Human vs. National Security

The call to redefine security in terms of human and ecological needs instead of national sovereignty and borders was advancing pre-9/11 as an alternative to the state-centered concept of "national security," rooted in the military/security/defense domain and academically lodged in the field of international relations. For feminists this has meant raising questions about whose security "national security" defends, and addressing issues like the violence continuum that threatens women's security daily, during war as well as so-called peacetime.

The concept of human security had also advanced through the UN--first defined in the UN Development Program's 1994 Human Development Report and later taken up by Secretary General Kofi Annan in his Millennium Report in 2000, which spoke of security less as defending territory and more in terms of protecting people.

But efforts to promote the concept of human security--which emerged out of discussions in which women are active, from the peace movement and the debate over development--were set back by 9/11, with the subsequent resurgence of the masculine warrior discourse. The media have been dominated by male "authority" figures, providing a rude reminder that when it comes to issues of terrorism, war, defense and national security, women, and especially feminists, are still not on the map.

Yet it is women who have been the major target of fundamentalist terrorism, from Algeria to the United States, over the past several decades. And it is mostly feminists who have led the critique of this growing global problem--focusing attention not only on Islamic fundamentalism but on Protestant fundamentalism in the United States, Catholic secret societies like Opus Dei in Latin America, Hindu right-wing fundamentalists in India, and so on.

The events of 9/11 should have generated attempts to address the very real threats to women's human rights posed by fundamentalism, terrorism and armed conflict in many guises. Instead, the occasion was used to demonize the Islamic Other and to justify further militarization of society and curtailment of civil liberties. Growing militarization, often with US support and arms, has brought an increase in military spending in many other regions, from India and Pakistan to Israel, Colombia and the Philippines. Meanwhile, the Western donor countries' pledges to support economic development at the UN International Conference on Financing for Development in March 2002 fell far short of what would be needed to even begin to fulfill the millennium promises made in 2000 for advancing human security.

Thus, while human security is a promising concept, it is far from being embraced as a replacement for the national security paradigm to which governments remain attached and have made vast commitments.

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