Promoting Human Security: Ethical, Normative and Educational Frameworks in Latin America and the Caribbean

Ethical, Normative
Promoting Human Security:

and Educational Frameworks

in Latin America and the Caribbean
 Promoting Human Security:
Ethical, Normative and Educational Frameworks
in Latin America and the Caribbean
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Ms Moufida Goucha / Ms Claudia Maresia
Section of Philosophy and Human Sciences
Social and Human Sciences Sector
UNESCO
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SHS/FPH/PHS/2005/PI/H/1

UNESCO 2005

Printed in 2005
 Promoting Human Security:
Ethical, Normative and Educational Frameworks
in Latin America and the Caribbean

Claudia F. Fuentes
Francisco Rojas Aravena

(Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences FLACSO)

 Contents

Foreword by Ms Moufida Goucha

Promoting human security: from concept to action 9

Introduction 13

Acknowledgements from the authors 17

Part One 19
A new international context 19
Latin America and the Caribbean 22

Part Two 25
Human security: debating the concept 25
(a) Commission on Human Security 26
(b) International Commission on Intervention and State
Sovereignty 28
(c) Origins of the human security concept: UNDP report 30
(d) International organizations and human security 32
(e) Countries promoting the concept of Human Security
and the Network 34
(i) Canada 35
(ii) Japan 36
(iii) Human Security Network 37

Part Three 41
Hemispheric initiatives 41

Part Four 47
Strengths and weaknesses of the concept of human security 47

5
Part Five 51
Human security: a unifying and linking concept 51
a) The security triad 52
b) Broadening the concept of security and violence 55

Part Six 59
Ethical and normative dimensions of human security 59
(a) Ethical aspects of human security 59
(b) Normative dimension of human security 61
(c) Treaties, conventions and other binding instruments
dealing with human security 63

Part Seven 93
Principal threats to human security in Latin America 93

1 Socio-economic vulnerabilities 95
(a) Growth and economic crises 95
(b) The steady rise in external debt 98
(c) Rising unemployment 99
(d) Marginal improvement in human development 103
(e) Rising poverty and income inequality 105
(f ) Rising social inequality 108
(g) Public-sector social spending and poverty 110
(h) Health 114

2 Social integration and vulnerability 118

(a) Migration and human security 118
(b) Indigenous peoples and multiculturalism 130
(c) Technology and social integration: internet, politics
and human security 131

3 Politico-institutional vulnerabilities: weak democracies 136

(a) Recurrent crises 137
(b) Low-density democracies 139

6
 (c) Corruption exacerbates politico-institutional
vulnerability 140
(d) Crisis of representation 142
(e) Public perceptions 143

4 International security vulnerabilities (traditional) 147

(a) Inter-state conflicts 147
(b) Unresolved border conflicts 147
(c) Transnational security threats 148
(i) Drug trafficking: a multilateral problem 149
(ii) Money laundering 152
(iii) Terrorism: worldwide cooperation to prevent it 153
(iv) Light arms trafficking: a multilateral problem 154
(v) Colombia: high levels of human insecurity 157

5 Internal security vulnerabilities 158

(a) Social violence and crime 158
(b) Institutionalized violence 163

6 Environmental vulnerabilities 165

Part Eight 169

Empowerment for human security 169

Recommendations 177

Bibliography 181

Appendices 191
A brief introduction to the authors: Claudia F. Fuentes
and Francisco Rojas Aravena (Latin American Faculty of Social
Sciences FLACSO) 193

7
Final recommendations of the First International Meeting
of Directors of Peace Research and Training Institutions
on the theme What Agenda for Human Security
in the Twenty-first Century? 195

Some UNESCO publications on Human Security, Peace

and Conflict Prevention 201

8
 Promoting human security:
from concept to action

During the last decade, human security has become a

central concern to many countries, institutions and social actors
searching for innovative ways and means of tackling the many
non-military threats to peace and security. Indeed, human
security underlines the complex links, often ignored or
underestimated, between disarmament, human rights and
development. Today, in an increasingly globalized world, the
most pernicious threats to human security emanate from the
conditions that give rise to genocide, civil war, human rights
violations, global epidemics, environmental degradation, forced
and slave labour, and malnutrition. All the current studies on
security thus have to integrate the human dimension of security.
Thus, since the publication of the United Nations
Development Programmes 1994 Human Development Report on
new dimensions of human security, major efforts have been
undertaken to refine the very concept of human security through
research and expert meetings, to put human security at the core
of the political agenda at both national and regional levels and,
most important of all, to engage in innovative action in the field
to respond to the needs and concerns of the most vulnerable
populations. Two landmarks in this process were the creation of
the Human Security Network in 1999, made up of twelve
countries from all regions, which holds ministerial meetings
every year, and the publication of the 2003 report of the
Commission on Human Security, Human Security Now:
Protecting and Empowering People, which has called for a global
initiative to promote human security.
UNESCO has been closely associated with these efforts
from the outset, in particular in the framework of its action

9
aimed at promoting a culture of peace. Thus, as of 1994, the
Organization launched a series of regional and national projects
relating to the promotion of a new concept of security, ensuring
the participation of regional, national and local institutions, and
involving a wide array of actors, including the armed forces, in
Central America and Africa.
On the basis of the experience acquired through the
implementation of those projects, human security became a
central concern for the Organization as a whole. A plan of action
for the promotion of human security at the regional level was
adopted in 2000, as a result of the deliberations of the First
International Meeting of Directors of Peace Research and
Training Institutions on the theme What Agenda for Human
Security in the Twenty-first Century?, held at UNESCO
Headquarters; and in 2002 human security became one of the
Organizations twelve strategic objectives as reflected in its
Medium-Term Strategy for 20022007. This strategic objective is
closely linked to UNESCOs contribution to the eradication of
poverty, in particular extreme poverty, to the promotion of
human rights, as well as to its action in the field of natural
sciences, in particular regarding the prevention of conflicts
relating to the use of water resources.
The choice of adopting regional approaches to human
security has been most fruitful to date. In Africa, UNESCO, in
close cooperation with the Institute for Security Studies of South
Africa and the African Union, has initiated action aiming at the
formulation of a regional human security agenda, addressing
conflict prevention and many of the issues raised in the New
Partnership for Africas Development (NEPAD) initiative, which
UNESCO has fully supported from its inception. In Latin
America, cooperation with FLACSO-Chile in 200103 led to
important discussions of human security issues in the region, and
to the formulation of policy recommendations that have been
submitted to the ministerial meetings of the Human Security
Network and to regional intergovernmental meetings on

10
hemispheric security. In East Asia, building on important
progress made by subregional academic and political institutions,
UNESCO, in collaboration with the Korean National
Commission for UNESCO and Korea University, organized the
2003 meeting on Human Security in East Asia, whose results
were widely disseminated. After the International Conference on
Human Security in the Arab States, jointly organized by
UNESCO and the Regional Human Security Center in Amman
(Jordan), in March 2005, UNESCO will be developing similar
projects in Central and South-East Asia in 2005, to conclude
with Africa and Eastern Europe in 2006.
With a view to opening new perspectives for focused
research, adequate training, preparation of pilot projects, and to
further consolidate public policy and public awareness on human
security issues, UNESCO is launching a new series of publications:
Promoting Human Security: Ethical, Normative and Educational
Frameworks. These will emphasize three important elements in
order to translate the concept of human security into action: (a)
the need to have a solid ethical foundation, based on shared values,
leading to the commitment to protect human dignity which lies at
the very core of human security; (b) buttressing that ethical
dimension by placing existing and new normative instruments at the
service of human security, in particular by ensuring the full
implementation of instruments relating to the protection of
human rights; and (c) the need to reinforce the education and
training component by better articulating and giving enhanced
coherence to all ongoing efforts, focusing on issues such as
education for peace and sustainable development, training in human
rights and enlarging the democratic agenda to human security issues.
We hope that the new series each publication focusing
on a specific region will contribute to laying the foundations of
an in-depth and sustained action for the promotion of human
security, in which the individual has a key role to play.

Moufida Goucha

11
 Introduction

This report analyses the debate that is taking place both

internationally and regionally on the subject of human security,
and evaluates the main threats to personal security in the
countries of Latin America.
The main conceptual approaches to human security are
associated with two substantial reports: Human Security Now,
from the Commission on Human Security (CHS, 2003), and
The Responsibility to Protect, from the International Commission
on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS, 2001). The first of
these develops the concept of human security from the point of
view of the protection of individuals vital freedoms and proposes
a series of tools and programmes of action for applying policies
based on the protection and empowerment of individuals. The
second report basically concentrates on humanitarian
intervention, stressing the responsibility of the international
community towards populations whose human rights have been
seriously infringed.
The 1994 UNDP report is also an important precedent
because of its contribution to defining the scope of human
security.
As regards international action, UNESCO believes that it
is essential to promote human security as part of its Medium-
Term Strategy for 20022007, in accordance with its mandate in
the spheres of education, science, culture, communication and
information. Since the late 1990s, and particularly since the First
International Meeting of Directors of Peace Research and
Training Institutions (Paris, November 2000), UNESCO has
been carrying out regional consultations with a view to
developing a series of ethical, normative and educational
frameworks to promote human security and conflict prevention

13
in cooperation with governments, non-governmental
organizations and local academic centres. In UNESCOs
judgement, the idea of human security is an essential element in
the establishment of a common platform of action to raise
awareness of the most critical threats among all those affected,
centring on the interests of populations and particularly the most
vulnerable segments of them.
Meanwhile, an informal partnership of countries with an
ambitious programme in this area, the Human Security
Network, has made substantial progress with its goal of banning
the use of anti-personnel mines and ultimately of eradicating
them. Chile is the only Latin American country to participate in
this partnership, and it has included this perspective in its foreign
policy.
At the hemispheric level, chiefly through the Summits of
the Americas and under the auspices of the Organization of
American States (OAS), a number of initiatives have been taken
to construct a shared concept of security for the countries of the
region that incorporates the dimensions affecting the security of
individuals within the framework of this broader debate. The
Bridgetown Declaration, adopted by the OAS General Assembly
in Barbados in 1992, is one of the most important developments
here, as it incorporates a multidimensional approach to
hemispheric security. The next Special Conference on Security,
which will be held in Mexico, will give the countries of the
hemisphere an opportunity to consolidate a broader vision of
security with a view to establishing an inter-American charter of
hemispheric security.
This report presents a survey of all the treaties,
conventions and binding instruments acceded to by the countries
of Latin America and the Caribbean that have a bearing on
human security in the political, socio-economic, international
security, environmental and cultural spheres.
Analysis of the conceptual debate and the incipient
implementation of the concept of human security at the national

14
and regional levels reveals the strong and weak points of this
outlook. Among the strong points are inclusiveness,
multidimensionality and the stress on multilateralism and
cooperation, factors that make human security a concept whose
implementation would allow a more effective response to the
threats facing people and communities. This concept also has an
important ethical and normative dimension, grounded in
international law and priority for human rights.
As regards the limitations of the concept, two factors are
of particular importance for Latin American countries the
difficulty of focusing on core interests and priorities owing to the
breadth of the human security field, and the problem of
including security issues in development plans and programmes.
The report suggests that to deal with these shortcomings in the
Latin American context, attention should be focused on two
issues: (a) the need to establish in practical and operational terms
the relationship between national security, international security
and human security; (b) the use of violence as a determinant for
analysis. For this it is necessary to consider the conditions that
pave the way for violence, the protagonists, and the measures that
could prevent violence and one of its extreme manifestations,
humanitarian crises.
Lastly, the report delineates and examines six essential
areas where threats to human security could arise: (1) socio-
economic vulnerabilities, (2) social integration, (3) political and
institutional weaknesses, (4) international security, (5) internal
security, (6) environmental risks. In the case of Latin America,
the main threats to human security arise from a number of
circumstances, in particular the weakness of democracy, the rise
of poverty and inequity and, increasingly, urban violence and
crime.

15
 Acknowledgements from the authors

This document was prepared at the request of UNESCO

by the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO)*,
and in particular by its Secretary-General, Francisco Rojas
Aravena and the Director of the FLACSO-Chile Human
Security Programme, Claudia F. Fuentes Julio, and presented as
part of the meeting Seguridad Internacional Contempornea:
Consecuencias para la Seguridad Humana en Amrica Latina
(Santiago, Chile, August 2003).

The authors of this study wish to thank the following

FLACSO-Chile staff for their contributions: Rodrigo Araya,
Grecia Bate, Claudio Fuentes S., Jorge Guzmn, Carolina
Stefoni, Rodrigo Vera, Carlos Vergara, and Andrs Villar.

* The Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) is an independent

international organization, regional in nature, that works to promote the social
sciences in Latin America and the Caribbean through research, technical
cooperation and postgraduate training.

17
 Part One

A new international context

Freedom from fear is the security objective laid down by

the United Nations in its Millennium Report (United Nations,
2000b). Achieving this will involve a recognition that the
international system has changed fundamentally in recent years
and that in the process a clear need has arisen to develop
innovative approaches and perspectives so that we can grasp these
changes and respond to new challenges. The main characteristics
defining the international system for over half a century were
transformed by the breakdown of the bipolar order. Furthermore,
changes in state capabilities and their effects on related matters
such as sovereignty are having repercussions on structural aspects
and on the attitudes of international actors and the way these are
regarded.
During the Cold War, concepts of security mainly related
to the state, and the viewpoint was primarily a military one. At
the present time, a transition can be observed towards a broader
concept of security whose objectives are peace, international
stability and protection for individuals and communities. Since
the mid-1990s we have seen the concept of human security,
which emphasizes the protection of individuals, coming strongly
to the fore.
One of the changes that has most influenced the
development of the human security concept is the new nature of
conflicts around the world, most of which take place within
states. In the ten years following the end of the Cold War there
were 103 armed conflicts, of which 93 were internal; in these,

19
90 per cent of the victims were civilians. This development has
modified the main international actors perception of tension and
conflict situations and, at a more general level, of concepts
relating to security.
The concept of security has evolved, coming to centre
more on individuals, because it has been understood that security
does not depend only on the armed forces of each state.
International agreements, the opening up of economies to nearby
countries, increasing interdependence, and even the awareness of
mutual vulnerability affect the security of individuals and the
state.
Another of the factors that has contributed to this change
in outlook where security is concerned is the complexity of global
problems and their repercussions for millions of people. There
are now threats very different from that of a military attack
against ones homeland, including environmental risks,
international crime, drug trafficking and terrorism. All this
entails far-reaching changes in the basic idea of sovereignty and
shows that national capabilities are inadequate to deal with the
main problems. The new international context is changing the
scale of problems that used to be wholly national in character,
requiring a new international system where only the ability to
pool forces will restore to states the ability to generate, jointly
with other actors, a legitimate order that can satisfy the demands
arising at the national, regional and world levels.
To sum up, the main changes and tendencies in the
international system that are influencing the way we observe and
analyse the new security challenges, and that have given rise to a
conceptualization which highlights the protection of individuals,
are associated principally with the following structural and
international factors:
The end of bipolar conflict with the breakdown of the
Soviet Union. This removed the context within which policy-
making took place for half a century. The communism/anti-

20
communism conflict has retained its momentum in some regions
but has ceased to be pivotal at the world level.
The impact of globalization in different areas, and
interdependence. What characterized international relations was
the differentiation between the national and international
spheres, and this is tending to disappear with globalization. In
the globallocal chain of cause and effect, the national level is
often not present even as an intermediary. There has also been a
change in the dimensions of time and space affecting policy-
making, response times and the scale of events.
New international actors. New transnational actors are
making a forceful appearance in the new context. Not only are
multinational/transnational companies acquiring new
capabilities in the conditions of globalization, but so are non-
governmental organizations. The increasingly important role
being played by individuals and their views in the form of global
public opinion is a potent factor in the new international
architecture.
New power relationships. The consolidation of the United
States as a hegemonic power is translating into growing
unilateralism and difficulties with multilateral policy
coordination.
New threats to security. Non-traditional security threats
are appearing, most of them transnational and non-military in
character. Examples include drug trafficking, money laundering
and organized crime.
Development gaps. There are major difficulties in
overcoming poverty and serious imbalances and inequalities in
the distribution of economic resources and in national, regional
and international decision-making.
The main international factors are as follows:
Loss of state capabilities. This factor relates to changes in
sovereignty. The case of world finance most clearly illustrates
states increasing inability to control international flows.
Similarly, the new global context is altering the scale of issues that

21
formerly had an exclusively national character but that are now
part of a new international system which demands responses that
are global in scope and include both state and non-state actors.
This is the case with the environment.
Increase in intra-national conflicts. Inter-state conflicts are
tending to diminish and internal conflicts to increase. The
victims of the latter are mainly civilians.

