ABSTRACT

Security and Securitization In the past few years, the concept of security has increasingly expanded in its referent object, core values and type of threats. Among scholars, Richard Ullman was the first to advocate an extension of the security concept to include a wide range of issues from natural disasters and diseases to environmental degradation.1 Such advocacy was prominent with the end of Cold War that witnessed the decline of military threats, while other threats to human beings (poverty, diseases, natural disaster, environmental degradation, and so on) have seemed to increase in the past few decades. This extension has nevertheless turned security into a heavily contested concept in the study of International Relations. While the ‘traditionalists’ defend the importance of the state as the main referent object of security issues, the ‘non-traditionalists’ argue that the referent object of security should be extended to include human collectivities or people.2 As the ‘non-traditionalists’ believe that the major threat to security encompasses a wide range of dangers affecting the condition of human existence, they suggest that the referent object of security should not be confined to the state.