Security on International level
Security is a core value of human life. Desiring security is basic human nature. For an individual security is all about ‘safety’. Whether physical or psychological, this safety includes freedom from harm. Threats to the security of an individual can cause fear or anxiety. Legal frameworks that protect individuals from threats to their security are the most common types of security. These include laws against murder, sex crimes, physical harm, robbery, and psychological harm, such as coercion etc.
As Thomas Hobbes reminds us, “without security” there is no place for industry… no arts, no letters, no society; and worst of all, eternal fear and danger of violent death; and the lives of men, lonely, weak, cruel, brutish, and short.” A sense of security either comes with power or a good and trustworthy relationship with others. It is written this way by Margaret Clark, a Yale professor of psychology:
“Humans are social creatures with vulnerabilities. Close relationships afford protections. For example, infants wouldn’t survive without other people. But material possessions also afford protection and security. Humans need food, clothing and shelter to survive. It takes a mix of things to make you feel secure. But if you heighten one source of security, people feel less concerned about the others.”
Social threats that are face by each and every individual i.e. physical threats (theft, vandalism, terrorism or natural disaster), economic threats (unemployment or loss of business), threats to rights (Denial of basic individual rights in custody) and the threats to position and status (public humiliation) are the very cause of desiring security. As stated, UNDP’s Human Development Report released a report in 1994, added seven areas to the definition of security on international level, which are economic security, food security, health security, environmental security, personal security, community security and political security. To get security from these threats people let some people or organizations (such as government) to rule over them, even they let them restricted their liberties in some areas of life.
Yet there are distinct ways to understand ‘Security’ in international relations. There are different approaches to the definition of security. One is very conventional that limited Security in terms of military only and those with alternative perspective says that the idea of security needs to extend its reach to include non-military threats to states and, perhaps, other actors OR include both military and non-military areas.
In International Relations, we see different ideologies have different perspective for the idea of security i.e. in Realism, realists are very conservative (traditionalists) that they are stick to the idea of security of state only. The States were the ‘actors.’ Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) were merely convenience alliances between states, whereas non-governmental international organizations (INGOs) were deemed irrelevant. Security Pluralism (or plural security provision) refers to circumstances in which an array of actors demands the right of coercive power, regardless of their relationship with the state. Marxist knew all too well that private property was always rationalized in the name of security, based on blood and plunder. Constructivism, as an ideology forming the concept of human security, believes that the process of collective interaction secures national interests. The approach establishes the interests and identity, and the interests are constituted by the identity.
Buzan’s multi-sectoral approach opened the way for the so-called Copenhagen School. The Copenhagen School of Security Studies is a school of academic thought with its origins in the book People, States and Fear: The National Security Issue in International Relations first published in 1983 by the international relations theorist Barry Buzan. He stated that military, economic, social and environmental security is part of the concept of stability. So the concept of protection goes beyond military aspects to this school of thought. There is talk of securitization in this school of thought. It conceptualizes security as a threat social construction process involving securitizing actors who announce that there is a specific threat that needs to be resolved, this condition will be posed to the audience, and if they support it, the actors will be legitimate to act against that threat.
War and the threat of war are associated with insecurity; security is associated with peace and stability. Since protection is an important precursor to human life, it is in itself a fundamental good, both a personal good and a political good. In more fortunate situations, the people who have witnessed the horror of war first-hand remind all of us, lest we forget, that security is the most fundamental of all human values. It is the basis on which our individual and collective lives are built.