Latin America and the Caribbean

The end of the Cold War coincided with democratization

and pacification in certain countries of South and Central
America. These developments, along with the resolution of
territorial and border conflicts between states, opened a new
chapter in the way security was evaluated in the region and in the
priorities set, given the emergence of new needs and challenges.
For most Latin American countries, the new security
agenda now focuses on intra-state problems. Personal security is
being quite seriously threatened by the rise in both organized and
non-organized crime, and by rising social tensions caused by
persistent and increasing poverty in the region. The Secretary-
General of the United Nations (Annan, 2003) has stated that
Colombia, Guatemala and Haiti are the countries that most need
the attention and support of the international community if they
are to resolve their conflicts peacefully. Concerning Colombia, he
noted that international efforts to achieve an agreement had been
inadequate and the civilian population of that country had been
subjected to serious violations of human rights and international
humanitarian law. In Guatemala, the United Nations still
maintains a Verification Mission to oversee compliance with the
peace agreements, established in 1996, which has observed a rise
in social conflict and in the poverty indices, as well as growing

22
militarization. Lastly, the Secretary-General saw the
establishment of the United Nations special mission in Haiti as a
positive step, the priority objectives of this mission being the
promotion of personal security, human rights and good
government.
When considering the new security situation in the
Americas, a number of tendencies need to be taken into account:
Latin America has not consolidated a disarmament policy
in relation to weapons of mass destruction. In this area there is still
a need to improve policies and, in particular, to generate efficient
verification mechanisms.
The military spending of Latin America and the Caribbean
is low by comparison with the rest of the world. Furthermore, the
region does not have modern strategic weapons. To consolidate a
tendency towards lower military spending it is necessary for
policy-makers to achieve progress with transparency, verification
and the development of a second phase of confidence-building
measures.
Latin America and the Caribbean has had, and still has, a
marginal position in global strategic affairs, and no change is in
prospect. At the same time, there are few inter-state conflicts in
Latin America and, isolated outbreaks notwithstanding, disputes
between states have remained largely unmilitarized.
Internal conflicts. Latin America and the Caribbean is a
region with a high index of intra-national conflict, where
violence plays a major role and affects perceptions of security
even beyond the borders of each state.
International security institutions are weak in Latin
America and the Caribbean. This results in a lack of coordination
and missed opportunities both for dialogue with the United
States and for the development of home-grown policies to
support tendencies towards peace and stability in the region.
The United States was the main actor in the region and
hemisphere during the Cold War, and still is. That country
performs differentiated and simultaneous functions, which

23
complicates its role as a global and local actor in the region. It is
at the same time an organizer of security, a supplier of arms and
military aid and the actor that lays down limitations on
procurement. The lack of suitable arrangements for dialogue
with the US, in the absence of solid institutions, reduces
opportunities for cooperation.
United States unilateralism and security priorities. As the
leading international actor, the US favours unilateralism in the
actions it undertakes internationally and towards the countries of
the region, and gives priority to its own security concerns when
it comes to bilateral and multilateral issues. There is a clear need
to develop concerted regional policies to respond to the demands
of the international system and, in particular, to US foreign
policy. Consequently, it is of the greatest importance to establish
a cooperative programme of action to deal with security issues
between the countries of the region and the US.
Latin America has not reached consensus on a common
conceptual framework for security. This affects the prospects for
constructing and implementing a system of binding norms in
relation to defence and international security and influences the
choice of public goods that are to be promoted and protected in
this field.
The situation described entails considerable challenges for
Latin American countries, particularly the need to produce a
common security concept for the Americas that reflects these
changes and the specific security requirements of the region. This
must be a fundamental objective as we look to the forthcoming
Special Conference on Security to be held under OAS auspices in
October. In this debate, the concept of human security is being
presented as a new perspective that can provide a better
understanding of the new security challenges facing the
countries. Indeed, the draft declarations being discussed at the
OAS affirm that state security and human security are mutually
reinforcing. Nonetheless, the debate as to how this link should be
implemented goes on.

24
 Part Two

Human security: debating the concept

The concept of human security made its appearance on

the world scene in the mid-1990s, a time when new paradigms
were being sought to explain the international system and a
growing theoretical and practical debate was under way on the
traditional concepts of security that drove countries actions for
much of the last century. Academics, certain international
organizations and even some states promoted human security as
a concept that would provide a better grasp of the new security
challenges from the perspective of individuals or citizens. Of the
countries promoting human security, the members of the
Commission on Human Security, chiefly Canada and Japan,
deserve particular mention.
The most recent debate on this concept centres around
two reports: Human Security Now (2003), from the Commission
on Human Security, and The Responsibility to Protect (2001),
from the International Commission on Intervention and State
Sovereignty. Considering the relevance of the two reports and the
intensity of the international debate surrounding them, this
section begins by analysing these documents and then goes on to
consider the positions of the international organizations that
have promoted this outlook and of certain countries that have
incorporated this conception into their foreign policy.1

1 The member countries of the Human Security Network are Austria, Canada,
Chile, Greece, Ireland, Jordan, Mali, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, South
Africa (observer), Switzerland and Thailand.

25
(a) Commission on Human Security

The creation of the Commission on Human Security was

announced in January 2001 in response to an appeal by United
Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in the context of the
Millennium Summit and with the support of the Government of
Japan. When it was constituted, the Commission set out to
consider ways of: (a) promoting public understanding of human
security and of the imperatives that this outlook entails; (b)
developing the concept of human security as an operational tool
for policy formulation and application; and (c) putting forward
a programme of action with a view to determining the best
measures for dealing with threats to human security.
Accordingly, in May 2003 it presented the report Human
Security Now (CHS, 2003), which seeks to respond to the three
points indicated. It emphasizes that the new factors of insecurity
affecting people require an integrated approach, and that the
human security perspective can generate responses to these new
challenges: Policies and institutions must respond to these
insecurities in stronger and more integrated ways. The state
continues to have the primary responsibility for security. But as
security challenges become more complex and various new actors
attempt to play a role, we need a shift in paradigm. The focus
must broaden from the state to the security of people to human
security.
Concerning the definition of this concept, it argues that
human security means protecting vital freedoms. It means
protecting people from critical and pervasive threats and
situations, building on their strengths and aspirations. It also
means creating systems that give people the building blocks of
survival, dignity and livelihood. Human security connects
different types of freedoms freedom from want, freedom from
fear and freedom to take action on ones own behalf.
Against this background, the report argues that there are
two general strategies for achieving the desired objective, these

26
being the protection and empowerment of individuals. Protection
insulates people from dangers. It requires a concerted effort to
establish norms, processes and institutions that systematically
address situations of insecurity. Respect for human rights is at the
core of human security protection. Empowerment, meanwhile,
enables people to participate fully in decision-making.
The report emphasizes that fostering democratic
principles is an important step towards human security and
development: it enables people to participate in governance
structures and make their voices heard. The report also points to
the need to create solid institutions, in a democratic context, to
underpin peoples autonomy and opportunities for participation.
The Commission sets forth its analysis of six issues relating
to conflict and need, when the manifestations of human security
are critical and widespread:
Protecting people in violent conflicts. The report
underlines the need to strengthen norms and mechanisms for
protecting civilians, the main victims of conflicts. Priorities
include disarming those with weapons, combating crime and
preventing weapons proliferation and illegal trade in resources
and people.
Protecting and empowering migrants and displaced persons.
At present there is no agreed international framework for
protecting or regulating migration, other than in the case of
refugees. The report suggests exploring the viability of an
international migration framework, laying the groundwork for
broad debate and dialogue on the need to strike a cautious
balance between countries security and development interests
and the human security of migrants.
Protection and empowerment of people in post-conflict
situations. The responsibility to protect people in conflict
situations ought to be complemented by a responsibility for
reconstruction. Accordingly, the report proposes that a
framework and strategy of specific financing for this should be
designed.

27
 Economic insecurity, the possibility of choice between
different opportunities. As well as the problem of poverty, human
security relates to unfavourable economic conditions and the
social effects of crises. The equitable distribution of resources is
of the greatest importance in securing peoples choices and
livelihoods.
Health as an element in human security. The report
emphasizes that HIV/AIDS is a priority. Because of their
urgency, extent and impact, the infectious diseases, poverty-
related threats and health needs that exist throughout the world
are particularly important.
Knowledge, preparation for life and values as elements of
human security. The Commission stresses the need to attain the
goal of universal primary education and emphasizes the way in
which the communications and public information media can
help to prepare people so that they can actively exercise their
rights and assume their responsibilities.

(b) International Commission on Intervention and

State Sovereignty

The International Commission on Intervention and State

Sovereignty (ICISS) was also established in response to the call by
Kofi Annan for the international community to work towards a
consensus over the question of humanitarian intervention. In
September 2002, during the United Nations General Assembly,
the Government of Canada and a group of major foundations
announced the creation of the ICISS with the objective of
addressing this issue.
In December 2001 the report The Responsibility to Protect
was presented. This centred on the idea that sovereign states had
a responsibility to protect their own citizens from avoidable
catastrophes (mass murder, systematic rape and starvation), but
that if they could not or would not do so, this responsibility had
to be assumed by the community of states. The report examines

28
the nature and scope of this responsibility, along with other
questions such as who should exercise it, upon what authority,
and when, how and where (ICISS, 2001).
The report emphasizes that the current debate about
intervention aimed at protecting human beings is taking place
within a historical, political and legal context in which
international standards of individual and state behaviour are
evolving, not least towards the formulation of new and stricter
rules and mechanisms for protecting human rights. It argues that
the concept of human security including concern for human
rights, but broader than that in its scope has also become an
increasingly important element in international law and
international relations, increasingly providing a conceptual
framework for international action. Although the issue is far
from uncontroversial, the concept of security is now increasingly
recognized to extend to people as well as to states (ICISS, 2001).
Thus, the Commission accepts that issues of sovereignty and
intervention do not affect the rights or prerogatives of states only,
but have profound and fundamental implications for each
human being.
As the document argues, one of the advantages of
concentrating on the responsibility to protect is that attention is
thereby focused on the needs of human beings seeking protection
or assistance. With this approach, the thrust of the security
debate shifts from territorial security to security based on human
development and on access to food, employment and
environmental security. It stresses that the traditional approach to
security neglects the most elemental and legitimate concerns that
people have in their daily lives. When rape is used as an
instrument of war and ethnic cleansing, when thousands are
killed by floods resulting from a ravaged countryside and when
citizens are killed by their own security forces, then it is just
insufficient to think of security in terms of national or territorial
security alone. The concept of human security can and does
embrace such diverse circumstances (ICISS, 2001).

29
 This being so, the report suggests that the responsibility to
protect is founded upon two basic principles: (a) state
sovereignty entails responsibilities, and it is the state itself that
has the prime responsibility for protecting its population; (b)
when the population is suffering serious harm as the result of civil
war, insurrection, repression by the state or the collapse of its
structures, and that state cannot or will not contain or prevent
this suffering, the responsibility to protect will take precedence
over the principle of non-intervention.
The international responsibility proposed by the report
would consist of three specific elements:
The responsibility to prevent: removing the direct
underlying causes of internal conflicts and other man-made crises
that endanger the population. Prevention is the most important
dimension of the responsibility to protect; all options in this area
need to be exhausted before intervention can be contemplated,
and more efforts and resources need to be devoted to prevention.
The responsibility to react: responding with appropriate
measures to situations in which the need for human protection is
overwhelming, including coercive measures such as the
imposition of sanctions and international legal initiatives and, in
extreme cases, military intervention.
The responsibility to rebuild: offering full assistance,
particularly after a military intervention, for recovery,
reconstruction and reconciliation, and removing the causes of the
harm that the intervention was intended to contain or prevent.

(c) Origins of the human security concept: UNDP report

In its report New Dimensions of Human Security (UNDP,

1994), the United Nations Development Programme tried for
the first time to generate a comprehensive analysis of the issue
and define the concept of security on a new basis. For UNDP,
there are two conditions that guarantee human security: (a)
freedom from fear, and (b) freedom from want.

30
 The document emphasizes that for most people the feeling
of insecurity focuses more on the concerns of day-to-day life than
on the fear of war in the world. More generally, it will not be
possible for the community of nations to achieve any of its major
goals not peace, not environmental protection, not human
rights or democratization, not fertility reduction, not social
integration except in the context of sustainable development
that leads to human security.
It also argues that human security is people-centred. It is
concerned with how people live and breathe in a society, how
freely they exercise their many choices, how much access they
have to market and social opportunities and whether they live
in conflict or peace Human security means that people can
exercise these choices safely and freely and that they can be
relatively confident that the opportunities they have today are
not totally lost tomorrow. Regarding the link between human
development and human security, it explains that the former
consists in expanding peoples opportunities, while human
security concerns the stable enjoyment of these, so that the
opportunities available today do not disappear over time.
The UNDP report proposes an enlarged conception of
human security, stressing that this entails a universal concern for
human life and dignity, that its components are interdependent
(in the political, social, economic and environmental spheres)
and that the effects of the main threats to it are worldwide in
scope (drug trafficking, terrorism, environmental damage, arms
trafficking, etc.). It also explains that this concept has an
integrative character that differentiates it from traditional
defensive conceptions of security limited to the defence of
territory and military power. Thus, the notion of human security
is based on the security of people, it being understood that
development must benefit all.
The report lists six dimensions that form part of human
security and its central concerns: the economic, health,
environmental, personal, community and political dimensions. It is

31
important to stress that while they may be analytically
distinguishable, these dimensions are part of a single phenomenon,
human security. Thus, the concept is regarded as indivisible
because when the securities associated with one of these dimensions
are undermined, all the other dimensions are affected too.

