The doctrine of human security in Canadian foreign policy: Lloyd Axworthy’s contribution to the study of world policy

The multitude of changes on the international scene during the 1990’s had a major impact on thinking in the area of international relations as well as on the foreign policy decision-making processes of all nation states. One of the most difficult issues to redefine and to give a meaning appropriate to the international needs of the moment was that of security. Lloyd Axworthy, Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1996 to 2000, convinced that, with the end of bipolarity, the challenges to security had moved from the level of states to concerns more closely related to the well-being of individuals, undertook the task of promoting, as part of his country’s foreign policy, the concept of human security