ABSTRACT
In the second decade of the twenty-first century, there has been renewed focus on human security. It is driven by developments surrounding the Arab Spring, especially events in Libya and Syria that have underscored the continuing importance of the responsibility to protect doctrine when dictators turn their guns against their own people. But as the forces of globalization transform the world, some also argue that income inequalities between the world’s richest and poorest countries are widening as trade and investment flows intensify between those countries that can compete in the global economy and those in the South that cannot. This point is convincingly argued in the World Bank’s 2007 Global Economic Prospects report, which points out that although globalization will contribute to rapid growth in average incomes over the next 25 years, it is also being accompanied by growing income inequality and potentially severe environmental pressures. As a result, the probability of civil unrest in a number of poor and middleincome countries is also rising.1