(d) International organizations and human security

The concept of human security was also treated as an

essential issue in the UN Millennium Report (United Nations,
2000b), in which Kofi Annan observed that the requirements of
security today have come to embrace the protection of
communities and individuals from internal violence, adding that
the need for a more human-centred approach to security is
reinforced by the continuing dangers that weapons of mass
destruction, most notably nuclear weapons, pose to humanity:
their very name reveals their scope and their intended objective,
if they were ever used (United Nations, 2000b, Chap. IV, 194,
195). The report argues that when security is defined in terms of
protection for people, six fundamental aspects need to be
considered: (i) prevention, which means promoting balanced
economic development along with respect for human and
minority rights and with political agreements whereby all sectors
are fairly represented. Conflicts are more common in poor
countries, particularly those that are badly governed and that
have acute inequalities between ethnic or religious groups; (ii)
protection for the most vulnerable sectors, through the correct
application of international law and respect for human rights;
(iii) the intervention dilemma, the argument being that national
sovereignty is not to be used to protect those who arbitrarily
violate the rights and threaten the lives of their fellows; (iv)
improved peacekeeping operations: the report invites
consideration of the recommendations made by a group of
experts set up by the Secretary-General to examine all aspects of
such operations; (v) the specification of sanctions: the Security

32
Council is urged to review and analyse research in this area with
a view to making sanctions more effective by specifying their
objective; (vi) arms reduction. The Secretary-General calls on
Member States to control the small arms trade more rigorously
and to commit themselves to reducing the risks of existing
nuclear weapons and proliferation.
In defining human security, Kofi Annan specifies that this
idea, in its broadest sense, embraces far more than the absence of
violent conflict. It encompasses human rights, good governance,
access to education and health care and ensuring that each
individual has opportunities and choices to fulfil his or her
potential. Every step in this direction is also a step towards
reducing poverty, achieving economic growth and preventing
conflict. Freedom from want, freedom from fear, and the
freedom of future generations to inherit a healthy natural
environment: these are the interrelated building blocks of human
and therefore national security (Annan, 2001).
UNESCO has also done important work in promoting
this concept, organizing a series of international seminars to
promote regional approaches towards a clearer understanding of
the needs and the most appropriate modes of action for the joint
promotion of human security and conflict prevention in each
specific regional and cultural context (Goucha and Rojas
Aravena, 2003a). In this context, the Chief of the UNESCO
Section of Philosophy and Human Sciences, Moufida Goucha,
has emphasized the importance of preventing conflicts and
violence, paying special attention to the combined effect of the
risks and threats to citizens and pursuing the eradication of non-
armed, non-military threats to peace and security. This means
taking the concepts of human security and democratic security
further, at a time when there is such a clear need to renew the
international logic of security.2 The Organization has also

2 Moufida Goucha, Unit for Peace and the New Dimensions of Security,
UNESCO, December 1999.

33
sponsored a series of educational initiatives, particularly human
rights training for specific groups, such as army, security force
and police representatives. It has also begun to establish exchange
relationships with peace research and training institutes, and with
defence and strategic studies institutes.
Through its SecuriPax3 network, UNESCO has created an
internet portal whose purpose is to improve interconnection
among different networks of organizations, research institutions,
universities and centres that promote peace and human security
as a main element in their programmes.
While the origins of the concept of protection for
individuals date back to the birth of international law, it was in
the United Nations Charter, and particularly in the 1948
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that it took on a global
dimension. As we have mentioned, in 1994 the UNDP
systematized a comprehensive approach. The ending of the Cold
War had opened up new opportunities for considering human
security from fresh points of view. In the Millennium Report, the
concept became pivotal to the United Nations. Two of its
academic institutions, the United Nations University and the
University for Peace, have carried out studies and published on
the subject. In Latin America and the Caribbean, FLACSO-
Chile has led a major debate on the concept of security in the
region. In the process, it has encouraged the development of
conceptual links between personal protection and human
security and the international and state dimensions of security.

(e) Countries promoting the concept of human security

and the Network

Adoption by the different states of the concept of human

security in international and cooperation policies has been very
uneven. Their different positions are obviously grounded in

3 http://www.unesco.org/securipax/

34
different historical traditions and in differences of outlook
concerning the strategic political role they see themselves as
playing in the international concert. A number of countries,
though, have developed and applied the concept of human
security as a guiding principle of their international policy. In
order to convey the different conceptualizations being debated at
present, we briefly analyse the cases of Canada, Japan and the
Human Security Network, which have taken the lead in this
area.4

(i) Canada

The Government of Canada, and in particular its former

Foreign Affairs Minister, Lloyd Axworthy, considerably
developed this concept as an essential part of its foreign policy. In
conjunction with Norway, it was also behind the creation of the
Human Security Network in 1998.
According to the document Freedom from Fear: Canadas
Foreign Policy for Human Security,5 the best way of conceiving
human security is through a change in outlook that makes people
the central point of reference in international affairs, with the clear
purpose of protecting their human rights. It defines human
security as freedom from threats to the rights of individuals, their
security or their lives. It lays down a number of foreign policy
priorities for promoting human security: the protection of civilians
in armed conflicts, support for peacekeeping operations, conflict
prevention, governance, accountability and public safety. In this
context, the Government of Canada contributed to and supported
the work of the International Commission on Intervention and
State Sovereignty, which in December 2001 presented its report
The Responsibility to Protect already referred to here.

4 For further details see Fuentes and Rojas Aravena (2003).

5 http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/

35
 The approach of the Government of Canada is more
restrictive than what has been proposed by UNDP and the
Commission on Human Security, as it focuses on the protection
of individuals and communities in violent conflicts, particularly
those within states. Its justification for this is the need for an
approach that makes it more practicable to analyse and
implement the concept of human security, rather than extending
it to all sorts of areas. It also argues that there are a range of
institutions dealing with development-related issues and that it is
necessary to concentrate on a number of specific threats and on
the creation of specific instruments for addressing them (Evans,
2003).
The University of British Columbia has created a human
security centre that forms part of a world affairs institute headed
by Lloyd Axworthy. This centre is conducting a major project
with a view to publishing a report on human security, under the
direction of Professor Andrew Mack. An important aspect is the
construction of a conflict database that will make it possible to
link human development to armed conflicts.6

(ii) Japan

Japan has emphasized the need for the twenty-first century

to be people-centred. This was made clear by the Bluebook of the
Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Government of Japan,
2002, Chap. 1), which states that human security is one of the
central aspects of the countrys foreign policy. Japan emphasizes
Human Security from the perspective of strengthening efforts
to cope with threats to human lives, livelihoods and dignity as
poverty, environmental degradation, illicit drugs, transnational
organized crime, infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, the
outflow of refugees and anti-personnel land mines, and has taken
various initiatives in this context. To ensure Human freedom

6 http://www.humansecurityreport.info

36
and potential, a range of issues needs to be addressed from the
perspective of Human Security focused on the individual,
requiring cooperation among the various actors in the
international community, including governments, international
organizations and civil society (Government of Japan, 1999,
Chap. 2, Sec. 3).
One of the greatest contributions has been the
establishment of a United Nations Trust Fund for Human
Security, to which the Government of Japan has donated
US$160.7 million in the last four years, making it one of the
most important United Nations funds of its kind. Japan has also
given crucial support to the creation and work of the
Commission on Human Security. Among the priority issues
selected for the awarding of project grants from the Fund are the
following: poverty, refugees and internally displaced persons,
health, drug control, transnational crime and the environment.
Japans human security priorities are a direct result of the broader
definition to which it subscribes in accordance with the
arguments of the Commission on Human Security, which
emphasizes the reduction of economic and social vulnerabilities
rather than the strengthening of individual rights and freedoms,
an approach that centres more on the prevention of violent
threats.7

(iii) Human Security Network

The Human Security Network (HSN) grew out of a

bilateral arrangement between Canada and Norway, signed at
Lysen Island (Norway) in 1998, and its aim was to form an
association of countries with the purpose of promoting a new
concept of human security centred on people (Fuentes, 2003).

7 It is interesting to note the differences between Canada and Japan here. Canada
is another country that has promoted the human security outlook, but stressing the
idea of freedom from fear, whereas Japan has prioritized freedom from want.

37
The first HSN meeting was held in 1999, organized as a group
of like-minded countries which, through informal and flexible
mechanisms, seek to generate points of consensus and promote
practical actions in this respect. The Network is currently made
up of thirteen countries: Austria, Canada, Chile, Greece, Ireland,
Jordan, Mali, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, South Africa,
Switzerland and the United Republic of Tanzania.
Chile is the only Latin American country in the Human
Security Network. In 2002 it hosted the Fourth Ministerial
Meeting of this group of nations, and it has consistently given
priority to the values and principles of human security when
formulating its foreign policy. The Chilean Minister of Foreign
Affairs, Soledad Alvear, has stressed that human security is
not only linked to a humanitarian view of conflicts but also to
the outcry of people, wherever they might live, for a decent
quality of life that meets their aspirations and provides a response
to their uncertainties. Therefore, our conviction is that peace is
directly relating to the opportunities men and women have to
lead a better life. For this reason, we emphasize that for us the
highest degree of human security will be attained only when we
seriously consider people as the main beneficiaries of national
and international public policies (Soledad Alvear, 2003).
Hitherto, the countries have concentrated more on
generating a programme of international action than on pursuing
the conceptual debate on human security. Thus, the agenda of
HSN meetings has focused on a number of issues, four of them
priority ones: prohibition of the use of anti-personnel mines and
the clearing of minefields; small arms; the participation of
children in armed conflicts; and human rights education. Table
1 summarizes the main issues dealt with at the five ministerial
meetings of the Network.

38
 Table 1

Agenda of HSN ministerial meetings (19992004)

Source: Based on the Presidents report of each Human Security Network meeting
(http://www.humansecuritynetwork.org/).

The HSN has worked on numerous issues, as Table 1

shows, and this has hindered it from taking effective
international action. This being so, one of the main tasks that
will have to be addressed by this network of countries if it is to
become a major international focus in this area is the
establishment of a working programme setting out its priorities.
Lastly, a Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict
Research has been launched at the University of Harvard, under
the direction of Claude Bruderlein. This programme publishes a
periodic bulletin highlighting the work of the Network countries
and the institutions that promote this vision of security.8

8 http://www.hsph.harvard.edu

39
 Part Three

Hemispheric initiatives

At the hemispheric level, an important debate has arisen

within the Organization of American States over the need to
generate a shared concept of security for the region. At the
Second Summit of the Americas, held in Santiago (Chile) in
1998, the presidents instructed the OAS Committee on
Hemispheric Security to carry out an analysis of the meaning,
scope and influence of international security concepts in the
hemisphere, with a view to identifying the common positions
most appropriate for addressing their different aspects, including
disarmament and weapons control. Emphasis was also laid on the
need to identify ways of strengthening institutions in this field.9
At the Third Summit of the Americas, held in Quebec in
2001, this mandate was confirmed and it was decided that a Special
Conference on Security should be held. The Commission on
Human Security was therefore asked to complete its review of all
issues relating to the approach taken to security in the hemisphere.
Furthermore, the Plan of Action states that governments will
continue with priority activities on conflict prevention and the
peaceful resolution of disputes, respond to shared traditional and
non-traditional security and defense concerns and support measures
to improve human security. The origin of this declaration was a
document presented by the Delegation of Canada to the OAS
General Assembly in June 2000. The Delegation of Canada
suggested that the Summit of the Americas and the OAS could

9 OAS, Special Conference on Security, AG/RES. 1908 (XXXII-O/02).

41
incorporate the question of human security into their efforts to
strengthen and consolidate democracy, as a useful yardstick for
establishing priorities and evaluating results.10
One of the most significant developments for the
reformulation of security concepts in the hemisphere occurred at
the OAS General Assembly held in Bridgetown (Barbados) in
June 1992. In the Bridgetown Declaration it was agreed that a
multidimensional approach to hemispheric security would be
established. Governments thus recognized that security threats,
concerns, and other challenges in the hemispheric context are of
diverse nature and multidimensional scope, and that the
traditional concept and approach should be expanded to
encompass new and nontraditional threats, which include
political, economic, social, health, and environmental aspects.11
The Declaration also stressed that the new threats and challenges
to security were transnational in nature and that the responses
they required would have to involve different national and
hemispheric organizations. This being so, it was agreed that
appropriate mechanisms should be developed and strengthened
to enhance cooperation and coordination so that the new threats,
concerns and other multidimensional challenges relating to
hemispheric security could be addressed in a more targeted way.
The next Special Conference on Security was planned for
May 2003, but was postponed until late October of that year.
The Committee on Hemispheric Security, in fulfilment of its
task of preparing the way for the conference, conducted a
number of exercises including diverse and wide-ranging
consultations with different organizations connected with
hemispheric security issues. In addition, a number of
governments answered a questionnaire dealing with the central
issues of the conference. Meanwhile, the last two meetings of the

10 Document presented by the Delegation of Canada to the OAS General

Assembly, OAS/SER.P, AG/doc.3851/00.
11 Bridgetown Declaration, AG/DEC. 27 (XXXII-O/02).

42
OAS General Assembly passed important declarations and
resolutions to pave the way for the forthcoming Special
Conference on Security (Table 2).
The Preliminary Draft Declaration of the Conference did
not command a consensus among OAS member countries. The
number of observations annotated throughout the preliminary
document, relating to both technicalities and matters of
substance, reflects the difficulties the countries face in finding a
common concept of security to enable them to develop and use
instruments that can protect states and their citizens.
The draft Declaration reaffirms the multidimensional
approach to security as the Bridgetown Declaration does. It refers to
the need to recognize the diversity of perceptions among states in
relation to threats and other security concerns and challenges such as
the countries economic, social, political, environmental and health
situations. It also affirms that the security of individuals is a principal
responsibility of states and is one of the essential foundations for
national and hemispheric security. The security of the state and the
security of the person are mutually reinforcing. Human security and
state security are strengthened where states work to ensure the
protection of all peoples rights, safety and lives.12
The Special Conference on Security is an opportunity for
the countries of the hemisphere to try to consolidate a broader
vision of security with a view to drafting an inter-American
charter of hemispheric security. It is important for Special
Conference declarations to reaffirm the values and principles that
organize cooperation on the continent, with democracy as the
central axis, and to highlight the need for a comprehensive
approach to security that effectively reflects the dimensions
affecting the security of individuals.

12 OAS, Draft Declaration of the Special Conference on Security, CP/CSH-

558/03 rev. 3 (http://www.oas.org). See also Consulting workshop with scholars
and civil society organizations for the Special Conference on Security of the
Americas, held at FLACSO on 17 March 2003 (http://www.flacso.cl).

43
 The concept of human security is also present in
subregional agreements. Of particular importance is the Costa
Rican initiative proposing a series of changes to the Framework
Treaty on Democratic Security in Central America. Costa Rica
argues that human security is a broader and more expressive
term than the concept dealt with in Part II of the Treaty, which
refers to the security of people and their property (Whyte, 2003).

