian intervention
was to restore to power a democratically elected regime. This implies
Nicholas Thomas & William T. Tow The Utility of Human Security 185
an obligation upon states not only to adhere to certain international norms of
governance but also to take necessary measures to ensure that such norms are
upheld by other states.27
East Timor
The East Timor crisis exploded in late summer 1999. It was the culmination of
an imbroglio over Indonesian sovereign authority that had lasted nearly a
quarter of a century. Indonesian troops had occupied East Timor in 1975 following
Portugal’s departure as the colonial power for that territory. The UN
had never recognized Indonesia’s 1976 annexation of East Timor, and a protracted
insurgency war waged by indigenous Timorese against Indonesian
forces continued to undermine Jakarta’s authority in the province. With President
Suharto’s resignation in May 1998 and the subsequent political turmoil in
Indonesia, Suharto’s successor, Bucharuddin Jusuf Habibie, surprised everyone
by announcing that a referendum would be conducted in East Timor
under UN auspices in August 1999. Nearly every eligible East Timorese voter
exercised the right to vote, and 78% chose the independence option. In the
aftermath, pro-Indonesian militias terrorized an East Timorese populace that
had voted overwhelmingly to secede from Indonesia.28
A ‘coalition of the willing’ was quickly fashioned to create the International
Forces in East Timor (INTERFET) intervention force. Around 11,550 troops
were deployed to secure East Timor against further atrocities. Authorized by
the UN Security Council to safeguard East Timorese independence,
INTERFET – and a successor peacekeeping contingent, the United Nations
Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) – successfully moved
the fledgling state towards full autonomy. Although the USA did not provide
land forces, it contributed vital airlift and maritime capabilities to facilitate the
movement and support of INTERFET ground personnel.29
Australia underwrote this peacekeeping operation’s initial costs, but an
international trust fund was later founded to smooth the transition from
peacekeeping to nation-building. The transition from peacekeeping to peacebuilding
was well under way by January 2000, when UNTAET supplanted
INTERFET as the operational UN peacekeeping entity. The UN assumed
responsibility for nation-building and the organization of East Timor’s civil
services. It also coordinated delivery of humanitarian, rehabilitation and
development assistance.30
Comparisons
The holistic nature of human security offers a framework for removing the
conceptual division between peacekeeping and peacebuilding operations.
Rather than assessing a conflict as simply requiring either a peacekeeping or a
186 Security Dialogue vol. 33, no. 2, June 2002
peacebuilding operation to resolve the situation, a human security approach
merges elements of both. As Elizabeth Cousens has observed with respect to
the post-Cold War era, ‘Both the conditions that gave rise to [wars] and those
that resulted from them argued for a more holistic approach to keeping peace
that went beyond military and security priorities to address issues of governance,
democratic legitimacy, social inclusion, and economic equity.’31 This list
of domestic issues is in keeping with the new humanitarian norms that, as discussed
above, link a state’s internal affairs to their perceived impact on the
well-being of the international community.
