Cross-border citizens' network for
peace, inter-communal
reconciliation & human security
Overall objective
• To establish a human security dialogue
including research, advocacy and capacity
building activities
Major outputs
• HS Annual Monitoring Reports
• Annual Thematic Reports on Particular Human
Security Areas – based on compiled CountrySpecific Thematic Reports
Major outputs
• HS Annual Monitoring Reports - Development, Preparation
and Publishing of 3 reports, analysing HS topics in a
regional context and presenting country/regional level
indicators and evaluations that will allow the monitoring of
HS throughout the region in a comparative and structured
basis.
• These reports will include an HS Monitoring Index to
facilitate a comparative analysis and highlight priority
problems across borders.
• The reports will review the public sector reforms and
changes in codes of conduct in the region, examine the
political, economic, and social environment around HS and
provide insights on the appropriate direction and focus of
further reforms and EU level policies.
Major outputs
• Annual Thematic Reports on Particular Human Security
Areas based on compiled Country-Specific Thematic
Reports
The reports are to include, tentatively:
(i) a country-level analysis based on desktop literature
review, field research, outputs from consultation &
stakeholder dialogue process conducted by partner’s
research teams;
(ii) meeting reports;
(iii) a brief regional level analysis framing the cross-cutting
issues; and
(iv) an analysis in relation to EU level policies and processes.
First 6 months
• identify local level needs, capacities and issues
• unravelling the local strategies of action
• assessment of the capacities and needs of
local stakeholders
• identify issues and local partners (desktop
research, outreach activities and a fact-finding
workshop will be conducted.
Until next meeting
Each partner will present
(i) a short country brief on how they approach
HS in their own local context,
(ii) the legislative/institutional framework and
the local reform agenda related to HS;
(iii) a brief draft list of civil society actors,
institutions, public bodies, and policy-makers to
be engaged to Project activities.
Objective of this meeting
• identify the research capacity of partners,
• transfer knowledge among partnership members
on the general approaches and methods of
human security research and advocacy,
• highlight issues of peace, reconciliation and
human security with respect to each local country
setting
• develop a common ground on the concepts,
methods and approaches of human security
Why Human Security?
• «a dangerous disjunction between traditional
security instruments and actual security needs»
• «inseparability of internal and external security »
• «increasing difficulty in defending a particular
territory or group of people in isolation»
• «new sources of insecurity that are less amenable
to traditional military methods»
• «growing interconnectedness in all fields,
deterritorialization of authority, and the erosion of
the autonomy of states.
Definition
in search of a regionally relevant common
definition/understanding
Some definitions:
«freedom from fear», «freedom from want», «freedom
to live in dignity» (1994 HDR+)
«The capacity of individuals and communities to respond
to threats to their social, human and environmental
rights».(Global Environmental Change and Human
Security Research Program )
«to protect the vital core of all human lives in ways that
enhance human freedoms and human fulfillment» UN
Commission on Human Security
Human Security as the Nexus
between Safety, Rights, and Equity
Dimensions
•
•
•
•
security for or of whom?
security against which threats?
security using which means?
secured by whom?
Methodology and Methods
Combination of empirically grounded
fundamental research on human security with
applied research on insecurity preventive
measures.
Regional research groups will generate data
relating to areas for priority attention and
protection relating to central societal target
groups
Target Groups
• We differentiate between various target groups constituted as follows:
Focus Group
Politics
Public servants
Constitution
Data Generation
Policy makers in positions related to
Public statements, statements of formal obligation
human security at local, country and
regional levels.
Police forces, public order related Strategy reports, statistics, other available
documents.
officials, public prosecutors, lawyers,
military officers (?)