Table 2

General Assembly declarations and resolutions relating

to the Special Conference on Security (200203)

AG/DEC. 27 (XXXII-O/02) Bridgetown Declaration: The multidimensional

approach to hemispheric security (adopted at fourth
plenary session, 4 June 2002)

AG/RES. 1908 (XXXII-O/02) Special Conference on Security

AG/RES. 1940 (XXXIII-O/03)

AG/RES. 1874 (XXXII-O/02) Inter-American Convention against the Illicit Manufacturing

AG/RES. 1972 (XXXIII-O/03) of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives,
and Other Related Materials

AG/RES. 1877 (XXXII-O/02) Support for the Work of the Inter-American

AG/RES. 1964 (XXXIII-O/03) Committee against Terrorism

AG/RES. 1931 (XXXIII-O/03) Protecting Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms

while Countering Terrorism

AG/RES. 1879 (XXXII-O/02) Confidence-and Security-Building in the Americas

AG/RES. 1967 (XXXIII-O/03)

AG/RES. 1880 (XXXII-O/02) Summit-Mandated Meeting of Experts on Confidence-

and Security-Building Measures in the Region

AG/RES. 1882 (XXXII-O/02) Annual Report of the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control
Commission and the Multilateral Evaluation Mechanism

AG/RES. 1949 (XXXIII-O/03) Observations and Recommendations on the Annual

Report of the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control
Commission

44
AG/RES. 1950 (XXXIII-O/03) Implementation of the Multilateral Evaluation
Mechanism of the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control
Commission

AG/RES. 1885 (XXXII-O/02) Natural Disaster Reduction

AG/RES. 1955 (XXXIII-O/03)

AG/RES. 1886 (XXXII-O/02) Special Security Concerns of Small Island States of the
AG/RES. 1970 (XXXIII-O/03) Caribbean

AG/RES. 1887 (XXXII-O/02) Limitation of Military Spending

AG/RES. 1963 (XXXIII-O/03)

AG/RES. 1889 (XXXII-O/02) The Western Hemisphere as an Antipersonnel-Land-

AG/RES. 1936 (XXXIII-O/03) Mine-Free Zone

AG/RES. 1934 (XXXIII-O/03) Support for the Program of Integral Action against
Antipersonnel Mines in Central America

AG/RES. 1935 (XXXIII-O/03) Support for Action against Mines in Ecuador and Peru

AG/RES. 1903 (XXXII-O/02) Consolidation of the Regime Established in the Treaty

AG/RES. 1937 (XXXIII-O/03) for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin
America and the Caribbean (Treaty of Tlatelolco)

AG/RES. 1938 (XXXIII-O/03) Inter-American Support for the Comprehensive

Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty

AG/RES. 1939 (XXXIII-O/03) Development of an Inter-American Strategy to Combat

Threats to Cybersecurity

AG/RES. 1968 (XXXIII-O/03) Proliferation of and Illicit Trafficking in Small Arms and
Light Weapons

AG/RES. 1966 (XXXIII-O/03) The Americas as a Biological- and Chemical-Weapons-

Free Region

AG/RES. 1795 (XXXI-O/01) Preparations for the Summit-mandated Special Conference

on Security

AG/RES. 1744 (XXX-O/00) Cooperation for Security in the Hemisphere

AG/RES. 1643 (XXIX-O/99) Work Program of the Committee on Hemispheric

Security in Preparation for the Special Conference on
Security

AG/RES. 1566 (XXVIII-O/98) Confidence- and Security-Building in the Americas

45
 Part Four

Strengths and weaknesses of the concept

of human security

As Part Three showed, international debate is intensifying

on the development of a concept of security centred on the
protection of individuals that can respond to the fresh challenges
and the many new threats that have been emerging in the new
post-Cold War international context. Although there are
disagreements about the conceptualization of human security
and the best ways of implementing it, some of the essential
characteristics of this concept can be described, as can some of its
shortcomings or limitations.
Among the strengths of this new concept, three
fundamental characteristics need to be highlighted:
Its integrative nature and its focus on people. Unlike
traditional security concepts, this one has been generated by civil
society, going beyond concern for military power and the defence
of territory in an effort to protect individuals and communities.
Thus, human security is based on the idea of personal security,
on the understanding that not only the state but also non-state
actors and the individual are responsible and need to participate
in creating policies and measures to enhance peoples security.
Its multidimensionality. Human security includes the
dimensions that affect peoples security (political, economic,
social) and identifies traditional and unconventional security
threats. It emphasizes that the effects of the main threats to
peoples security are worldwide in scope.

47
 Its stress on multilateralism and cooperation. The new
international context has altered the dimensions of issues that
were formerly addressed exclusively from a national perspective
but that are now part of a new international order where only the
capacity for joint action will restore to states the ability to
generate, together with other actors, a system capable of meeting
national, regional and international demands. Human security
emphasizes partnership and cooperation.
In the terms set out above, the concept of human security
has the effect of drawing together security concerns in different
areas. Nonetheless, this concept does have some limitations and
these are particularly important in the context of the Latin
American countries, whose democratic systems have
shortcomings. Here, the main limitations of this concept derive
from two factors: (a) its wide scope; (b) the introduction of the
security dimension into development priorities.
Some authors have argued that the scope of security
concepts entails the risk of desecuritization, i.e. that they might
be emptied of content by being extended too far because
everything can be evaluated from the perspective of security,
which thus loses its specificity, the result being a potential failure
to protect citizens.13 Not every important issue is a security issue.
Nor is every security issue necessarily a priority one. Thus, it is
important for the idea of human security to be linked to violence
and the use of force and to be kept as a coordinating concept
(Rojas Aravena, 2001).
In practical terms, however, the scope of the tasks relating
to human security translates into difficulties in focusing on issues
considered to be of high priority and generates implementation
problems at both the national and the regional and international
levels. In the first case, this is because priorities and the extent of
the problems affecting peoples security vary depending on the

13 Ole Waever, cited by Diamint (2001).

48
regional and national context, which complicates the design of
strategies for action associated with this concept given the
multiplicity of interests and demands involved. An example of
this is the difficulties that the Human Security Network has
encountered in seeking to identify which issues are of priority for
this partnership of countries and to apply the appropriate
international measures.
This problem is felt particularly strongly in Latin America,
as although good analyses are available of the main vulnerabilities
affecting the region, there is no consensus as to what the
priorities should be. This results in weak policy-making when it
comes to action for development and human security.
As regards problems with applying and implementing this
concept, it is important to realize that they derive not just from
the scope of the tasks involved in human security but also from
the need to improve coordination between organizations. This
process can give rise to confusion as to the respective roles and
functions of particular institutions, organizations and individuals
participating in this process, and it also coincides with the slow,
long-drawn-out reform and modernization of states and certain
international organizations with the objective of greater
administrative efficiency. At the national level, it requires greater
coordination between the staff of defence and foreign affairs
ministries, and of the armed forces and police. In the case of the
Latin American and Caribbean countries, there is a need to carry
out a reform of security systems as a crucial aspect of
institutional modernization and as an instrument of democratic
governance. At the international level, meanwhile, the functions
of multilateral organizations need to be better targeted to deal
with security threats.
The second shortcoming of this concept is the possibility
that the issue of security may be integrated into development
plans and that these plans may overlap, i.e. the possibility that
there may be military responses to what are properly
development issues. Here, while the problems of development

49
and security are closely linked, it is important to demarcate their
respective fields of action and be clear that these are two different
fields that need to be harmonized carefully. In Latin America,
special attention needs to be paid to: (a) targeting the functions
of the armed forces and police within a democratic framework: it
is essential for legal frameworks to be delimited to prevent the
police from becoming militarized or the military from taking on
attributes that properly belong to the police; (b) establishing
effective coordination between the civil and military authorities
to address the new security threats in an effective way. The issue
of the use of violence and the states monopoly of this is crucial,
as shown in Part Five.

50
 Part Five

Human security: a unifying and linking concept

In the last decade, the countries and societies of Latin

America have undertaken a far-reaching review and
reformulation of security concepts. A conceptual shift has been
taking place, away from the Cold War outlook that identified a
single enemy and that was strongly military, with state interests
predominating, towards a post-Cold War stage in which the
threats are diffuse, have less of a military character, often appear
to have nothing to do with the state, and may even be
deterritorialized. The objective of this debate is to develop a
shared concept of hemispheric security that yields more effective
responses to the demands arising at the national, regional and
international levels.
Against this background, FLACSO-Chile has been
working on the conceptualization of human security with the
idea of enhancing the strengths of this outlook and evaluating
and clarifying its possible limitations, particularly in the Latin
American context. To this end, three essential issues have been
concentrated on: (a) the need to establish in practical,
operational terms the relationship between national security,
international security and human security; (b) the use of violence
as a determining element in the analysis; (c) the formulation of
recommendations for preventing violence and other non-military
threats to the individual.

51
(a) The security triad14

One of the main intellectual and institutional challenges is

to establish a conceptual link from human security to
international security that takes in state security on the way
(Rojas Aravena, 2003a). Once satisfactorily established, this
relationship will simultaneously satisfy world security needs and
those of nations, individuals and peoples. At the same time, it
will improve the implementation of human security measures.
The primordial characteristic of the new international
conflicts, centred on intra-state problems, reveals the need to
reach a better understanding of the interrelationship between
these three levels, particularly in view of the impact of
globalization. The new threats are transnational in nature and
involve actors and agents that in most cases do not represent a
nation or are not located in a clearly delimited state territory.
Again, in a context of globalization and interdependence
the risks and vulnerabilities that affect a nations security also
affect other states, and thus cannot be resolved exclusively within
its own borders. Wars have changed radically as well. The great
majority of them are no longer between states. Conflicts take
place within states and have inter-state consequences. Their
origins and motivations have more to do with ethnicity, religion
or self-determination than with disagreements over borders or
state interests. Non-state actors are playing a more prominent
part. Furthermore, demands are increasingly being directed
towards international, inter-state and non-governmental
organizations, which means that the capabilities of states,
especially the less powerful ones, are being reduced.
To conceptualize security, a number of associated concepts
need to be considered.
National security is what is traditionally meant by security,
being concerned primarily with sovereignty and matters relating

14 This subject is also discussed by Fuentes and Rojas Aravena (2003).

52
to borders and natural resources. The conceptualization of
national security centres fundamentally on the state, which is
considered responsible for safeguarding the interests of its
community. The size and balance of military forces come into
play here, as do concepts associated with deterrence and defence.
International security refers principally to relations
between states, the international community of the United
Nations and regional organizations (such as the OAS). World
aspects, globalization and the influence of state actors,
international organizations and, increasingly, non-state actors,
can be situated at this level. In the sphere of international
security, solutions of a general nature are produced and global
and/or regional international regimes are instituted. Thus, this
level works on the basis of multilateralism.
Human security centres on the protection of individuals
and communities. This concept has a unifying and
multidimensional nature. It takes in more local dimensions, even
if these relate to issues affecting great masses of people. It also
takes in issues of a planetary scale that affect humanity as a whole
(AIDS, SARS, the environment, etc.). In both cases, these are
issues that have not traditionally been approached at the other
two levels (national security and international security). In other
words, the focus is shifting from the state to individuals; the
fundamental issue is the protection of individuals and peoples
over and above their connection with a particular state.
Thus, human security is emerging as a unifying and
linking concept for the new security problems and determinants
of the twenty-first century.
Table 3 summarizes the main dimensions of analysis used
to define the concepts of national security, international security
and human security, and the practical consequences that these
definitions entail.

53
 Table 3

Dimensions of analysis. Conceptualization of national security,

international security and human security

In the human/national/international security triad, the

predominating factor can vary depending on the situation. In the
vast majority of cases where the state is strong and dominant, the
pivot will be national security and its link with international
security. This confirms that the state is still the main
international actor. In some geographical regions, mainly Africa,
the centre of gravity may instead be international security and its

54
principal actors, owing to the collapse of some states. In other
words, the focus is on the ability of the international system to
react to crises in fragile or disappearing states, either to achieve
stability or to produce and promote cooperation and assistance
when humanitarian disasters occur.
In Latin America, the main vulnerabilities derive from the
crisis of governance that is affecting the region, making human
security harder to achieve and at the same time creating the
conditions for serious insecurity that perpetuates the fear of
violence and the persistence of serious unmet needs throughout the
region. Because there is very little in the way of inter-state conflict
and the crisis of governance has not attained the proportions of a
humanitarian crisis, the international community has paid little
attention to the problems facing Latin American countries.
To sum up, the conditions required for human security
can only be met in conjunction with the conditions required for
state and international security. Indeed, an international crisis is
at once a state crisis and a human security crisis. Likewise, a crisis
in the state becomes a humanitarian crisis and an international
crisis, and a human security crisis is simultaneously a state and
international crisis, whence the need for a holistic approach.

(b) Broadening the concept of security and violence

What sets human security apart is its unifying, holistic

character. This means that the dimensions affecting peoples
security/insecurity can be determined and the concept of security
accordingly extended to take in economic, political, social,
environmental and indeed cultural aspects. To avoid the danger
of over-reach referred to earlier, however, it is necessary to settle
upon an approach or element that can provide a focal point for
the concept of human security in the different dimensions and at
the different levels where it is expressed. Similarly, a holistic or
integrated perspective means that appropriate linkages can be
made in the conceptual triad.

55
 In our judgement, the specific structural element that
enables this phenomenon to be best understood and targeted is
violence. Accordingly, we need to consider both the conditions
under which this appears and its perpetrators.
The phenomenon can be more readily analysed if three
main aspects are considered: the conditions under which violence
is likely to occur; the perpetrators of violence; and the preventive
measures that can be taken so that violence and humanitarian
crises do not break out.
(i) The conditions under which violence is likely to occur. The
particular relationships that arise between structural elements
and the manifestations of violence must be understood in order
to analyse the necessary preconditions for violence. Simultaneous
consideration must also be given to the specific conditions
leading to violence: these are the elements that turn necessary
conditions into sufficient conditions. By considering these
aspects the set of conditions that come together in a particular
way to produce violence can be determined with greater
precision.
(ii) The perpetrators of violence. The functions and
capabilities of potential perpetrators of violence will be of vital
importance. Thus, consideration must be given both to their
actual capacity for exercising power and to their subjective
capacity for influencing others so that violence can be
committed. In the current international context we can recognize
non-state actors whose capabilities are very considerable, in many
cases greater than those of states themselves, which means that
differentiated responses are required to address the phenomenon
of violence in its various manifestations.
(iii) Preventive measures to stop violence breaking out.
Multidimensional approaches to security widen the field of
analysis. Nonetheless, if violence and the use of force are to be
kept as the focus of analysis targeted responses must be produced
to account for the phenomenon of violence as such, i.e. to be
capable in an emergency of dealing with structural situations by

56
various means. Establishing a preventive framework means
determining in what situations it can be said that the power of
the state has proved inadequate or in what circumstances a
humanitarian situation requires an international reaction,
something that in turn means establishing where the decision to
act will be taken, and by whom. If this takes place in an
international setting then solid multilateral institutions will be
required to lay down the parameters for collective action.
Equally, while preventive and active measures will focus primarily
on situations of actual violence, they need to be understood as
part of a broader response process that is able to take a
multidimensional approach to the situations described. In this
latter case, preventive and active measures reaffirm the associative
and cooperative nature of the response.
In the present situation, the impact of globalization and
interdependence and of development gaps has resulted in a major
loss of state capabilities, affecting small and medium-sized states
in particular. In the case of Latin America, this has been
manifested in a profound crisis of governance. In this context,
the state ceases to exercise effective sovereignty in all kinds of
areas. When it loses its monopoly of legitimate force then a
critical situation arises, one that can lead to a humanitarian crisis
because of the states inability to respond.
Collapsed or failed states are an acute example of this loss
of capabilities. One of the prime options opening up in todays
context is that of generating a planned, associative and necessarily
reciprocal surrender of sovereignty to expand the scope for
regulation based on the interconnection and interdependence
between two or more state actors.
Joint action to forestall the use of force reaffirms
international law and generates increased opportunities for
concerted action. In other words, the new global and regional
challenges in the post-Cold War period are to improve and create
law and to construct spaces for cooperative action, substantive
links to limit the use of force, by working towards the

57
establishment of regimes that bring stability and peace within
reach.15
In the Latin American countries, great masses of people
are suffering the consequences of the states failure to assert a
monopoly of violence or its inability to create a demilitarized
order. This is compounded by the growing presence of
transnational phenomena involving the use of violence, not at a
level sufficient to overthrow an established state but enough to
create a strategic threat. These are what have been called
asymmetrical threats. Other forms of violence can be the work of
the state when it oversteps the legitimate use of force, with effects
that are equally negative for individuals. There is a need to design
new and more efficient policy coordination mechanisms that
include prevention and coercion of the non-traditional
dimensions of violence.
Identifying violence as a pivotal element makes it possible
to achieve a broad understanding of the phenomena that
determine it and to obtain specific responses as to when and in
what cases legitimate violence is the best means and when other
instruments should be used. The militarization of responses
results in a rising spiral of violence that is hard to stop.
Conversely, the adoption of preventive measures limits the scope
for the emergence of conditions that favour violence.