By creating coalitions of actors able to address macro- as well as micro-level
concerns, there is a greater potential for realizing broader conditions for a sustainable
peace. Such actors include (but are not limited to) the military, civil
society organizations (CSOs) and business groups, all of which must operate
in conjunction with the host state. At different stages (or to achieve different
objectives), different configurations may be congenial. Thus, in East Timor,
immediately after the vote for independence, the military, CSOs and the UN
operated in coalition with the representatives of the East Timorese leadership
to enforce, keep and then build the peace. In the period leading up to the first
general elections in August 2001, various business–CSO–East Timorese coalitions
emerged, under a UN umbrella, to create an environment conducive to
the alleviation of human insecurity. It was hoped that transnational insecurities
(between East Timor and Indonesian West Timor) could be mitigated
through the creation of an economically stable domestic environment.32
Both operations (Haiti and East Timor) also relied upon economic forces to
generate conditions for sustainable security. In Haiti, economic stability was
initially of lesser importance than restoration of the Aristide regime. An
embargo, which preceded Operation Uphold Democracy, shrank the economy
by 30%. However, during the peacekeeping phase, the United States and other
international donors pledged compensatory funding.33 Although these funds
partially reversed the economic decline, many social and economic indicators
(such as unemployment levels and foreign direct investment) remained below
pre-coup levels.34 In East Timor, an economic ‘jump-start’ was considered vital
if the newly emergent state was to remain viable. Economic growth was
directly tied to social cohesion and political stability. UNTAET thus emphasized
the creation of training and education programmes to complement a
central job bank that matched labour tasks with the approximately 80% of the
East Timorese population that were without means of support.35
In both Haiti and East Timor, the economic conditions for security were not
sustainable without supporting political structures. As Chetan Kumar noted
with regard to Haiti, ‘Clearly, in the absence of a political process to absorb
and manage it, economic assistance [alone] cannot be a reliable path to building
international peace.’36 East Timor’s economic recovery has been hampered
by the absence of a representative political system able to generate policies on
Nicholas Thomas & William T. Tow The Utility of Human Security 187
behalf of its citizens. This lack of popular representation, and hence legitimization,
has slowed down reconstruction efforts and led to dissatisfaction with
the UN authorities.37
In addition, also in both Haiti and East Timor, there were systemic domestic
problems that led to the creation of transnational tensions that overwhelmed
the afflicted states’ capacity to resolve their own political crises. This led to
coalitions being formed to address the crises, seeking a return to a condition of
state security that would reinforce international security. However, to resolve
the transnational problems, domestic-level issues also had to be addressed.
This required top-down structures in the form of peace-enforcing/peacekeeping
operations along with bottom-up projects to build peace and security. These
bottom-up projects drew upon domestic and international civil society organizations
to help resolve the crises. In Haiti, the UN made an explicit attempt to
incorporate ‘international and humanitarian organizations’ in ‘sustaining the
secure and stable environment established during the multinational phase’.38
In the case of East Timor, Security Council Resolution 1264, passed in midSeptember
1999, called for UN members to meet ‘the urgent need for coordinated
humanitarian assistance’. The Australian government had already put
together a A$3 million aid package to facilitate the delivery of emergency
relief supplies by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as Caritas to
both East Timorese and large numbers of displaced people camping in West
Timor. Australian, British, French and World Food Programme (WFP) transport
aircraft were subsequently used to conduct airdrops of food rations and
blankets to the besieged outer areas of the former province.39 In both Haiti and
East Timor, the operations of civil society organizations supplemented the
capacity of domestic and international institutions.
In both crises, strong lobbying efforts preceded the initiation of peace operations.
In the case of Haiti, the Organization of American States (OAS) and the
regional Caribbean community (CARICOM) actively lobbied the Haitian
regime to change its practices. Immediately after the coup d’état that ousted
President Aristide in 1991, the OAS sent a mission to Haiti to meet with General
Cedras to seek a return of the elected regime.40 Later, the member-states of
CARICOM supported UN Security Council Resolution 940 as a group and
committed themselves to contributing military personnel to the multinational
force.41 In the United States, state and civil society representatives actively
lobbied the Clinton administration to take action. An example of this was seen
in the actions of the black caucus in the US Congress, which undertook a campaign
to encourage the administration to take action against the coup leaders.42
In East Timor, the United States applied decisive pressure on the Habibie
government in Indonesia to authorize a peacekeeping operation on its soil.
This facilitated efforts by Australian diplomats at the Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Auckland to secure logistical support from
the USA for the operation and, as importantly, to mobilize international opinion
188 Security Dialogue vol. 33, no. 2, June 2002
to favour military intervention in the crisis. Illustrative was a press statement
issued by the US–Korea–Japan Trilateral Summit, held just prior to APEC, that
called for the Indonesian government to take prompt measures to relieve the
crisis and for the members of the international community to work toward
that end. From mid-September, Australia worked closely with representatives
from the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to
facilitate the emergency relief assistance of other NGOs in the most oppressed
areas of East Timor.43
Hence, from the outset, both interventions relied on transnational lobbying
at both the state and societal levels to achieve their objectives. In addition to
the traditional state-to-state efforts, local and international CSOs were coopted
to pressure the host state in an attempt to create a space in which policy
change could occur. Without these efforts, the alleviation of insecurity would
undoubtedly have been less effective.
