Human Security and the Interests of States

1 The Security Council also asked for continuing action, starting with a report from the Secretary-General, to assess the adequacy of existing international humanitarian law (Report from the UN Security Council, 12 February 1999, `Daily Highlights', www.un.org/News/). The other main occasion when the UNSC discussed humanitarian issues as a general topic was in connection with the Report of the Secretary-General on Protection for Humanitarian Assistance to Refugees and others in Conflict Situations, S/1998/883 (22 September 1998).

2 Howard Adelman, `Canadian Policy in Rwanda', in Howard Adelman & Astri Suhrke, eds, The Path of a Genocide: The Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire (New Brunswick, NJ & London: Transaction Publishers, 1999).

3 Washington Post, 20 February 1999.

4 The term was frequently used in the early 1990s by Jan Egeland, Deputy Foreign Minister in the Labour government.

5 The notion of states as guarantors of human rights is prominent in international human rights law. The idea is also used more generally in the sense of sovereignty as responsibility. For a recent formulation applied to Africa, see Francis Deng, ed., Sovereignty as Responsibility: Conflict Management in Africa (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 1996).

6 For a representative selection from a `constructivist perspective', see Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); and Martha Finnemore, National Interest in International Society (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996).

7 Annual Report of the Secretary-General on the Work of the Organization (New York: United Nations, August 1998, A/53/1).

8 See Rosalyn Higgins, `The New United Nations and Former Yugoslavia', International Affairs, vol. 69, no. 3, 1993; and Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda (Copenhagen: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1996).

9 Thomas Weiss & Leon Gordenker, NGOs, the UN and Global Governance (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1996); Alex de Waal, Famine Crimes: Politics & the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa (Oxford: James Currey, 1977).

10 I am here drawing on the neo-institutionalist school. For a recent review of their writings and their critics, see Peter J. Katzenstein, Robert O. Keohane & Stephen D. Krasner, `International Organization and the Study of World Politics', International Organization, vol. 52, no. 4, 1998, pp. 645-685.

11 Analysts argued that a developing compromise between domestic welfare capitalism and an open international market represented an embedded liberalism that served to sustain social stability, although this was not necessarily or explicitly the intention. The term `embedded liberalism' was coined by John G. Ruggie in an analysis of international regimes, `International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order', in Stephen D. Krasner, ed., International Regimes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), pp. 195-232.

12 Human Development Report. 1994. (New York: United Nations Development Programme, 1994).

13 `Human Security: Safety for People in a Changing World', Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Ottawa, April 1999.

14 Ivan Illich, in `Development as Planned Poverty', Celebration of Awareness: A Call for Institutional Revolution (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970).

15 Majid Rahnema, ed., The Post-Development Reader (London: Zed Books, 1997).

16 Cited in James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977) p. 1.

17 Robert Goodin, Protecting the Vulnerable (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1985).

18 Galtung's writings on this include `A Structural Theory of Imperialism', Journal of Peace Research, vol. 8, no. 2, 1971, pp. 81-117; (with Tord Høivik) `Structural and Direct Violence', Essays in Peace Research, vol. I (Copenhagen: Ejlers, 1975), pp. 135-139; `Violence, Peace and Peace Research', Essays... vol. I, pp. 109-134; `Feudal Systems, Structural Violence and the Structural Theory of Revolutions', Essays... vol. III (1978), pp. 197-267.

19 For a recent example see Mary B. Anderson, Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace - or War (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999). The literature is surveyed in Humanitarian Assistance and Conflict. Chr. Michelsen Institute Report 6.2. 1997 (Bergen: CMI).

20 In 1998, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights appointed a special rapporteur to look into the consequences of structural adjustment and the debt burden of poor countries.