African Environmental and Human Security in the 21st Century
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African Environmental and Human Security in the 21st Century By ...

Chapter 1:  On the Margins
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of ordinary people who sought security in their daily lives. For many of them, security symbolized protection from the threat of disease, hunger, unemployment, crime [or terrorism], social conflict, political repression and environmental hazards. With the dark shadows of the Cold War receding, one can see that many conflicts are within nations rather than between nations.20

In 2004 the European Union's Human Security Doctrine for Europe used human security as its strategic anchor, defining it as “individual freedom from basic insecurities…genocide, widespread or systematic torture and degrading treatment, disappearances, slavery, and crimes against humanity and grave violations of the laws of war as defined in the Statute of the International Criminal Court.”21

Even the UN has changed the definition of sovereignty to adjust to today's security environment:

In signing the Charter of the United Nations, States not only benefit from the privileges of sovereignty but also accept its responsibilities. Whatever perceptions may have prevailed when the Westphalian system first gave rise to the notion of State sovereignty, today it clearly carries with it the obligation of a State to protect the welfare of its own peoples and meet the obligations to the wider international community.22

Consequently, when a state cannot or will not protect its citizens, then the international community must engage.23 Scholars have described this forward-leaning definition of international security as the “duty to protect.”24 While human insecurities primarily occur in weak and failing states, due to the nature of weak regions, such insecurities quickly spread. And, as we have witnessed in our increasingly global world, these insecurities frequently have diffuse global effects, such as migrations, reverberations in diaspora communities, environmental impacts, and even the exportation of terrorism.25 The human-security paradigm should remind strategists that they must approach issues holistically and empathetically. This requires painstaking analysis, patience, and tenacity.