In traditional security terms, these lobbying efforts were a clear imposition
on the sovereignty of the host states (Haiti and Indonesia). Despite this, both
cases under review here were internationally sanctioned operations. In part,
this was because of perceived violations of international norms by the Haitian
government and the Indonesian-backed militias. There was also concern that
these crises might spill over the borders of the affected states and threaten
other countries (in the Caribbean and Australia, respectively). In both instances,
these violations and insecurities encompassed human rights abuses
and forced immigration flows as well as state-sanctioned breakdowns in governance
and economic development. Hence, the lobbying efforts represent an
evolution in crisis resolution. Not only do these activities represent a weakening
of sovereignty, whereby the state is no longer free to act in a manner it
sees as appropriate within its own borders; they also demonstrate that the international
community now includes a broad range of non-state organizations
that are viewed as having a legitimate purpose in security contingencies.
Lessons Learned
In examining possible options for the resolution of human security crises, certain
factors become apparent from the two cases examined here. First, human
security threats do not confine their genesis to a particular catalyst, such as a
military confrontation, a health epidemic or an environmental disaster. There
are always other factors that lead to the emergence of a particular threat. It is
no longer sufficient simply to send in troops to restore peace between warring
groups or to stop forests from being illegally logged. Systematic programmes
that link political and economic reforms to social development must be implemented
to correct the underlying deficiencies.
Second, in the post-Cold War era, the international community has decided
that some areas of security and well-being overlap domestic and international
Nicholas Thomas & William T. Tow The Utility of Human Security 189
boundaries. Where this occurs, the international community has a legitimate
right to lobby for change. State sovereignty still exists, but it is no longer a
compelling deterrent against intervention to affect change. These factors mean
that, from a security viewpoint, the world must be seen in a more complex
fashion than traditional security paradigms have allowed. However, various
aspects of traditional security approaches also remain relevant. By combining
peace-enforcement with peacebuilding, human security provides one, potentially
significant, framework for reconciling security needs within the contemporary
international security environment.
Conclusion
This article has argued that human security could become an important
approach to managing contemporary IR if it were to be applied with more
precision and were focused on transnational threats. It could be especially useful
for explaining and justifying humanitarian interventions by underscoring
the causes that generate the conflicts that invite such action. Security politics
as a whole should be seen as a mix of domestic and international issues. In
identifying those issues that transcend a purely sovereign locale, however, a
more inclusive definition of security can be applied to international security
problems. Even though this structure challenges traditional prerogatives of
sovereignty, it must be recognized that this entity was already being tested in
a number of IR arenas. Such a trend neither delegitimizes the state nor devalues
sovereignty, but rather places both in a contemporary setting where their
relative worth as security agents can be more accurately assessed.
Human security can thus be considered a valid paradigm for identifying,
prioritizing and resolving emerging transnational security problems. There
remain policy limitations, however, on its conceptual and empirical utility.
Most notably, policy communities rarely have the resources to reach micro
levels of analysis and resolution. An increasing array of socio-political, cultural
and economic problems that lead to security crises represents a substantial
challenge for both policymakers and their polities to address and overcome.
But human security can be applied through successive processes of
learning and help resolve the core problems underlying potential threats
before they intensify. This may require marshalling resources that exceed the
capacity of single contributing states or parties. In such instances, coalitions of
additional actors (for example, CSOs) can help meet the capacity shortfall.
This has already taken place in various humanitarian interventions, as we
have demonstrated in the cases of Haiti and East Timor.
Ultimately, the fact remains that traditional interpretations of security cannot
fully meet the international security community’s present needs. A human
190 Security Dialogue vol. 33, no. 2, June 2002
security approach to transnational security problems offers an alternative analytical
framework. State sovereignty remains a key element in contemporary
IR. However, the security requirements of the international community are
being increasingly linked to the internal behaviour of its individual memberstates.
If international security is to be achieved, it must address the behavioural
challenges that are emerging. The human security model offers a way to
respond to these challenges – upholding the contemporary international order
without devaluing its most important function: safeguarding and improving
the quality of life of those individuals and groups that constitute the state’s
reasons for being.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
* Nicholas Thomas is a Research Officer for the China–ASEAN Project at the Centre of
Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR. He received his PhD from
the University of Tasmania. William T. Tow is Professor of International Relations and
Director of the International Relations and Asian Politics Research Unit (IRAPRU) at
the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.
