ABSTRACT
Human security encapsulates a wide variety of security realities and experiences. In the 1994 report of the United Nations Development Programme, ‘Human Security Now’ (UNDP 1994), the term was introduced to draw attention to people's experiences of security, which were often ignored due to the emphasis on state security. In the post-cold war context of the early 1990s, therefore, the traditional focus was supplemented with a concern for humans and their experiences of insecurities. State-defined security, revolving around political and military sectors, was conceived as too narrow and insufficient (Hoogensen 2004:8). Despite some current analyses that suggest human security is a tool used to support practices for increased state security, such as (Western) military interventions (in states of the global South, e.g. Afghanistan) (Duffield and Waddell 2006; Chandler 2007; Duffield 2007), human security entails a normative concern with people and security. It is noted however that the people to whom human security matters are mostly passive subjects in the policy discourse (Krause 2005:6). At the same time, it is claimed that directing the focus of research towards people's experiences can contribute to altering the understandings of security (Darby 2006:467). To achieve that, a bottom-up and people-centred perspective of human security research is called for (Krause and Jütersonke 2005; Ewan 2007:187).
