Human Security
| Date | 01 June 2008 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200806300212 |
| Published date | 01 June 2008 |
| Subject Matter | Debates: Two Views of Human Security |
D E B AT E S
Francis J. Furtado is a former special policy advisor to the Department of National Defence.
This article was drawn from remarks made at the Dalhousie University’s centre for foreign
policy studies’ third annual student symposium, 17-18 March 2007.
Over a decade after the release of the 1994 United Nations human develop-
ment report, conversations about human security retain an academic tone.
Perhaps this was to be expected. After all, a notion that rose to prominence
as a “paradigm shift” in the security debate would never lose its place at a
graduate seminar, with the attendant focus on theory, data, and language.
But human security was also supposed to be about something more. For
a brief time in the late 1990s, it was held to be a dominant theme in Cana-
dian foreign policy—only to fade from view a few years later. As such, it re-
mains an interesting topic—not only as a substantive matter, but also as a
window into how ideas fare in the day-to-day operations of government.
Human security entered the lexicon of Canadian government during the
mid-1990s. It had a powerful rhetorical appeal for Canadians who had
watched the humanitarian tragedies of the decade—Somalia, Bosnia, and
Rwanda. It also appeared to have a simple premise: to shift the security dis-
cussion away from an exclusive focus on states and toward the welfare of in-
dividual human beings.
| International Journal | Spring 2008 | 405 |
Francis J. Furtado
Human security
Did it live? Has it died? Does it matter?
| Francis J. Furtado |
| 406 | International Journal | Spring 2008 |
As the human security agenda evolved, it quickly acquired a number of
attributes—a list of issues that its advocates felt had been ignored by tradi-
tional discussion of security issues. The list grew quite long: conflict preven-
tion, the protection of innocent populations, refugees, internally displaced
persons, humanitarian intervention, postconflict stabilization, humanitarian
relief, landmines, reconstruction, development, governance, human rights,
gender, the environment, and pandemics.
All of these issues were unassailably worthy. During the last half of the
1990s, the focus on these “new” terms suggested that human security was
destined to become the guiding principle of Canadian foreign policy.1But
judging from the behaviour of successive Canadian governments, it never re-
ally happened. There were a few high-profile policy initiatives that came to
fruition (such as the oft-cited landmines treaty), along with marginal in-
creases in funding—but, in the end, no fundamental changes to
les grandes
lignes
of Canadian foreign policy, the core policies of the relevant depart-
ments, or the government’s spending priorities.
How did this happen? How did human security fail to become the ani-
mating concept for Canadian foreign policy? Part of the answer can be found
in the nature of human security itself. Part of it reflects how officials see the
world.
HOW DO OFFICIALS SEE THE WORLD?
At any given moment, the way in which officials see the world reflects two
things. First, there is their understanding of how the government of the day
approaches things (as a straightforward, narrow thing). Second, there is the
mental make-up that officials bring to a given issue (a more complicated
item). Still, if one word had to capture the way in which the community of
Canadian foreign and defence officials regards ideas, it would be
pragmatic
.
One can see this in several ways. Officials tend to situate new ideas
within the framework of their own department’s priorities, accountabilities,
and deliverables. Their concept of the long run is a series of short-runs all
1 Clearly, none of these issues was born in the 1990s, something that advocates of
human security go out of their way to point out. And one can clearly see the antecedents
of human security in the Bruntland report, the sustainable development debate, and (in
a Canadian context), the 1992 citizen’s inquiry on peace and security. But the Canadian
human security interlude of the late 1990s was the latest and most prominent effort to
make this the focal point of Canadian foreign policy.
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