15 Translated from Rojas Aravena (2001).

58
 Part Six

Ethical and normative dimensions

of human security

(a) Ethical aspects of human security

Besides the conceptual debate about human security, it is

important to note that this idea also entails an ethical and a
normative dimension. The ethical dimension concerns the idea
of right and wrong, while the normative one relates to what
ought to be done. Ultimately, ethics are the set of values and
principles that govern a particular society or human group and
the normative aspect concerns the practices that norms prescribe.
This means the international agreements and conventions signed
by states to protect the individual in the case of human security,
and the follow-up of their application by governments,
international organizations and civil society.
From an ethical point of view, human security is to be
understood as an idea that promotes respect and protection for
individuals and that needs to be put into practice so that
individuals perceive it not as an elusive concept but as a basic
demand and a fundamental right, as well as a personal
responsibility (Lee, 2004).
In this context, it is essential to point out that respect for
human rights is the core of personal protection. The two are
mutually reinforcing. As the Report of the Commission on
Human Security puts it, the idea of human security helps to
determine which rights are threatened in particular situations,
whereas human rights answer the following question: how can
human security be furthered? The idea of rights and obligations

59
complements recognition of the ethical and political importance
of human security.
Some authors have even argued that human security
is the realization of the three generations of human rights: human
beings need freedom from fear and from unmet basic needs (the
essence of human security), and to this end they have the right to
individual freedom, equality before the law, the ownership of
material goods, an active vote, the making of laws, resistance to
oppression, a fair wage, food, clothing, housing, health,
education and culture. In sum, human beings have the right to
live and choose in states that are politically self-determining, that
dispose in a free and sovereign fashion of their natural resources,
and that are free to construct their own culture.16
The ethical aspect lies in the protection of individuals as a
basic element of international law and of the definition of the
public goods on which the international system is based. When
it comes to implementing this approach, however, priorities
differ significantly by region. In the case of Africa a stronger state
is a precondition, and from this follows the argument that the
key factor is the link between human security and human
development. Without state capabilities and a minimum basis of
human development, neither stability nor peace will be achieved
and non-traditional threats will weigh every more heavily
(Goucha and Cilliers, 2001). In the case of the Caribbean,
similar ethico-normative conditions are emphasized in relation to
the security challenges that need to be met in the regions small
countries.

16 Translated from Vctor Valle (2003).

60
(b) Normative dimension of human security

One of the factors giving greater currency to the concept

of human security is the growing universalization of the values
and principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights and the development of international law as it relates to
the protection of the individual. As this section shows, the
international order is no longer confined to matters bearing on
the prevention of war between states, but also extends to the
promotion of citizens rights, welfare and personal freedom.
Each of the issues and concerns included in Tables 48
relates to an area that has been the subject in more or less recent
times of a normative effort by the international community in
those aspects that affect the security of individuals. As
highlighted earlier, the Human Security Network has played a
significant role in this.
Conventions and protocols have been used to establish
legal sources which, on the one hand, provide the tools needed to
move towards enforcement of the objectives set forth in each of
these instruments of international law and, on the other, taken as
a whole, illustrate the degree to which each country is committed
to what may now be considered universally accepted principles.
Applying this criterion to Latin America and the
Caribbean, the tables that follow show which of a number of
conventions and protocols the countries of the region have
signed up to in the political (political rights, human rights),
socio-economic (economic and social rights), cultural (cultural
rights, non-discrimination) and environmental spheres and in
the area of disarmament and international and regional security.
The instruments chosen directly concern one or more of the
problems of the human security field, thus they throw light on
the extent to which this outlook is being promoted in Latin
America.
To simplify our approach, each countrys degree of
participation in each of the conventions and protocols identified

61
is summarized by the expressions SP (State Party) and NP (Non
Party).
The first of these refers to countries that have signed and
ratified or acceded to each of these instruments and that therefore
have not only incorporated them into their domestic legal
arrangements but participate in their administration by the
international community or the inter-American community, as
the case may be, either as States Parties at their conferences, or as
Member States of organizations set up by these.
The expression NP (Non Party) alludes to those states that
have not signed these instruments, or have signed them but not
ratified them, and have therefore not incorporated them into
domestic law and do not participate in their administration.
In one particular case, that of the United Nations
Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (Table 6),
the expressions Signed (S), Not Signed (NS) and Ratified (R) are
used, because this instrument has not yet come into force, and
the categories of State Party and Non Party do not yet apply.

62
(c) Treaties, conventions and other binding instruments
dealing with human security
Table 4

SP: State Party

NP: Non Party
S: Signed
R: Ratified
NS: Not Signed

63
 Table 5

SP: State Party

NP: Non Party
S: Signed
R: Ratified
NS: Not Signed

64
 Table 6

SP: State Party

NP: Non Party
S: Signed
R: Ratified
NS: Not Signed

65
 Table 7

SP: State Party

NP: Non Party
S: Signed
R: Ratified
NS: Not Signed

66
 Table 8

SP: State Party

NP: Non Party
S: Signed
R: Ratified
NS: Not Signed

67
Socio-economic sphere

ICESCR: International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural

Rights

Adopted and opened for signature, ratification and

accession by the United Nations General Assembly on
16 December 1966. In force since 3 January 1976. This is a
binding instrument that complements the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and it basically
establishes that all peoples have the right of self-determination. It
adds that, by virtue of this right, the peoples of the world are free
to pursue their own economic, social and cultural development.
It also contains the complementary provision that all
peoples may, for their own ends, freely dispose of their natural wealth
and resources without prejudice to any obligations arising out of
international economic co-operation, based upon the principle of
mutual benefit, and international law. It specifically states that in
no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence and
that its provisions will apply to men and women alike. Again,
among the most important rights to be protected, the following
are specified: the right to fair wages and decent living conditions
for workers and their families; the right to safe and healthy
working conditions; the right to rest and leisure; the right to
form unions and to social security; the right to protection of the
family; the right to physical and mental health; the right to
education (primary education is compulsory for the citizens of
States Parties); and the right to culture and the benefits of
scientific progress and its technological applications.

CRC: Convention on the Rights of the Child

This Convention was adopted and opened for signature

and ratification by the United Nations General Assembly on
20 November 1989. It has been in force since 2 September 1990

68
and its objective is to create the conditions for the children of the
world to be able to exercise their right to full development and
the harmonious development of their personalities, growing up
in their families in an atmosphere of happiness, love and
understanding. Children, the Convention states, must be
educated in the spirit of the ideals proclaimed in the United
Nations Charter and, in particular, in a spirit of peace, dignity,
tolerance, liberty, equality and solidarity. To this end, the
Convention lays down a framework of protection against
exploitation and discrimination for all those aged under 18,
starting with recognition of their right to life, to a nationality, to
their identity and to know their parents, from whom they may
not be separated against the latters will. The States Parties to the
Convention must adopt the measures necessary to prevent the
illegal removal of children abroad and their illegal retention in
places away from their parents. The Convention also recognizes
the rights of children to health, to education, to formulate their
opinions and to freedom of conscience and religion. It likewise
establishes, for those States Parties that recognize adoption, the
obligation to safeguard the childs best interests. It also includes
provisions for the protection of children who are mentally or
physically disabled.

OP-CRC-AC: Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the

Child on the involvement of children in armed conflicts

Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on

25 May 2000 and in force since 12 February 2002. The text
expresses the concern of the international community about the
recruitment, training and use within and across national borders of
children in hostilities by armed groups distinct from the armed forces
of a State, recognizing the responsibility of those who recruit,
train and use children in this regard, on the basis of which it
establishes the obligation of States Parties to ensure that no
member of their armed forces aged under 18 participates directly

69
in hostilities, and that no-one under this age is subjected to
compulsory recruitment. In conformity with this, and in view of
the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child,
states must raise the age of compulsory recruitment to over 18,
and at lower ages recruitment will only be acceptable if it is
genuinely voluntary.

OP-CRC-SC: Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the

Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography

Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 25

May 2000 and in force since 18 January 2002. The text states
that, considering that the Convention on the Rights of the Child
recognizes the right of the child to be protected from economic
exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be
hazardous or to interfere with the childs education, or to be harmful
to the childs health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social
development, and that among the most worrying cases of child
exploitation is the increasing international traffic in children for
the purpose of the sale of children, child prostitution and child
pornography and sex tourism, the States Parties have decided to
expressly ban the sale of children, child prostitution and child
pornography. For this purpose, the Protocol defines the sale of
children as any act or transaction whereby a child is transferred by
any person or group of persons to another for remuneration or any
other consideration; child prostitution as the use of a child in
sexual activities for remuneration or any other form of consideration;
and child pornography as any representation, by whatever means,
of a child engaged in real or simulated explicit sexual activities or
any representation of the sexual parts of a child for primarily sexual
purposes.

70
 ILO-182: Convention concerning the Prohibition and Immediate
Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour
(Convention 182)

Adopted by the General Conference of the International

Labour Organization (ILO) on 1 June 1999 and in force since
19 November 2000. ILO Member States considered the need to
adopt new instruments to prohibit and eliminate the worst forms
of child labour, to complement the different instruments of
international law that protect the rights of the child, particularly
the 1973 Convention and Recommendation concerning
Minimum Age for Admission to Employment.
The Convention expresses the determination of ILO to
effectively eliminate the worst forms of child labour through
immediate and comprehensive action, taking into account the
importance of free basic education and the need to remove the
children concerned from all such work and to provide for their
rehabilitation and social integration while addressing the needs of
their families. The text identifies the following as the worst forms
of child labour:
(a) all forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery, such as
the sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage and serfdom and
forced or compulsory labour, including forced or compulsory
recruitment of children for use in armed conflict;
(b) the use, procuring or offering of a child for prostitution,
for the production of pornography or for pornographic performances;
(c) the use, procuring or offering of a child for illicit activities,
in particular for the production and trafficking of drugs as defined
in the relevant international treaties, and
(d) work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which
it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of
children.

71
Political sphere

SICC: Statute of the International Criminal Court

Signed in Rome on 17 July 1998. On 11 April 2002 the

minimum number of ratifications required for it to come into
force was reached and it came into effect on 1 July 2002 (76
ratifications and 139 signatures). Through this instrument, the
majority of the international community aims to put an end to
the impunity of those committing crimes that threaten peace and
security. The Court is competent to judge cases of genocide,
crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression.
The main obstacle to the full operation of the Court at present is
the position of the current government of the United States,
which rejects its jurisdiction.

ICCPR: International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 16

December 1966, the Covenant is an express acknowledgement
that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights cannot be
realized, and nor can the ideal of free human beings enjoying civil
and political freedom and freedom from fear and want, unless
conditions are created whereby everyone may enjoy his civil and
political rights, as well as his economic, social and cultural rights. In
its provisions the Covenant recognizes the right of all peoples to
self-determination at the same time as it obliges signatory states
to guarantee the civil and political rights of their inhabitants
without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language,
religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin,
property, birth or other status.

72
 ICCPR-P2: Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death
penalty

Adopted and proclaimed by the General Assembly on 15

December 1989, it basically establishes that no one within the
jurisdiction of a State Party to the present Protocol shall be
executed, and that each State Party shall take all necessary
measures to abolish the death penalty within its jurisdiction.

GC-1949: Geneva Conventions of 1949

The after-effects of the Second World War led the

international community to develop a normative structure to
provide legal protection for the victims of armed conflicts. This
structure is constituted by the Geneva Conventions, signed on 12
August 1949, which immediately became the cornerstone of
international humanitarian law.
There are four of these Conventions, each of them relating
to a category of persons who do not participate or have ceased to
participate in hostilities, namely:
I. Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of
the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field
II. Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of
Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at
Sea
III. Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of
War
IV. Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian
Persons in Time of War
So far, 188 states have ratified these instruments or
acceded to them.

73
 CNWC: Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations
to War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity

Adopted and opened for signature, ratification and

accession by the United Nations General Assembly on
26 November 1968. In force since 11 November 1970, it
declares that statutory limitations will not apply, first, to war
crimes as they are defined in the Charter of the International
Military Tribunal, Nrnberg, and to the grave infringements
enumerated in the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949,
relating both to the protection of victims of war and to crimes
against humanity whether committed in time of war or in time of
peace (again according to the definition given in the Charter of
the Nrnberg International Military Tribunal of 8 August 1945).
The Convention likewise declares statutory limitations to
be inapplicable to the expulsion of civilians by armed attack or
occupation, inhuman acts due to the policy of apartheid and the
crime of genocide as defined in the 1948 Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, even if
such acts do not constitute a violation of the domestic law of the
country in which they were committed.
By virtue of this instrument, States Parties are obliged to
adopt all necessary domestic measures, legislative or otherwise, with
a view to making possible the extradition, in accordance with
international law, of persons accused of crimes to which statutory
limitations are deemed inapplicable. Likewise, States Parties
undertake to adopt, in accordance with their respective
constitutional processes, any legislative or other measures necessary to
ensure that statutory or other limitations shall not apply to the
prosecution and punishment of the crimes referred to in the
Convention.

74
 CAT: Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or
Degrading Treatment or Punishment

Adopted and opened for signature, ratification and

accession by the United Nations General Assembly on 10
December 1984. In force since 26 June 1987. This Convention
prohibits torture, which it defines as any act by which severe pain or
suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a
person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person
information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third
person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or
intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based
on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted
by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a
public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It includes
procedures for trying those suspected of committing such acts.

CSR: Convention relating to the Status of Refugees

Adopted on 28 July 1951 at a United Nations conference

on the status of refugees and stateless persons. It has been in force
since 22 April 1954 and its purpose is to establish a specific
point of reference that, combined with other instruments of
international humanitarian law, provides adequate protection to
those persons who owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted
for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular
social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his
nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail
himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a
nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual
residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear,
is unwilling to return to it. Among other important aspects, the
Convention establishes the legal status of each refugee and his or
her rights as regards association, access to the courts wherever he
or she may be, paid employment, housing and public education.

75
 ACHR: American Convention on Human Rights (Pact of San Jos,
Costa Rica)

Signed in San Jos, Costa Rica, on 22 November 1969, at

the Special Inter-American Conference on Human Rights, this
Convention was inspired by the principles laid down in the
Charter of the Organization of American States, in the American
Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights to make the rights and
freedoms set out in these instruments fully operational in the
Americas and to ensure to all persons subject to their jurisdiction the
free and full exercise of those rights and freedoms, without any
discrimination for reasons of race, color, sex, language, religion,
political or other opinion, national or social origin, economic status,
birth, or any other social condition.
The text of the Convention establishes that the internal civil,
political, economic, social and cultural rights of the States Parties
must conform to its provisions, and it then goes on to list the civil
and political rights meant, namely, the right to juridical personality,
the right to life, the right to humane treatment, freedom from
slavery, the right to personal liberty, the right to a fair trial, the right
to compensation and to respect for personal honour and dignity,
the right to freedom of conscience, religion, thought and
expression, and the right of assembly, among other things.
It creates the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights, which has seven members and whose mission will be to
promote respect for human rights in the continent. If a Party so
requests, it can report on a particular situation; once the
procedures laid down by the Convention have run their course,
the matter may be taken to the Inter-American Court of Human
Rights, an organization created by the Convention itself whose
jurisdiction shall comprise all cases concerning the interpretation
and application of the provisions [of the Convention] that are
submitted to it, provided that the States Parties to the case recognize
or have recognized such jurisdiction.

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 IADC: Inter-American Democratic Charter

Adopted by the OAS General Assembly on 11 September

2001, the Charter recognizes that representative democracy is
indispensable for the stability, peace, and political, economic,
social and cultural development of the Americas. It states:
considering that one of the purposes of the OAS is to promote and
consolidate representative democracy, with due respect for the
principle of nonintervention, the states composing it pronounce
that this system of government is the only valid one and that its
components are, inter alia, respect for human rights and
fundamental freedoms, access to and the exercise of power in
accordance with the rule of law, the holding of periodic, free, and
fair elections based on secret balloting and universal suffrage as an
expression of the sovereignty of the people, the pluralistic system of
political parties and organizations, and the separation of powers and
independence of the branches of government.

