Empowerment and Protection - Stories of Human Security Oct. 2014 | Page 122

The concept of human security, if superficially
understood, may expand the reach of traditional
military-based strategies to areas originally
considered outside its scope, including
development, education, food security, etc.
This unintended consequence can be avoided
by emphasising human security as a process of
inclusive dialogue that involves citizens and nonstate actors in identifying sources of insecurity
and policies to address them. Emphasising the
multidimensionality of human security threats and
the importance of preventive action is another
important way to build shared understanding
that the task of providing security is often a
civilian one. Human security should result in the
democratisation of security policymaking, not the
securitisation of development.

Human security should result
in the democratisation of
security, not the securitisation
of development.
A complex and sensitive question for human
security advocates is the role of the military
and security forces in ensuring human security.
A human security approach should proactively
identify principles of military engagement to
provide guidance to states on this security tactic.
Current guidance on civil-military interaction
and cooperation needs to be expanded to inform
military and broader security sector relations
to civil society beyond humanitarian and aid
sectors.16 However, such an attempt should also
go further and analyse the impact of militarised
state protection strategies on other sources of
human security, including rule of law, citizen
empowerment, and such types of security as
community security, health, and food security.
Precisely because a national security strategy
that includes military engagement is a dominant
traditional state approach to security, human
security proponents need to engage directly in
discussions about the effects of military force on
people’s experiences of security in a variety of
contexts.
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