Civil Society
Academia
Organisations active in the public sphere Statements and strategy papers, reports, etc. issued
and their representatives
by these initiatives
interested/engaged in democratization,
HR, citizenship, pluralism & minority
rights, vulnerable groups, Internally
displaced people, youth organizations,
reconciliation good governance,
poverty, environmental and health
issues (?)
national, regional, international policy All kinds of relevant current academic documents
oriented research organizations and
scholars working in relation to HRs,
human security, civil society, peace,
reconciliation and democratic
governance; poverty
Methodology and Methods
• Two types of data are to be generated
pertaining to each target group:
– Documents from the target groups’ field of
activity related to the issues at hand
– Expert interviews employed to record and
evaluate the personal experiences of target group
members regarding insecurities and priorities
Methodology and Methods
• Our assumption of empirical research: the
‘bottom-up’ definitions held within ‘everyday
theories’ of insecurity are anchored in social
patterns of perception that actors apply
unconsciously.
• They cannot be polled in the direct method
commonly used in opinion research. They must
be reconstructed from administrative and other
official documents and recorded statements in
interviews.
Methodology and Methods
Building on this insight, both the documents as
well as the expert interviews are to be subjected
to a qualitative content analysis for reports.
H.S.I.
• link the levels of human (in)security to
numbers referring to the dimensions of the
human security and the main threats in each
region.
WHY an H.S.I?
• an instrument to assess the actual threats to
human beings
• measure the actual threats related to
insecurity to find appropriate policy
responses,
• identify priorities for policy agendas
Steps for Constracting HSI
• Compilation of cross country raw data on
insecurities
• Idetification of the dimensions
• Selection of indicators
• Formulation of the index
Evaluation criteria for Indicator selection
• the indicator measures either key structural relationships (i.e.,
linkages and defining characteristics) or key functional relationships
(i.e., process flows) of the system with reference to either
environmental, economic, societal, or institutional components
(Table 1);
• existence of a theoretical or empirical link between the indicator
and insecurity (see below);
• general availability of the data;
• consistency of the data with other selected indicators to allow for
future modeling of the system; adequacy of the spatial coverage
based on the number of countries represented and adequacy of the
time series available.
Source: Index of Human Insecurity (IHI) developed by the GECHS
Some HSI examples
• Human (In)Security Index of INEF
– Dimensions:
– Economic security (being able to provide for a minimum
standard of living or, if this is not the case, being secured by
some kind of social security provided by the state or private
actors.)
– Food Security implies that all people at all times have both
physical and economic access to basic food. This requires that
people have ready access to food – that they have an
‘entitlement’ to food, by growing it for themselves, by buying
it or by taking advantage of a public food distribution system
(UNDP 1994: 27)
– Health Security protection from major causes of death,
including mainly infectious and parasitic diseases.
Human (In)Security Index of INEF
–
–
Environmental Security includes threats inflicted by the
degradation of local eco systems and that of the global
system, mainly global warming
The combined dimension of Personal Security and
Community Security
• Personal Security is defined as security from threats from physical
violence. These threats may come from the state (physical torture),
from other states (war), from other groups of people (ethnic conflicts),
from individuals (crime or street violence, they might be directed
against women (rape or domestic violence) and threat to self such as
drugs or suicide (UNDP 1994: 30).
• Community Security aims at the protection of people from their loss
of traditional practices and membership in certain groups, be it a
family, a community, an organization or a racial or ethnic group from
which people derive cultural identity, that provide them with security.
A loss of traditional practices may be caused by modernization, but
also by sectarian and ethnic violence (UNDP 1994: 31f.).
Index of Human Insecurity (IHI) by the
GECHS
Dimensions:
• environment,
• economy,
• society,
• İnstitutions.
Index of Human Insecurity (IHI) by the GECHS
•
The 16 indicators, equally weighted, present a one-to-one mapping of human
insecurity
Index of Human Security made by
David A. Hastings.
Dimensions:
• protection of (and benefiting from) diversity,
• peace,
• environmental protection,
• freedom from corruption and
• information empowerment
Main pillars of the project
• good governance,
• reconciliation
• social inclusion
– from regional & country-specific perspectives.
HS dimensions of the Project
a) political economy of crime & corruption;
b) militarism/nationalism;
c) justice & rule of law in transitional-reconciliatory
processes;
d) poverty, inequality & social inclusion;
e) security sector policies & “policing”
f) environment (?)
h) health (?)
i) institutional (?)