5th Global Conference
Session Nine (A) Human Security, Replacing or Replicating a Human Rights Approach?
Chair: Andrew Wilson
Voices – Paths of Peace in Lebanon: Contributions of the 25-40 Age Group
Pamela Chrabieh Badine
Institute for Islamic-Christian Studies; St-Josef University, Beirut, Lebanon
For the last three decades, Lebanon has witnessed intermingling wars and periods of status quos, compiling new war memories onto others, reviving old wounds and shattering the dreams of reconstruction and stability. In this context of multilayered social and political crises and conflicted identities, the role of Lebanese civil society and Diaspora - and especially the role of the 25-35 age group - in spreading courage and hope despite constraining conditions, and in working towards breaking the cycle of war by building a culture of peace and conviviality, is of utmost importance. This paper presents a summary of recent research conducted on the Lebanese between 25 and 40. The research is based on participatory observation in Beirut and Montreal since September 2005, the collection and analysis of published data (press releases, scientific articles, electronic and multimedia material), and on contacts and qualitative interviews with forty Lebanese aged between 25 and 40, including journalists, poets, novelists, artists, bloggers, psychologists, movie and documentary producers, in addition to activists in NGOs, transnational organizations and groups of interreligious and intercultural dialogues. By building a culture of peace and conviviality, individuals and collectives within the 25-40 age group show that not only weapons have to be silenced. In their work and output, these groups and individuals buttress the necessity of testifying the personal war experiences, learning the lessons of history, sharing the mourning, breaking the cycle of hatred and revenge, connecting divisions and embracing a common humanity. In doing so, they run against the grain of the political class and large parts of Lebanese society. The paper examines how this implicit status of being a cross-sectarian “counter-culture” influences their campaigning and, conversely, its reception in the Lebanese public.
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An Unfulfilled Promise: Why Implementation of
UNSC Resolution 1325 Remains Elusive
Elizabeth Moore
National Intelligence Council, USA
When United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325) was passed in 2000, it seemed that a new age had dawned. For the first time in UN history, the Security Council had grappled with gender issues, not only acknowledging the differing impacts of conflict on women and men, but urging the participation of women in conflict prevention, peacebuilding, and reconstruction. The rationale behind the resolution was not just humanitarian, but a matter of common sense: cease-fires and peace settlements tend to be more lasting when women are involved in their formulation. To date, however, the great hopes accruing to 1325 have largely been dashed: in spite of the very occasional 1325 success story, observation of the resolution has been more in the breach than in reality.
UNSCR 1325’s supporters have offered a number of explanations for such a disappointing outcome: the low status of women in the developing world, the bottom-of-the-stack priority accorded “women’s issues” generally, lack of funding for 1325 implementation, and the fact that there is no single, unified UN agency looking out for women’s interests. All of these observations are valid, but insufficient to completely explain the mere lip service given to 1325. This paper argues that in order to understand why UNSCR 1325 has barely been implemented, it is necessary to examine the resolution within larger contexts: those of UN dynamics, nation-building practices, the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect, and the post-Cold War paradigm shift. In those contexts non-implementation of UNSCR 1325 is still disappointing, but hardly unexpected. At the same time, it becomes easier to move beyond much of the normative language accruing to 1325 and formulate more realistic expectations.
Insecurity by Impreciseness: Towards a Specific Concept of Security
Benjamin Rampp
Interdepartmental Centre for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW),
Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Tübingen,
Germany
About fifteen years ago, the concept of human security entered the discourse on war, peace and human rights. There have been long discussions and animadversion concerning the usefulness and side effects of the concept. It is, however, still used broadly. The critique persists and is twofold:
On the theoretical side, the concept of human security still lacks sharpness, significance and added value compared to more precise terms dealing with security matters. More important still, on the empirical side, the use of the concept creates more insecurity than security. Although the original idea of human security – focussing on the άταραξία (Ataraxia) – is an important basic idea (since security is more than just physical inviolability), its use in practice proved to be a self-destroying prophecy. Whenever the protection and reestablishment of human security gave reason to political action, more security was lost than won. In these cases, “human security” served and serves as justification of an interference with sensitive matters (i. g. the Operation Iraqi Freedom launched in March 2003) without addressing the problems accurately.
Facing these problems of the concept of “human security”, I propose a distinction between two levels of analysis:
On one level, human security as a general concept and goal of action is useful. It emphasizes that security is a multidimensional matter that cannot be reached monocausally.
But on a second level, the level of scientific practicability and empirical outcomes in the real world, the concept of human security is of less use. Here, the concept’s ill-specification leads to more problems than are solved by its use. Therefore, it should be replaced by more specific concepts that address the respective problems adequately – and at the same time have a focus on ‘personal security’ (UNDP 1994: 30f.), i.e. a ‘core concept’ dealing with the basic idea of physical inviolability as a common denominator.
Only by using specific concepts – instead of holistic ones – security can be increased. This is not an ontological matter, but an epistemological and methodological one.
Therefore a two-step procedure is necessary: By striving to achieve clearly formulated specific security goals at first, there is a chance that, in a second step, human security can be established.