1 Jessica Tuchman Matthews, ‘Redefining Security’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 68, no. 2, Spring
1989, pp. 162–177.
2 Inge Kaul, ‘Peace Needs No Weapons: From Military Security to Human Security’,
Ecumenical Review, vol. 47, no. 3, July 1995, pp. 313–319, on p. 313.
3 A theme found consistently throughout James Hamill’s ‘From Realism to Complex
Interdependence? South Africa, Southern Africa and the Question of Security’, International
Relations, vol. 14, no. 3, December 1998, pp. 1–30.
4 United Nations Development Programme (HDR), New Dimensions of Human Security
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
5 Commission on Global Governance, Our Global Neighbourhood: The Report of the Commission
on Global Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Sverre Lodgaard,
‘Human Security: Concept and Operationalization’, paper prepared for Expert Seminar
on Human Rights and Peace, Geneva, 8–9 December 2000 (available from Harvard
University’s Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research at http://
www.hsph.harvard.edu/hpcr/events/hsworkshop/lodgaard.pdf). We have also developed
this point from anonymous reviewers’ comments on an earlier draft of this article
and are grateful to the reviewers for their input.
6 Lodgaard, ibid., p. 4.
7 As noted by William T. Tow & Russell Trood, ‘Linkages Between Traditional Security
and Human Security’, in William T. Tow, Ramesh Thakur & In-Taek Hyun, Asia’s
Emerging Regional Order: Reconciling Traditional and Human Security (Tokyo: United
Nations University Press, 2000), pp. 22–24.
8 Gary King & Christopher Murray, ‘Rethinking Human Security’, Program on Human
Security, Center for Basic Research in the Social Sciences, Harvard University, 4 May,
2000, as posted at http://www/cbrss.harvard.edu/hs/measuring.htm.
Nicholas Thomas & William T. Tow The Utility of Human Security 191
9 George Maclean, ‘Instituting and Projecting Human Security: A Canadian Perspective’,
Australian Journal of International Affairs, vol. 54, no. 3, November 2000, pp. 269–276.
10 See, for example, Maclean, ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Astri Suhrke, ‘Human Security and the Interest of States’, Security Dialogue, vol. 30,
no. 3, September 1999, pp. 268–269.
13 This point is emphasized by Francis Abiew, ‘Assessing Humanitarian Interventions in
the Post Cold War Period: Sources of Consensus’, International Relations, vol. 14, no. 2,
August 1998, p.62.
14 Chris Brown, ‘Moral Agency and International Society: Reflections on Norms, the UN,
Southampton FC, the Gulf War and the Kosovo Campaign’, paper presented at the 41st
Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, Los Angeles, CA, 14–18
March 2000.
15 Richard A. Matthew & George E. Shambaugh, ‘Sex, Drugs and Heavy Metal: Transnational
Threats and National Vulnerabilities’, Security Dialogue, vol. 29, no. 2, June 1998,
pp. 163–175, on p. 166.
16 A thoughtful discussion of the human security paradigm’s methodological problems to
date is Roland Paris’s ‘Human Security: Paradigm Shift or Hot Air?’, International
Security, vol. 26, no. 2, Autumn 2001, pp. 87–102.
17 Matthews (note 1 above), p. 166.
18 Matthew & Shambaugh (note 15 above), p. 167.
19 Suhrke (note 12 above), p. 272.
20 Matthew & Shambaugh (note 15 above), pp. 172–173.
21 See Daniel Byman, Ian Lesser, Bruce Pirnie, Cherly Benard & Matthew Waxman,
Strengthening the Partnership: Improving Military Coordination with Relief Agencies and
Allies in Humanitarian Operations (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2000), pp. 9–10. This study
identifies complex coercive operations as ‘being at the high end of the scale of contingencies’
and as entertaining ‘two main goals: (1) provid[ing] humanitarian assistance
without trying to resolve conflict and (2) try[ing] to resolve conflict, typically through
enforcement of a peace plan’.