International and regional security sphere

NPT: Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

Opened for signature on 1 July 1968 in Moscow,

Washington and London, it has been in force since 1970. The
Treaty negotiators established in their preamble that this
instrument had its origin in a concern shared by the whole
international community about the devastation that would be
visited upon all mankind by a nuclear war and the consequent need
to make every effort to avert the danger of such a war and to take
measures to safeguard the security of peoples.
Since the Cold War, the NPT has been a cornerstone of
global disarmament. Its basic objectives are to halt the race for
leadership in weapons of mass destruction of this type, reduce the
size of nuclear arsenals and prevent new states acquiring nuclear
weapons, while at the same time encouraging international

77
cooperation in the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. At
present, 187 states are Parties to the treaty, including the five
states that officially possess a nuclear arsenal.

TLATELOLCO: Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin

America and the Caribbean (Treaty of Tlatelolco)

Signed in Mexico City on 14 February 1967 and in force

since 25 April 1969, the Treaty of Tlatelolco created the worlds
first non-nuclear zone, obliging its States Parties to use nuclear
material and installations subject to their jurisdiction for
exclusively peaceful purposes and to prohibit and prevent the
following on their own territory:
the testing, use, manufacture, production, or acquisition
by any means whatsoever of any nuclear weapons, by the Parties
themselves, directly or indirectly, on behalf of anyone else, or in
any other way.
the receipt, storage, installation, deployment, and any form
of possession of any nuclear weapons, directly or indirectly, by the
Parties themselves, by anyone on their behalf, or in any other way.
refrain from engaging in, encouraging or authorizing,
directly or indirectly, or in any way participating in the testing,
use, manufacture, production, possession, or control of any
nuclear weapons.
The administration of the Treaty, which is permanent, is
the responsibility of the Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear
Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean (OPANAL), and
it has now been signed and ratified by all the countries of Latin
America and the Caribbean.

BOGOTA: American Treaty on Pacific Settlement (Pact of Bogot)

Adopted on 30 April 1948 during the Ninth American

International Conference, the Pact of Bogot is, along with the

78
OAS Charter and the Rio Treaty, one of the pillars of the inter-
American system.
By virtue of this instrument (which has only been ratified
by thirteen countries), the Parties agree to refrain from the threat
or use of force or from any other means of coercion in settling
disputes, undertaking at the same time that they will never use
any but peaceful procedures. The Parties to the Treaty also
undertake to resolve international disputes through peaceful
regional procedures before taking them to the United Nations
Security Council.
The Treaty establishes two procedures for peaceful dispute
settlement:
good offices, consisting in the attempt by one or more
American governments not parties to the controversy, or by one
or more eminent citizens of any American State that is not a
party to the controversy, to bring the parties together, so as to
make it possible for them to reach an adequate solution between
themselves.
investigation and conciliation, which consists in
submitting the controversy to a Commission of Investigation and
Conciliation to be established in accordance with the provisions
of the Treaty itself.

CPBW: Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production

and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and
on their Destruction

Signed on 10 April 1972 and in force since 26 March

1975, this Convention bans the development, production,
stockpiling, acquisition or retention of microbiological agents or
other biological agents or toxins, as well as weapons, equipment
or means of delivery designed to use such agents or toxins for
hostile purposes or in armed conflict. The prohibition is not an
absolute ban but only applies to types and amounts that are not
justified for prophylactic or protective purposes or for other

79
peaceful ends, and accordingly the Convention does not contain
provisions restricting scientific research activities in the field of
biology.
It is important to stress that the Convention establishes
that States Parties may not transfer to any other state, or to
organizations or groups of persons, the biological agents, toxins,
weapons, equipment or means of delivery referred to, and they
are forbidden to help or encourage other states, organizations or
individuals to acquire these.
Likewise, the Biological Weapons Convention obliges
States Parties to destroy or divert to peaceful purposes such stocks
of biological agents, toxins, weapons, equipment and means of
delivery as may have a military use. This Convention, then, was
the first legal instrument to ban an entire class of weapons.

CPCW: Convention on the Prohibition of the Development,

Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their
Destruction

Signed after long negotiations on 13 January 1993 and in

force since 29 April 1997, this Convention, as its name
indicates, prohibits States Parties from developing, producing,
acquiring, stockpiling, transferring and/or using chemical
weapons.
In addition, it obliges all States Parties to destroy their
stocks of such weapons and the installations where they were
produced. It also obliges them to arrange for the destruction of
any chemical weapon they may have abandoned on the territory
of another State Party.
It should be emphasized that the Chemical Weapons
Convention establishes permanent verification provisions
covering not just the military sector of all States Parties but also
their civilian chemical industries, which have to respect certain
restrictions to comply with the objectives of the Convention.
Verification is based on a system of transparency that obliges

80
States Parties to keep the Organisation for the Prohibition of
Chemical Weapons (OPCW) permanently informed while
allowing random inspections of sites where chemical weapons
might be produced. It also allows for the possibility of challenge
inspections being carried out following a complaint by another
State Party.
As a special mechanism, the Convention makes it possible
for assistance to be rendered to a State Party that is attacked or
threatened by chemical weapons, and contains other provisions
to encourage cooperation between Parties and foster the trade in
chemical products and equipment for peaceful purposes.

OTTAWA: Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling,

Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their
Destruction

The Ottawa Convention on the elimination of anti-

personnel mines is the result of a worldwide campaign by various
governments and non-governmental organizations. It was signed
in December 1997 and applied on 1 March 1999. At present,
134 countries are Parties to this instrument, which in a short
period has considerably reduced the number of these inhuman
weapons whose impact, particularly on civilian populations,
continues even after the end of the crises or conflicts in which
they were employed.
The Convention forbids States Parties to:
(a) use anti-personnel mines;
(b) develop, produce, otherwise acquire, stockpile, retain
or transfer to anyone, directly or indirectly, anti-personnel mines;
(c) assist, encourage or induce, in any way, anyone to
engage in any activity prohibited to a State Party under the
Convention.
Each Party likewise undertakes to destroy or ensure the
destruction of all the anti-personnel mines it possesses. To
achieve this objective, the text provides, firstly, for a system of

81
international cooperation whereby each State Party has the right to
seek and receive assistance from other States Parties and, secondly,
for the creation of a transparency mechanism whereby each Party
must report to the United Nations Secretary-General the total of
all stockpiled anti-personnel mines owned or possessed by it, or under
its jurisdiction or control, to include a breakdown of the type,
quantity and, if possible, lot numbers of each type of anti-personnel
mine stockpiled, and submit a plan for destroying them within
specified periods.

CTOC: United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized

Crime

Organized crime has taken on international proportions,

becoming one of the most important new threats to international
security (besides the threat it entails for the economic, social and
cultural development of the inhabitants of each country taken
separately).
The international community has addressed the problem
through the Convention against Transnational Organized Crime
(Palermo Convention), signed in December 2000 in that Italian
city. It has not yet come into force, but its signing should be seen
as a demonstration of the political will to promote cooperation to
prevent and combat transnational organized crime more effectively.
To this end, the Palermo Convention clearly defines what
is meant by organized criminal group, serious crime, structured
group and proceeds of crime, along with other definitions that are
important for combating international crime. The text then goes
on to typify crimes and states that its provisions cover serious
offences (more than four years in prison) and/or offences that
involve the participation of an organized criminal group. This
legal instrument is thus formulated to allow international
cooperation so that criminal activities such as money laundering,
arms smuggling and drug trafficking can be effectively combated.

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 ICMTF: Inter-American Convention against the Illicit Manufacturing
of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives, and Other
Related Materials

Adopted by the OAS General Assembly on 13 November

1997 and in force since 1 July 1998, the Convention addresses
the urgent need to prevent, combat, and eradicate on the American
continent the illicit manufacturing of and trafficking in firearms,
ammunition, explosives, and other related materials, due to the
harmful effects of these activities on the security of each state and the
region as a whole.
The objective of the Convention is that of preventing,
combating, and eradicating the illicit manufacturing of and
trafficking in firearms, ammunition, explosives, and other related
materials, to which end it seeks to promote and facilitate
cooperation and exchange of information and experience to prevent
their use and spread. The Convention obliges Parties to take the
legislative measures necessary to classify as appropriate the crimes
in which arms of this type are used, create the necessary
competences within their respective legal systems, carry out
branding of arms so that they can be properly supervised,
confiscate arms that have been used in illegal acts, and other
measures of a legal and technical nature to establish effective
control.

ICSFT: International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing

of Terrorism

Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 9

December 1999, and in force since 10 April 2002, this
Convention establishes a superstructure that links together
another nine Conventions serving to combat terrorism, while at
the same time representing a practical advance in the
international communitys condemnation of all acts, methods and
practices of terrorism as criminal and unjustifiable, wherever and by
whomever committed, including those which jeopardize the friendly

83
relations among states and peoples and threaten the territorial
integrity and security of states.
To ensure international cooperation in suppressing the
financing of such acts, the Convention defines what is to be
understood by funds, state or governmental facility and proceeds
that can be used to finance terrorism, while it expressly explains
who will be deemed to have violated its provisions, namely,
anyone who by any means, directly or indirectly, unlawfully and
wilfully, provides or collects funds with the intention that they should
be used or in the knowledge that they are to be used, in full or in
part, in order to carry out:
(a) An act which constitutes an offence within the scope of
and as defined in one of the following anti-terrorism conventions:
Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of
Aircraft (The Hague, December 1970).
Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts
against the Safety of Civil Aviation (Montreal, September 1971).
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of
Crimes against Internationally Protected Persons, including
Diplomatic Agents (New York, December 1973).
International Convention against the Taking of
Hostages (New York, December 1979).
Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear
Material (Vienna, March 1980).
Protocol for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts of
Violence at Airports Serving International Civil Aviation,
supplementary to the Convention for the Suppression of
Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Civil Aviation (Montreal,
February 1988).
Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts
against the Safety of Maritime Navigation (Rome, March 1988).
Protocol for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against
the Safety of Fixed Platforms Located on the Continental Shelf
(Rome, March 1988).

84
 International Convention for the Suppression of
Terrorist Bombings (New York, December 1997).
(b) Any other act intended to cause death or serious bodily
injury to a civilian, or to any other person not taking an active
part in the hostilities in a situation of armed conflict, when the
purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a
population, or to compel a government or an international
organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.

Environmental sphere

MONTREAL: Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the

Ozone Layer

Following arduous negotiations within the framework of

the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer
(March 1985), the Protocol was finally adopted on 16
September 1987. In its present form it contains amendments
introduced at conferences in London (1990), Copenhagen
(1992), Vienna (1995), Montreal (1997) and Beijing (1999). It
is now regarded as part of Agenda 21, adopted at the Rio de
Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992. Its object is to regulate the
production and consumption of and trade in substances that
deplete the ozone layer: chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), halons,
hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), methyl chloroform (MCF)
and carbon tetrachloride (CCL4). Because of its economic
implications, the text reflects a trade-off between groups of
developing countries that do not want emissions constraints to
act as an obstacle to their economic development and developed
countries that have more advanced environmental priorities and
believe these substances to be an imminent danger to all
humanity because of their impact on climate change, the
environment and human health. Thus, the ultimate objective of
the Protocol is to lead the States Parties to the elimination of these
substances.

85
 It is interesting to note that the Protocol, after providing
the necessary definitions, establishes a system of emissions
control that includes a transfer mechanism whereby one country
can negotiate with another to transfer production of controlled
substances, should its own be excessive and that of the receiving
country be below the level permitted under the Vienna
Convention on the Protection of the Ozone Layer (March 1985).

CCC: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

The Convention was adopted by the General Assembly on

9 May 1992 and opened for signature at the Rio de Janeiro
Summit of June 1992. It came into force on 21 March 1994. It
reflects the concern that had been growing in the international
community since the early 1980s that human activities, especially
those of industry, had been substantially increasing the atmospheric
concentrations of greenhouse gases, and that this had intensified the
natural greenhouse effect, something that, on average, would
result in an additional warming of the Earths surface and
atmosphere that could adversely affect natural ecosystems and
humankind.
By virtue of this diagnosis, the UN set itself the objective
of achieving, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the
Convention, stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the
atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic
interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved
within a time frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally
to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened
and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable
manner. To this end, the Convention supplements the measures
pledged under the Montreal Protocol by stipulating a number of
commitments, among which the most important are to:
(a) develop, periodically update, publish and make
available to the Conference of the Parties national inventories of

86
anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of all
greenhouse gases not controlled by the Montreal Protocol;
(b) promote sustainable management, and promote and
cooperate in the conservation and enhancement, as appropriate,
of sinks and reservoirs of all greenhouse gases not controlled by
the Montreal Protocol, including biomass, forests and oceans as
well as other terrestrial, coastal and marine ecosystems;
(c) promote and cooperate in scientific, technological,
technical, socio-economic and other research, systematic
observation and development of data archives relating to the
climate system and intended to further the understanding and to
reduce or eliminate the remaining uncertainties regarding the
causes, effects, magnitude and timing of climate change and the
economic and social consequences of various response strategies.

KYOTO: Kyoto Protocol

Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention

on Climate Change, adopted on 11 December 1997 at the
Third Conference of the Parties held in Kyoto (Japan). It was
open for signature between 16 March 1998 and 15 March
1999. To date there have been 111 ratifications and accessions,
leaving the percentage of countries that have ratified it still short
of the required 55 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions for
1990.17 The Protocol is a political, economic and technical
instrument whose aim is the progressive reduction of these gases
to 5.2 per cent below their 1990 level by 2012.

CBD: Convention on Biological Diversity

Adopted at the Rio de Janeiro Summit of 5 June 1992. Its

object is to protect our biodiversity, i.e. the wide variety of living

17 Since the time of writing, the Kyoto Protocol has entered into force
(16 February 2005).

87
beings that inhabit the Earth and the natural patterns they form,
an issue of the greatest importance for the sustainable
development strategy adopted by the Summit. To this end the
States Parties to the Convention undertake to establish a
sustainable relationship between economic development and
environmental conservation, seeking to achieve three principal
goals: (a) conservation of biological diversity; (b) sustainable use
of its components, and (c) fair and equitable distribution of
benefits from the use of genetic resources.

CARTAGENA: Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety

Instrument that complements the Convention on

Biological Diversity, adopted at Cartagena de Indias on 29
January 2000. In accordance with Principle 15 of the Rio de
Janeiro Declaration on Environment and Development (1992),
it represents an application of the precautionary principle, as its
object is to create a system to protect biodiversity from the risks
represented by the cross-border transportation, handling and use
of products derived from biotechnology, particularly genetically
modified organisms. The Protocol provides for the creation of
mechanisms to ensure that countries participating in the
transportation and handling of these organisms have the
information they need to take measures which remove the risk their
importation represents to the environment and human health.

BASEL: Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary

Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal

Adopted by an international conference that met in Basel

(Switzerland) on 22 March 1989, it was the main precursor to
Chapter 20 of Agenda 21, which emphasizes the importance for
natural resource conservation and sustainable development of
effective control of the generation, storage, treatment, recycling and
reuse, transport, recovery and disposal of hazardous wastes.

