Paper short abstract:

Human security thinking contributes in norm setting, intellectual framing, and policy orientation, but less as a concrete policy planning approach. Perhaps the task is to link it to existing practical approaches. The paper investigates two: Max-Neef’s Sustainable HD approach; and the BRAC approach.

Paper long abstract:

Human Security thinking covers a series of domains:

1. Human security as a concept and norm/set of norms (e.g., freedom from fear, from want, from indignity)

2. Human security as an intellectual frame that underlies the conceptualization and that functions for describing and analysing situations so as to understand (non-)fulfilment of the norm(s) and aid its/their pursuit

3. Human security as a policy philosophy/perspective for furthering the norm(s), that emphasizes themes of precautionary investment, common security, public goods, solidarity, etc.

4. Human security tools, instruments and detailed policy formats, such as human (in)security indicators and indexes, ‘hotspot’ mapping, etc., and structured packages of procedures and tools as in agencies’ manuals (e.g., UN Human Security Unit).

Human security thinking makes valuable contributions at levels 1, 2 and 3 (e.g., UNDP 2022). Some commentators express dissatisfaction regarding its evolution at level 4. However, there is perhaps a danger of reinventing the wheel. Is the main task instead to link HS thinking at levels 1-3 to existing approaches relevant at level 4? This paper investigates two examples, of different types.

First, Max-Neef (1991)’s Sustainable Human Development approach has a strong record of combining inspirational appeal and practical applicability for supporting local communities (Guillen-Royo 2016, Gasper 2024).

Second, Smillie (2009) presents a model of the learning human-development organization, from study of BRAC, from its establishment in 1971 to becoming the world’s largest NGDO. Trying to respond to the systemic insecurity faced by poor Bangladeshis (Wood 2007), BRAC’s founders gradually realized that urban outsiders did not already understand the nature of rural poverty or how to tackle it, so needed to engage in long-term processes of learning via experimentation and review, and to build systems and institutions for doing so.

Gasper, D., 2024. Understanding Max-Neef’s model of human needs as a practical toolkit for supporting development work and societal transitions. Ch.4 in: Beyond Ecological Economics and Development, eds. Luis Valenzuela-Rivera & María del Valle Barrera. Routledge.

Guillén-Royo, M. 2016. Sustainability and wellbeing: Human scale development in practice. Routledge.

Human Security Unit. 2016. Human Security Handbook. United Nations.

Max-Neef, M. 1991. Human scale development. Apex Press.

Smillie, Ian. 2009. Freedom from Want, Kumarian Press.

UNDP, 2022. New threats to human security in the Anthropocene. New York.

Wood, Geof. 2007. The Security of Agency: Analysing Poor People’s Search for Security. Conference paper.