22 Jean-Germain Gros, ‘Haiti’s Flagging Transition’, Journal of Democracy, vol. 8, no. 4,
October 1997, pp. 94–109.
23 Adam Roberts, Humanitarian Action in War, Adelphi Paper 305 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1996), pp. 23–24.
24 For a detailed account of this military intervention, see John T. Fishel, ‘Operation
Uphold Democracy: Old Principles, New Realities’, Military Review, vol. 77, no. 4, July–
August 1997, pp. 22–30; available at http://www-cgsc.army.mil/milrev/english/
julaug97/fishel.htm.
25 Merlye Gelin-Adams, ‘Holding Up Democracy’, The World Today, vol. 56, no. 5, May
2000, pp 14–16; Ambassador James F. Dobbins, ‘Haiti: A Case Study in Post-Cold War
Peacekeeping’, remarks at the ISD Conference on Diplomacy and the Use of Force,
Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 21 September 1995 (available at http://
sfswww.georgetown.edu/sfs/programs/isd/files/haiti.htm.
26 The text of UN Security Council Resolution 940 made the link between Haiti’s domestic
stability and the regional security environment. This resolution determined ‘that the
192 Security Dialogue vol. 33, no. 2, June 2002
situation in Haiti … [constituted] a threat to peace and security in the region’. It was
adopted by the Security Council at its 3413th meeting, on 31 July 1994.
27 David Malone, ‘Haiti and the International Community: A Case Study’, Survival,
vol. 39, no. 2, Summer 1997, pp. 126–146.
28 Leonard C. Sebastian & Anthony L. Smith, ‘The East Timor Crisis: A Test Case for
Humanitarian Intervention’, Southeast Asian Affairs 2000 (Singapore: Institute for
Southeast Asian Studies, 2000), pp. 64–86.
29 James Cotton, ‘Against the Grain: The East Timor Intervention’, Survival, vol. 43, no. 1,
Spring 2001, pp. 127–142; Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), East Timor
in Transition 1998–2000: An Australian Policy Challenge (Canberra: Commonwealth of
Australia, 2001), pp. 140–154.
30 DFAT (note 29 above), p. 157.
31 Elizabeth Cousens, ‘Introduction’, in Elizabeth Cousens & Chetan Kumar, eds, Peacebuilding
as Politics: Cultivating Peace in Fragile Societies (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner,
2001), pp. 1–20, on p. 1.
32 See the subsection on ‘Civil Service’ in DFAT (note 29 above), p. 161; and David
Devoss, ‘East Timor: The Little Country That Wants to Be’, Los Angeles Times, 26 August
2001, p. M-2.
33 See David Crary, ‘Donors Pledge $900 Million To Boost Democracy’, Associated Press,
31 January 1995.
34 Gelin-Adams (note 25 above), pp. 14–16. An example of this partial reversal can be seen
in Haitian unemployment statistics, which dropped from around 75% once Aristide
was returned to office to approximately 65% by 1998.
35 DFAT (note 29 above), p. 162.
36 Chetan Kumar, ‘Peacebuilding in Haiti’, in Cousens & Kumar (note 31 above), pp. 21–
52, on p. 42.
37 John McBeth, ‘Whose Future Is It Anyway?’, Far Eastern Economic Review, vol. 163,
no. 45, 9 November 2000, pp. 68–71.
38 UN Security Council Resolution 940 (note 26 above).
39 DFAT (note 29 above), pp. 149–150.
40 Agence France Presse, ‘OAS Envoy Says Haiti Talks to Continue Outside the Country’,
Agence France Presse, 14 November 1991.
41 US Department of State Dispatch, US–CARICOM Efforts To Support UN Security Council
Resolution 940 (statement by Strobe Talbott and John Deutch), 5 September 1994; available
at http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usacsl/divisions/pki/Military/military.htm (under
Case Studies/Haiti/UN Observer Mission in Haiti [UNMIH]).
42 Virginia W. Leonard, ‘Back to the Future: Haiti in 1915 and 1994’, Low Intensity Conflict
and Law Enforcement, vol. 6, no. 3, Winter 1997, pp. 64–75.
43 DFAT (note 29 above), pp. 135–137, 150–152; Cotton (note 29 above), pp. 132–133.