ABSTRACT
Human security attempts to harness the alarm bell function of security to direct attention and resources to the security of people rather than states. Unlike many concepts that dominate security studies, human security draws on scholarly insights but was not developed in the halls of academia. Securitising an issue always risks framing it in terms of the dominant logic of state security and traditional, military-based solutions. Human security gained international attention due to its inclusion in the 1994 United Nations Development Program's Human Development Report and its adoption by Canada and other middle powers at around the same time. Security narratives that do not conform to the above structure especially those that might challenge its epistemological assumptions are not recognised as security talk. The adoption of the human security agenda by states and international organisations has largely followed this trajectory, showing the resilience of standard security narratives.
