The report in brief
This is the fifth volume in the series of Arab Human Development Reports sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and independently authored by intellectuals and scholars from Arab countries.
Like its predecessors, this Report provides eminent Arab thinkers a platform from which to articulate a comprehensive analysis of their own contemporary milieu. It is not a conventional report produced by the United Nations. Rather, it is an independent publication that gives a voice to a representative group of Arab intellectuals whose sober and self-critical appraisals might not otherwise be heard in the particular circumstances of the region. The views of the authors are supplemented by an opinion poll conducted in four Arab countries—Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco and the Occupied Palestinian Territory—that represent a range of political and cultural contexts for the Report's analyses. A special Youth Forum convened for the Report also provides insights from young Arabs.
Inspired by UNDP's 1994 global Human Development Report on human security, the present study takes up that subject as it concerns the Arab countries.1 Its starting point is that, seven years after the publication of the first Arab Human Development Report, the region's fault lines as traced in that analysis may have deepened.2 The question thus arises: why have obstacles to human development in the region proved so stubborn?
This new Report proposes that the answers lie in the fragility of the region's political, social, economic and environmental structures, in its lack of peoplecentred development policies and in its vulnerability to outside intervention. Together, these characteristics undermine human security—the kind of material and moral foundation that secures lives, livelihoods and an acceptable quality of life for the majority. Human security is a prerequisite for human development, and its widespread absence in Arab countries has held back their progress.
Human insecurity at the global and regional levels
The world order that followed the end of the Cold War has proved to be tumultuous. External and internal challenges to the integrity of states have multiplied. From without, environmental pollution, international terrorism, large population movements, a melting global financial system and the rise of other cross-border threats such as pandemics, the drug trade and human trafficking have all laid siege to traditional notions of security. Within countries, spreading poverty, unemployment, civil wars, sectarian and ethnic conflicts and authoritarian repression have exposed the limits of many states in guaranteeing their citizens' rights and freedoms. While preserving the integrity of states remains the highest consideration of national security, a newer concern with protecting the lives of the people who reside in them has overtaken that preoccupation. The concept of human security, which complements that of national security, brings this change in perspective into focus.
In the Arab region, human insecurity— pervasive, often intense and with consequences affecting large numbers of people—inhibits human development. It is revealed in the impacts of military occupation and armed conflict in Iraq, Sudan, Somalia and Occupied Palestinian Territory. It is found in countries that enjoy relative stability where the authoritarian state, buttressed by flawed constitutions and unjust laws, often denies citizens their rights. Human insecurity is heightened by swift climatic changes, which threaten the livelihoods, income and access to food and water of millions of Arabs in future. It is reflected in the economic vulnerability of one-fifth of the people in some Arab states, and more than half in others, whose lives are impoverished and cut short by hunger and want. Human insecurity is palpable and present in the alienation of the region's rising cohort of unemployed youth and in the predicaments of its subordinated women, and dispossessed refugees.
The concept
Human security is the "rearguard of human development". Whereas human development is concerned with expanding the individual's capabilities and opportunities, human security focuses on enabling peoples to contain or avert threats to their lives, livelihoods and human dignity. The two concepts look at the human condition from different ends of a continuum, summarized by Amartya Sen as "expansion with equity" (human development) and "downturn with security" (human security). The intellectual frameworks they provide are co-extensive and mutually reinforcing. Moreover, human security is related to human rights inasmuch as respect for people's basic rights creates conditions favourable to human security.
Beginning with these insights, the Report adopts the comprehensive categorization of threats to human security originally posited by UNDP and defines human security as "the liberation of human beings from those intense, extensive, prolonged, and comprehensive threats to which their lives and freedom are vulnerable". Its chapters focus on: Pressures on environmental r - esources
- The performance of the state in guaranteeing or undermining human security
- The personal insecurity of vulnerable groups
- Economic vulnerability, poverty and unemployment
- Food security and nutrition
- Health and human security
- The systemic insecurity of occupation and foreign military intervention
Human security can be measured on both an objective and subjective level, and in quantitative and qualitative terms. The Report takes the view that no single composite index of human security would be valid, reliable or sufficiently sensitive to varying levels of human security and to different circumstances in the region. Rather, it affirms the relevance of discrete quantitative indicators and opinion surveys at the level of the regio of the region, its sub-regions and country groups.
