International initiatives for human security

Human security has entered the policy discourse of a number of governments. Notable examples are Canada and Japan during the 1990s and early 2000s. Each provided a slightly different definition of the concept and customized its application to best suit its individual interests. The government of Japan subscribed to a comprehensive understanding of human security—one that covers all the aspects that potentially endanger survival, daily life, and human dignity. On the other hand, the Canadian government, led by former foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy, adhered to a narrower but still open-ended definition of human security that distinguishes “freedom from fear” from “freedom from want” while acknowledging their distinctiveness and mutual interdependence.

An attempt to institutionalize the human security agenda internationally created the Human Security Network, a result of a bilateral agreement between Canada and Norway in 1998; 13 other countries and one observer later joined the initiative. This intergovernmental forum was created so as to advance and embed further the human security agenda within global governance, with the end goal of creating a more humane world free from fear and want and where people can fully develop their human potential. The network was intended to serve as a forum for dialogue and research and, above all, as an avenue to share evolving understandings and practices to advance the development of the human security approach. Substantively, the policy proceedings resulting from yearly ministerial meetings provided general guidelines for states where the safety and well-being of citizens were endangered; they also helped legitimize the UN’s overarching framework for the human security approach. Yet beyond this “coalition of the willing,” very few states embraced the approach and used it as reference for their domestic and foreign policies.

At the supranational level, the UN played a crucial role in defining, supporting, and translating the new security paradigm from idea into practice. Alongside the UN, other international organizations demonstrated interest in the agenda. Both James Wolfensohn, a former president of the World Bank, and Michael Camdessus, a former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, expressed a commitment to policy and institutional reforms in line with the human security paradigm by means of expanding representation within the respective institutions and by extending ownership of developmental policies to individual communities. The extent to which these people-centred reforms will have an effect in eliminating want remains questionable; having reached a certain maturity, the reforms have not resolved the gross distributional problems that lay at the heart of global inequality and individual security.