88
Achieving these ends, Agenda 21 adds, will require the active
cooperation and participation of the international community,
governments and industry, by industry being meant large
industrial enterprises, including transnational corporations and
domestic industry.
The objective of the Basel Convention is to establish a
system of rules to prevent the transportation of hazardous wastes
from becoming a specific threat to the environment and human
health, and to this end it establishes, among other important
measures, the right of states to forbid the transit of wastes that
they believe could represent a threat of this kind.
At the same time, it obliges states to reduce their
production of such wastes and to ensure the availability of
adequate disposal facilities so that they can be managed in an
environmentally sound way. The text also lays down the
obligation for States Parties to cooperate among themselves to
ensure that the objectives laid down are met, while Annex I lists
the categories of wastes to be controlled (clinical, pharmaceutical
and chemical wastes, organic solvents, waste mineral oils,
hydrocarbons, arsenic, mercury, lead, etc.) and Annex II lists the
categories of wastes requiring special consideration (explosives,
inflammable substances and inflammable solids).

CITES: Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of

Wild Fauna and Flora

Convention adopted by an international conference held

in Washington, D.C. (United States) on 3 March 1973, which
came into force on 1 July 1975. Its objective is to prevent the
illegal trade in wild species becoming a threat to their survival.
Application of the Convention is based on cooperation between
States Parties, and protection is currently being given on this
basis to some 30,000 species of flora and fauna worldwide. For
this purpose, CITES has drawn up three schedules of species

89
classified into three appendices depending on the degree to
which they are threatened:
Appendix I includes all endangered species. Trade in
specimens of these species is authorized only in exceptional
circumstances.
Appendix II includes species that are not necessarily
endangered, but trade in which has to be controlled to ensure
that they are not used in a way incompatible with their survival.
Appendix III includes species protected in at least one
country that has requested the assistance of other Parties to
CITES in controlling trade in them.

Cultural sphere

ICERD: International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of

Racial Discrimination

Adopted in New York on 21 December 1965 and in force

since 4 January 1969, this Convention defines racial
discrimination as any distinction, exclusion, restriction or
preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin
which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the
recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human
rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social,
cultural or any other field of public life.
It consequently obliges States Parties to ensure that their
authorities and institutions will not practise any form of racial
discrimination against individuals, groups of persons or
institutions. Accordingly, the Convention requires national and
local laws to be revised so that any vestige of racial discrimination
can be eliminated from their cultures. At the same time, national
and local authorities must work for the creation of integrationist
and multiracial organizations whose aim is to remove barriers
between races and eradicate any activity that might tend to
entrench racial division.

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 CEDAW: Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
against Women

In force since 3 September 1981, this Convention

represents a major achievement by the international community
in its struggle against discrimination based on gender.
Its Preamble notes that States Parties that are signatories to
the International Covenants on Human Rights are obliged to
guarantee equality for men and women in the enjoyment of all
economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights, including the
right to equality between men and women.
Concerning principles, the Convention states that
discrimination against women violates the principles of equality of
rights and respect for human dignity, is an obstacle to the
participation of women, on equal terms with men, in the political,
social, economic and cultural life of their countries, hampers the
growth of the prosperity of society and the family and makes more
difficult the full development of the potentialities of women in the
service of their countries and of humanity, by virtue of which it
obliges its States Parties to:
(a) embody the principle of the equality of men and
women in their national constitutions and legislation and ensure
the practical realization of this principle;
(b) adopt appropriate legislative measures, including
sanctions where appropriate, prohibiting all discrimination
against women;
(c) establish legal protection of the rights of women on an
equal basis with men and ensure the effective protection of
women against any act of discrimination;
(d) refrain from engaging in any act or practice of
discrimination against women and ensure that public authorities
and institutions shall act in conformity with this obligation;
(e) take all appropriate measures to eliminate
discrimination against women by any person, organization or
enterprise;

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 (f ) take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to
modify or abolish existing laws, regulations, customs and
practices which constitute discrimination against women;
(g) repeal all national penal provisions which constitute
discrimination against women.
In 1999 the Convention was provided with an Optional
Protocol recognizing the competence of a Committee on the
Elimination of Discrimination against Women, which can be
applied to by any woman to demand enforcement of the rights
guaranteed to her by the Convention.

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 Part Seven

Principal threats to human security

in Latin America18

Insecurity in todays world results from the convergence of

numerous factors that manifest themselves in interrelated
dysfunctions in the political, economic, social, environmental
and even cultural spheres. In the case of Latin America, the main
threats to human security are associated with a set of
circumstances that include, chiefly, weak democracy, rising
poverty and inequity and, increasingly, urban violence and crime.
Although efforts have been made by multilateral institutions,
governments and civil society to deal with these vulnerabilities,
there is still a long way to go.
This section offers a thematic analysis of the main
vulnerabilities observed in the Latin American countries as they
affect the security and protection of individuals.
It identifies six basic areas in which threats could arise for
human security in the context of the Latin American countries:

1 Socio-economic vulnerabilities
(a) Economic growth
(b) External debt
(c) Unemployment; women and the young
(d) Human development

18 This section is mainly based on a FLACSO report prepared for the XXXIII
meeting of the OAS General Assembly, Santiago, 7 June 2003 (FLACSO-Chile,
2003a). Various ECLAC, FAO and UNDP documents and the 2003 report of the
Commission on Human Security were also major sources, as the bibliography shows.

93
 (e) Poverty
(f ) Social inequality
(g) Public-sector spending
(h) Health

2 Social integration and vulnerability

(a) Migration
(b) Indigenous peoples and multiculturalism
(c) Technology and social integration

3 Politico-institutional vulnerabilities
(a) Recurrent crises
(b) Political and civil rights
(c) Corruption
(d) Crisis of political party representation
(e) Public perceptions

4 International security vulnerabilities (traditional)

(a) Inter-state conflicts
(b) Unresolved border conflicts
(c) Transnational security threats: (i) drug trafficking;
(ii) money laundering; (iii) terrorism; (iv) light arms
trafficking; (v) Colombia

5 Internal security vulnerabilities

(a) Social violence and crime
(b) Institutionalized violence

6 Environmental vulnerabilities
(a) Deforestation
(b) Water

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1 Socio-economic vulnerabilities

Social and economic vulnerabilities reflect the growing

inability of the production, trading and financial systems to solve
peoples most immediate problems, essentially poverty, the
distribution of income and, increasingly, unemployment. From
the human security point of view, it is essential to find the best
tools for dealing with these insecurities. Accordingly, emphasis
has been laid on the need to reiterate the principle of growth
with equity and establish that of crisis with security. In other
words, to generate and encourage the creation of mechanisms to
protect people in adverse situations that include inflation,
unemployment and fiscal crises.
A review of some indicators for Latin America reveals low
rates of growth and great vulnerability to upheavals in the
international economy, rising external debt and high
unemployment rates. This last factor leads to an uncertain
economic outlook for the countries of the region. From the social
point of view, furthermore, we find that poverty levels are rising,
social exclusion is not improving, the gap between rich and poor
is widening, and social spending is low in some countries.

(a) Growth and economic crises

In relation to this point it is important to stress that

economic crises in developing countries often create immediate
threats to human security as output falls, income is lost and
unemployment increases, provoking a significant rise in poverty
and intensifying peoples fear that they will be unable to meet the
basic needs of their families or themselves. Generally speaking,
financial crises can have harmful effects on long-term human
security.
Economic growth in the region has been unstable over the
last twelve years. While there were periods of great dynamism
and growth at the beginning of the decade, the different

95
international crises and the way governments reacted to spells of
prosperity had very rapid consequences for the behaviour of the
regions economies (Figures 13).
In 1994 the Mexican crisis and the resultant tequila effect
caused GDP to fall by 4 points. The Asian crisis of 1997 had
similar effects, with a new slowdown of growth.
By contrast with the instability experienced in the 1990s,
which affected just a few countries, the crisis of the last three
years has had negative effects on all the economies of the
hemisphere, as reflected in the slowdown of growth throughout
the region. Vulnerability is manifested by the lack of fiscal tools
available to governments to cope with crises and the direct
repercussions of the lower levels of growth on social spending.
While growth is expected to recover, 2003 will have been the fifth
year of economic slowdown in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Figure 1
Latin America and the Caribbean: gross domestic product
(1990-2001)

Source: ECLAC (various years) (http://www.eclac.cl/).

96
 Figure 2
North and Central America and the Caribbean: gross domestic product

Source: ECLAC (various years) (http://www.eclac.cl/).

The economic crises arising from global instability and

local difficulties undoubtedly had the greatest repercussions in
the countries of South America, especially Argentina, Uruguay,
Paraguay and Venezuela. In the north, only Mexicos GDP fell.

Figure 3
South America: gross domestic product

Source: ECLAC (various years) (http://www.eclac.cl/).

97
 As can be seen from the statistics for Latin America, it is
essential to devise protection and mitigation mechanisms to cope
with economic crises and setbacks. Progress needs to be made in
developing early warning mechanisms in this area. Prevention
work can be of considerable help in limiting the high costs to
personal security.

(b) The steady rise in external debt

In parallel with economic and financial crises, the rise of

external debt is increasing economic uncertainty and
discouraging foreign investment, and thus undermining human
security.
Gross disbursements of external debt rose quickly during
the 1990s until 1999, when the regional average stabilized and
then began to fall. Between 1993 and 2002 the regions debts rose
by 37 per cent. Since 1999, the year when the trend was broken,
debt has fallen slowly by a cumulative 5 per cent (Figure 4).
While the tendency in Argentina has been similar to the
regional average, as of last year its debt had risen by 84 per cent
from its 1993 level. The macroeconomic policies applied during
the two terms of President Menem contributed to a situation that
exacerbated the crisis, making Argentina the most heavily
indebted country in the hemisphere. It is followed in second and
third places by Brazil and Venezuela, respectively. In the case of
Venezuela, debt fell slowly but steadily throughout the period,
while the indices for Brazil match those of the region as a whole
during the decade.
The regions instability and the decline in its indices of
confidence have raised the cost of borrowing and increased
interest rates on bonds sold and on international loans. This high
level of borrowing entails high indices of economic vulnerability,
as it raises doubts in international organizations as to the
feasibility of this debt being repaid.

98
 From a human security point of view, every new person is
born with a deficit corresponding to this heavy burden of external
debt. This will affect the opportunities open to the countries and
give rise to increased global differentiation. New generations are
increasingly fearful about the prospects for meeting their needs.

Figure 4
Latin America and the Caribbean: gross disbursements of external debt

Source: ECLAC (http://www.eclac.cl/).

(c) Rising unemployment

From the human security point of view, the problem of

employment is fundamental, because in real life people can only
obtain at least partial security by improving their ability as
individuals or families to generate and control resources. The rise of
unemployment is one of the main sources of insecurity in the region.
The unemployment indices rose steadily, although
moderately, throughout the period. Whereas in early 1993 the
regional average was 6.6 per cent of the population, by 2002 the
figure had risen to 9.1 per cent as a weighted average (Figure 5;
ECLAC).

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 The countries with the highest unemployment rates at
present are in South America, examples being Argentina,
Colombia, Uruguay and Venezuela, where they are in excess of
15 per cent. In the case of Argentina the unemployment level
had risen by more than 11 points from its 1993 level by 2002, to
over 20 per cent. The decline in output and external investment
had a direct effect on the labour market and raised urban
unemployment to the highest level in the region.

Figure 5
South America: urban unemployment

Source: ECLAC (http://www.eclac.cl).

The extent to which the regions economies are influenced by

international crises is shown directly by its unemployment levels.
During the last three years there have been direct effects on most of
the countries. Only Chile, Ecuador, Mexico and Panama have
experienced modest rises. The hope is that economic recovery will
stabilize unemployment levels and reverse this rising trend in the
coming years. In North and Central America and the Caribbean, by
comparison, unemployment levels are lower (Figure 6).

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 Figure 6
North and Central America and the Caribbean: urban unemployment

Source: ECLAC (http://www.eclac.cl).

In Latin America there are two tendencies that should be

analysed with respect to human security. First, the rise in
unemployment is coinciding with an increase in the number of
own-account workers, many of whom are not included in the
statistics and lack adequate social protection. Second, the rise in
joblessness in many countries has been accompanied by higher
indices of social delinquency, particularly among young people.
Unemployment is also one of the main causes of mass migration
to the developed world.

Social and economic indicators for women and the young

In all the regions countries, rates of joblessness are

significantly higher among the youth population. Furthermore, if
these rates are compared within the 1524 age group (Table 9),
it transpires that unemployment is significantly higher among
women.

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 Table 9
Female and youth unemployment percentages, age 1524 (1999)

Source: ECLAC (2002) (http://www.eclac.cl/).

If earnings are compared by gender, it transpires that

women are paid much less than men in all the countries of the
region. In Bolivia, Brazil and Mexico women earn 40 per cent
less than men. When the figures are compared by educational
level, this difference tends to increase rather than diminish in a
number of countries, the most striking cases being Bolivia,
Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras, Panama and Paraguay.
The disparities between men and women can have a great
impact on economic security (Table 10), especially in societies
where women are more discriminated against. In this context, the
empowerment of women at work is essential if security
conditions are to improve in the long term.

Table 10
Womens average earnings as a percentage of mens, by years
of education, urban areas (1999)

Source: ECLAC (2002) (http://www.eclac.cl/).

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 (d) A marginal improvement in human development

Economic security does not just mean earnings and basic

resources; it also entails the freedom to enjoy basic health, education
and housing services, among others. Generally speaking, measures
to promote economic security (reducing poverty and increasing
living standards) are observed to have a major social impact.
In the region, there has been a marginal improvement in
social development. The index prepared by the United Nations
places most of the regions countries in the medium human
development group (Table 11). While the indicators have
increased in most of the countries, only six of them have moved
up to the high development category (Argentina, Bahamas,
Barbados, Chile, Costa Rica and Uruguay).
The Human Development Index takes account of life
expectancy at birth, schooling and per capita GDP growth. Table 11
shows that these indices improved marginally between 1990 and 2000.
Although the data are not comparable over time (because
of the different methodologies used each year), it should be noted
that all the regions countries show a rising tendency, although
the increases are not substantial. The countries showing the least
change in this index are Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Paraguay
and Venezuela. The majority of the regions population is situated
at a medium level of human development.

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 Table 11
Changes in the Human Development Index and index
of variation between periods

Source: UNDP.

104
 (e) Rising poverty and income inequality

The Development Objectives of the Millennium

Declaration state that poverty is one of the priorities for the new
century. This being so, human security policies should treat the
struggle against poverty as a major challenge for the international
community. According to United Nations data, 1.2 billion
people suffer from extreme poverty. In other words, a fifth of the
worlds population lives on less than a dollar a day. In these
circumstances, it is impossible to consider human security while
ignoring the problem of poverty. For the Latin American
countries, this is a need of the first order.
Poverty in Latin America rose by about 3 percentage
points between 1980 and 2001, from 40 per cent to 43 per
cent. As regards social marginalization, the 2001 indices are
exactly the same as those of 1980 (Figure 7).
The severe economic crisis of the 1980s led to a rapid rise
in the number of people living in poverty and a steady increase
in the income inequality indices. The 1990s were characterized
by a tendency for poverty to fall until the middle of the decade,
and then to rise steadily from 1997 onward.
While the percentage of people living in poverty fell
during the 1990s, in absolute terms poverty increased. Around
1999, over 200 million people were living in poverty in the
region. In short, the economic expansion of the 199097 period
throughout much of the region was not sufficient to reduce
poverty levels effectively, and poverty indices in Latin America
are now higher than they were in 1980.

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 Figure 7
Latin America: poverty and indigence (19802001)

Source: ECLAC (http://www.eclac.cl).

