Human security thinking in practice: ‘personal security’, ‘citizen security' and comprehensive mappings

Abstract

The paper describes the introduction of an emphasis on 'personal security' in human security thinking and practice, as part of the ultimately unsuccessful attempt to compartmentalize the pursuit of security. It reviews the past twenty years of attention to 'personal security': both in compartments that consider organized physical violence or threats to personal safety and property ('citizen security'), and as parts of more wide-ranging examination of threats to fulfilment of basic needs and rights, for example in comprehensive mapping exercises undertaken in various UNDP Regional and National Human Development Reports or in studies of women's security. The paper reflects on the complex process of opening-up conventional security thinking and practice, seeking value-added and depth without shrinking into preconceived compartments.Keywords: human security, personal security, citizen security, gender violence, Human Development Reports The evolution of a boundary concept: the limits of compartmentalizationHuman security analysis looks at threats to fulfilment of basic values in people's lives. It seeks to reorient use of the prioritizing concept 'security', towards securing basic needs of ordinary people. So it answers the question 'whose security?' with: 'each of us and all of us'.In addressing next the question 'security of what?', some forms of human security analysis have adopted compartmentalization, trying to separately discuss 'personal security', 'economic security', 'environmental security' and so on. This can be helpful, and fits established bureaucratic and disciplinary convenience. It is also often unhelpful. Many important threats arise out of the interconnections between different aspects and forces in particular situations, so that much of the value-added from human security analysis comes not from putting a new name on topics already considered under existing bureaucratic and 2 disciplinary arrangements but from functioning as a boundary concept to transcend those divisions, flexibly according to the nature of particular situations. A focus on how people live and can live, and the function of looking at priority values and priority threats, require a transdisciplinary holistic perspective, at least periodically, in order to see linkages and to draw comparisons across 'sectors' to try to ensure priority attention to the threats most relevant in the given time and place.We examine these themes with special reference to 'personal security', a prominent-and some argue pre-eminently important-area in human security policy and research, that stands in contrast to the predominant fields of policy attention in the 20 th century: national state security and economic growth. We touch on three major (overlapping) sub-areas of work:-violence against civilians, during wars, civil wars and other armed conflict; crime against civilians; and violence against women, during peace as well as war, considered as part of broader examination of threats and forms of marginalization affecting women.Section 2 explain...

Análisis Espacial de la Inseguridad Percibida en Barcelona: el Papel de los Barrios Adyacentes y de los Factores Psicosociales Implicados

“…La seguridad puede ser definida como un estado de bienestar y armonía que es encontrado por el individuo y que hace posible su desarrollo como persona en la sociedad (Gasper y Gómez, 2015). Es un constructo abstracto que se distribuye de manera dinámica, por lo que cuanto mayor sea el nivel de seguridad que se le puede atribuir a un individuo mayor margen de desarrollo sobre su potencial se le otorgará.…”

Who Is the Citizen in Citizen Security?

“…The onto-political basis of citizens in PRONAPRED undermines the democratic aspirations of citizen security. As various authors attest, citizen security aims to forge a relation between the citizen and the state that reconciles security with democracy (Bonner 2014) and move beyond the repressive state apparatus (Gasper and Gómez 2015). While PRONAPRED undoubtedly improves on the state-sanctioned violence often associated with mano dura policies, it is democratically reductive in two ways: it locates citizens within the existing confines of institutional power and at the same time holds them separate from such power.…”

Intervening for human security

“…Gasper and Gómez contend that a holistically orientated human security perspective can advance two critical sensibilities in responding to insecurity: (1) "the perception of an intensively interconnected global system which we share"; and (2) "the ability to think sensitively about how other people live their lives" (2015: 112). They go on to underline how a substantial body of feminist work on human security has demonstrated the value of not shrinking its concerns "into one component", but rather "promoting people's security" through a "holistic consideration of their lives" (Gasper and Gómez 2015: 106; see also Hoogensen and Stuvoy 2006;Truong et al 2006;Wibben 2011;Tripp et al 2013;Gasper and Sinatti 2016). In this sense, the 'elasticity' of the concept of human security is, in both concept and practice, an enabling attribute in responding to security needs in 'context-sensitive' ways.…”

“…In providing an overarching vision for "broadening security concerns related to specific human rights", and as a tool in tackling "issues of structural vulnerability in an interrelated and contextualised manner", human security has enormous potential (Estrada-Tanck 2016: 251). As Estrada-Tanck's work makes clear, it can "act as the bridge between different collective or societal conditions that threaten individual (or group) human rights", and human rights in turn "can inform and deliver a more precise and operational conception of human security" (2016: 253, 254; see also Gasper and Gómez 2015). In such an envisioning, human security can become a focal "heuristic tool" for the state in identifying circumstances in which it is "compelled to take additional measures regarding concrete human rights as foreseen in normative instruments, standards and indicators" (Estrada-Tanck 2016: 254).…”