Human Security: Relevance and Perspective

Introduced for the first time in the Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) of 1994, the concept of human security has reversed significantly the rules of the game on the international scene. The end of the Cold War and the emergence of the concept of human security as a challenge of primacy of state in traditional security, has forced us to rethink the implementation of such concept in national and international field. Since then, the risk of conflicts between the great powers has been considerably reduced, but at the same time has appeared in a more fragile” or failed states amply characterized by violence and incapability to guarantee the security of their citizens. The concept today represents an added value of a new era, interpreted security as a basic need for individuals and has shown that facing with new threats in a rapidly changing world, the security of states is strongly linked to the security of the individual which are in a direct complimentary relationship to each other. The aim of this paper is to argue that security between states is of particular importance for individuals and that states remains the basic guarantors of national security and territorial integrity, but that state security does not a priori guarantee the security of citizens. So, by examining debates as stated above, this paper try to argue that despite the facts that: civil wars, political violence, disease and poverty put people at a greater risk than inter- state wars, the definition and policy agenda for human security remains an open question