While poverty has tended to decline across the region in

the last decade, a number of South American countries are above
the regional average or have experienced increases. The case of
Argentina is the most striking. During the last three years
observed, the percentage of its population below the poverty line
increased by more than 10 points to over 30 per cent. In the
same period, indigence came to afflict 10.2 per cent of the
population, a rise of 5 points in just three years.
The South American countries that are most socially
vulnerable because of their high poverty levels are Argentina,
Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela (Figure 8). In
Bolivia and Ecuador the poverty index is 60 per cent. In Central
America the indices are much higher than the Latin American
average (Figure 9). The most vulnerable countries in that
subregion are El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua,
with poverty levels of over 60 per cent.
In short, as the Commission on Human Security report
points out (CHS, 2003), identifying the mix of political

106
institutions and processes needed for a level of growth sufficient
to reduce poverty has become a matter of international concern.
If the objective of eradicating poverty is to be achieved, one thing
that is crucial is for the international trade organizations (such as
WTO) and other regional and national actors to act in concert to
encourage the action of markets so that equitable growth is
generated. At the same time, growth accompanied by human
development also requires state intervention, which needs to be
combined with market policies.

Figure 8
South America, selected countries: poverty (19902001)

Source: ECLAC (2002b) (http://www.eclac.cl/).

107
 Figure 9
Mexico and Central America, selected countries: poverty
(19902001)

Source: ECLAC (2002a).

(f) Rising social inequality

Human security would increase if society as a whole

benefited from the income generated by economic growth.
Unfortunately, in the Latin American countries growth does not
translate into an expansion of social protection services or
networks. The distribution of resources, both material and
human, is crucial if persistent inequality is to be addressed.
The region continues to be characterized by inequality in
the distribution of income. Over the last ten years this has not
only remained at high levels, but has increased worryingly.
Whereas on average the richest 10 per cent of households
receive more than 30 per cent of total income, the poorest 40 per
cent receive only 10 per cent (Figure 10; Tables 12, 13). The regions

108
income distribution is the most unequal on the planet. It is in Brazil,
Chile and Colombia that income inequality is most acute: here, the
richest 10 per cent receive more than 40 per cent of total income.
Generally speaking, the richest 20 per cent of the population
have incomes that are 23 times as great as those of the poorest
quintile, and in some cases, such as Bolivia, they are 50 times as great.

Figure 10
Income distribution differential between richest 10% and poorest 40%

Source: ECLAC (http://www.eclac.cl).

Table 12
Income distribution: total income share of the poorest 40%

Source: ECLAC (http://www.eclac.cl).

109
 Table 13
Income distribution: total income share of the richest 10%

Source: ECLAC (http://www.eclac.cl).

(g) Public-sector social spending and poverty

Another vital aspect from the point of view of human

security is public-sector social spending, particularly that which
goes on poverty eradication. The objective of this spending is to
establish social protection networks so that everybody has the
opportunity to participate in every sphere of life. These networks
might include unemployment insurance, pension plans and
training programmes, for example.
Social protection networks are vital for coping better with
times of economic crisis. One of the lessons the Asian countries
learned after their crisis was the necessity and importance of
applying such protection measures. In Latin America, social
spending has tended to rise over the last decade, but the results
are very far from being comparable with the social welfare
systems built up by some developed countries.
Whereas in the early 1990s spending averaged some
US$360 per capita in the region, towards the end of the decade
it was US$540 per capita, or a rise of 50 per cent (Figure 11).
The increase in spending is explained by the better economic
times experienced by most of the countries until the mid-1990s,
and by a shift in government policies that gave greater priority to

110
social spending. It is still low, however, when compared with
social spending in developed countries.

Figure 11
South America, selected countries: public-sector social
spending per capita (199099)

Source: ECLAC (http://www.eclac.cl).

In South America most countries exceed the Latin American

average, particularly Argentina and Uruguay, where the figure is in
excess of US$1,000 per inhabitant. At the other extreme, Bolivia
and Peru have low social spending. Nonetheless, countries with low
or moderate spending levels saw much faster growth in the last
decade than countries with higher levels of spending, with increases
averaging almost 100 per cent (Figure 12).
In the Mexico and Central America subregion, the highest
social spending is found in Costa Rica, which saw steady growth
throughout the period. Honduras went against the regional trend
by lowering its social spending steadily throughout the decade,
even the latter part of it, when the rise in the cost of living there
is taken into account.

111
 In the rest of the region, social spending rose steadily. As
these are extremely poor countries with little social investment,
the rises seen in the last period amount in some cases to over 100
per cent in relation to the 1990 level. This is the case with
Guatemala.

Figure 12
Mexico and Central America, selected countries:
public-sector social spending per capita (199099)

Source: ECLAC (http://www.eclac.cl).

As a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) social

spending has increased steadily in the region, averaging 13 per
cent towards the end of the decade. Expressed in this form, the
rise in spending shows that the regions governments have been
giving greater priority to social issues in their allocation of fiscal
revenue (Figure 13).

112
 Figure 13
Latin America: social spending as percentage of GDP (199099)

Source: ECLAC (http://www.eclac.cl).

Despite steady growth, the level of spending on social

development areas in Latin America is still inadequate in
comparative terms. For example, the ten countries with the
highest per capita health expenditure levels in the region spend
far less than the ten countries with the highest Human
Development Index scores (Figure 14). Argentina, the country
with the regions highest health expenditure, spends US$650 per
capita, far less than the US$1,704 spent by Finland, the country
ranked tenth by the report.
Measured in terms of fiscal effort, expenditure tends to be
closer to the level of more-developed countries; nonetheless, only
three countries in the region spend more than 5 per cent of
GDP on health (Colombia, Costa Rica and Panama), while in
most of them the level is 23 per cent.

113
 Figure 14
Countries with worlds highest health expenditure
vs ten highest-spending Latin American countries

Source: UNDP (2002).

(h) Health

Health is an essential element in human security, as the

basis of security is the protection of human life. Good health is
also a precondition for social stability. Outbreaks of an epidemic
or disease can destabilize an entire society at times of crisis.
Good health is not synonymous with security, however.
There are specific problems and challenges connected with
human security. The 2003 report of the Commission on Human
Security proposes four criteria for establishing a link between
human security and health:
(a) the burden represented by disease now and in the
future;
(b) the urgency with which measures are adopted;

114
 (c) the extent and degree of the impact on society;
(d) interdependence or external causes that may produce
a chain reaction spreading beyond the persons or locations
immediately affected.
Following these criteria, two major problems for Latin
America can be identified: infant mortality and HIV/AIDS. The
first of these is closely linked to the poverty in the region, where
malnutrition is widespread, as is the lack of drinking water and
proper sanitation (Figures 15, 16).
Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, for example,
display high rates of infant mortality, with an average of 40
children dying for every 1,000 live births. Infections, poor
quality food and a lack of medical attention are among the
explanations for these high mortality levels.
Again, there are extremely large gaps between certain
countries. While there are over 100 deaths per 1,000 in Haiti, the
figure in Costa Rica and Cuba is 10 per 1,000, very close to
developed-country levels.

Figure 15
Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean:
infant mortality, 05 years (2001)

Source: WHO (http://www.who.int).

115
 In South America, mortality rates are somewhat lower.
Nonetheless, the average is very similar to that of other regions in
Latin America. Bolivia has the highest mortality index, followed
some way behind by Brazil and Peru. Chile and Uruguay are the
exceptions in the region, together with Costa Rica and Cuba.

Figure 16
South America: infant mortality, 05 years (2001)

Source: WHO (http://www.who.int).

The rise in the population infected with HIV/AIDS is

another major health vulnerability, as the situation in the
countries of sub-Saharan Africa makes plain.
The countries most affected in Latin America are Brazil,
Haiti and Mexico (Figures 17, 18). It is interesting to note,
however, that the epidemic has been fairly well contained by
comparison with other countries such as China, India and the
Russian Federation, where there is a serious danger of the
epidemic spreading explosively.

116
 Figure 17
Central America, the Caribbean and Mexico: population living
with HIV/AIDS (2001)

Source: Avert (http://www.avert.org).

Figure 18
South America: population living with HIV/AIDS (2001)

Source: Avert (http://www.avert.org).

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2 Social integration and vulnerability

The persistence of high levels of poverty in the region,

combined with the weakness of democratic institutions, is
seriously affecting the social integration of traditionally excluded
sectors that are subject to severe discrimination.
The sectors that are particularly vulnerable in Latin
America are ethnic groups and immigrants. Empowerment of
these is essential, because they are the sectors that suffer most
from economic, social and indeed cultural insecurities.
This section shows some examples of this exclusion. It
examines more closely the subject of migration, a vital issue for
human security both internationally and regionally. It also
considers the digital divide as a source of human insecurity.

(a) Migration and human security

The convergence of two concepts such as human security

and migration raises two initial questions, the answers to which
will determine both the frameworks within which the discussion
is approached and the different policy proposals and measures
adopted by states. The first question is how the relationship
between human security and migration is to be understood and
what the consequences of linking the two terms will be. The
second question is what theoretical and political contribution the
concept of human security can make to the analysis of
migrations. In other words, to what extent will approaching the
matter from the human security point of view provide new
elements for the analysis and study of migratory movements?
Without trying to answer these questions fully, this section
sets out to determine the relationship between migration and
human security in order to create a framework within which the
problems can be raised and considered as they relate to the
region. Some proposals are advanced for action to construct
conditions of human security for immigrants within the

118
framework of international law and the instruments available to
protect the human rights of immigrants of both genders.

Migration in Latin America

The issue of migration as it relates to human security in

the new global situation opens up an interesting and complex
field of analysis, encompassing not just the conflicts inherent in
migration itself, but also the tensions deriving from the crisis of
national states in the face of globalization, with a focus on
people.
International migration, which is part of human history,
means movements in which, by definition, men, women and
children have to cross the politico-administrative frontiers of
nation-states. This places migration in a category that transcends
the traditional limits of states, giving the most basic definition of
migration an international perspective. The international
dimension that is part of the very concept is transmitted and
reproduced in the analysis of the causes, consequences and
problems of this phenomenon, placing migration in a context
that is planetary in scope. Migrations are worldwide, and so are
their causes and consequences, as well as the situation of social
and economic vulnerability affecting migrants who leave their
countries in search of better living conditions.
This being so, an approach to migration from the
perspective of human security will contain three basic elements:
(i) the worldwide nature of this phenomenon, (ii) the central
role of individuals and their social, economic and psychological
vulnerability, and (iii) the responsibility of states for taking
coordinated, organized measures to deal with the insecurity
affecting millions of human beings who risk their very lives in
attempting to realize their dream of a better existence.
Between 1970 and 2000 the immigrant population of the
world doubled, so that in the latter year 175 million people were
living in a country other than that of their birth; this is almost 3

119
per cent of the worlds population. Whereas this number may be
small in comparison with the population that does not emigrate,
the fact is that the high concentration of immigrants in particular
countries or geographical areas has led to migration becoming a
problem, which has in turn become one of the key political
priorities of governments. According to an International
Migration Report (United Nations, 2002), 60 per cent of
immigrants currently live in more-developed countries. Most of
these are in Europe (56 million), Asia (50 million) and North
America (41 million). One in every ten people living in the more-
developed regions is an immigrant, while one in every seventy
people living in the less-developed regions is an immigrant.
This situation reveals that migratory movements have a
definite direction, running from less-developed areas to more-
developed ones. It is thus necessary to consider more carefully,
first, what is going on in the recipient countries and if
immigrants quality of life really does improve there and,
secondly, how the countries of origin could succeed in keeping at
least part of this population.
Although Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights recognizes the right of everyone to freedom of
movement and residence within the borders of each state and the
right to leave any country and return to their own, states have
responded to the rise in immigrant numbers by beginning to
apply policies that seek to reduce the number of foreigners
reaching their respective countries,19 justifying this by the
principle of protecting their sovereignty and territory.
This situation creates a basic tension as, on the one hand,
the dynamic of globalization, the unequal growth of economies
and technological development are intensifying the movement of
people from one country to another, whereas, on the other hand,
states are invoking the right to defend and protect their

19 See United Nations (2002). According to the report, by 2001 some 40 per cent
of States had adopted measures to control and reduce immigration.

120
sovereignty, citizens and territory by gradually starting to close
their borders to foreigners, particularly undesirable ones, in
response to demands by the domestic labour market.
The closing of borders creates all the conditions most
calculated to exacerbate the vulnerability of immigrants. The rise
of human trafficking, the irregular status of immigrants and their
stigmatization as illegals, criminals and even potential
terrorists not only make it harder for immigrants to plan their
lives when they leave home, but expose them to greater abuses,
generating a dynamic in which discrimination, exclusion and
marginalization are increased.
Despite this tension, an international system is emerging to
protect the human rights of all immigrants within the framework
of globalization itself and of the advance of multilateral policies.
For these international regulatory frameworks to have a positive
effect, a crucial factor is the attitude of nation-states and their
willingness not only to accede to the different agreements and
treaties, but to apply them thoroughly within their own borders.
It is impossible to conceive that states by themselves might
succeed in finding solutions to problems such as human
trafficking, discrimination against immigrants and labour market
pressures, particularly considering that one of the main reasons for
the rise in migration is the globalization of the economy,
communications and scientific advances. For this reason, the
states concerned need to take concerted action.
The problems of human security in the region are similar
to those in the rest of the world, but they have certain specificities
in the current context. Some of the particular characteristics of
Latin American migration are set forth below, with a view to then
identifying the main human security problems facing the region
in this respect.
Far from being homogeneous, the region displays a variety
of tendencies that make up a heterogeneous picture. This is true
both of todays migratory movements and of historical migration
patterns.

121
 In Latin America and the Caribbean it is calculated that
20 million people live outside their country of birth, a figure
that represents 13 per cent of all international immigrants
(Martnez and Villa, 2002).
Of these the vast majority are in the United States, with
smaller numbers in other developed countries (Japan, Canada,
Spain, Italy and others). In the United States, according to the
Current Population Survey (Census Bureau, 2000), there are 14.5
million immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean (half of
all the immigrants in the country). Meanwhile, Latinos (including
immigrants and US-born) form 13 per cent of the countrys total
population, making them the largest minority (Table 14).

Table 14
United States: immigrants from selected Latin American
and Caribbean countries (197198) (thousands)

Source: INS (1998).

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 While migratory movements in the region are quite
heterogeneous, some characteristic features may be distinguished:
An increase in migration to the United States, much of
it from Mexico.
A high level of internal mobility in the Caribbean
(making up about half of all international migratory
movements). Costa Rica is one of the main destinations.
In South America, Argentina and Venezuela are ceasing
to be the main centres of attraction and destinations are
diversifying, the main ones now being the European countries,
the United States, Canada and Japan. Countries such as Chile are
beginning to attract immigrants.
Colombia is a particularly serious case. The number of
displaced persons is estimated at between 600,000 and 2
million. Those hardest hit by displacement are women, children
and adolescents (Petit, 2002).
According to Martnez and Villa (2000), three migratory
patterns can be distinguished in the region. The first, migration
from overseas, refers to the primarily European immigration that
arrived in the Americas between the late nineteenth and mid-
twentieth centuries. The second is the intra-regional migration
that peaked in the 1970s and stabilized in the following decades.
Although intra-regional migration fell in the 1980s and 1990s,
Latin America still has a high level of cross-border displacement.
This is probably due to structural economic factors
(complementary labour markets) and socio-political factors (such
as political tensions and internal wars).
In the 1990s, new forms of mobility emerged. These are
circular, cross-border or reversible movements, suggesting an
expansion of geographical living areas.
The third pattern, finally, is extra-regional migration,
characterized by the movement towards the United States and
other destinations such as Australia, Japan and Europe, among
others.

123
 Against this background, we now look at the human
security issues affecting the region.

(i) Human trafficking

According to the United Nations Population Fund

(UNFPA, 2000),20 4 million women are sold each year for the
purposes of prostitution, slavery and/or marriage and 2 million
children are brought into the sex trade. Between 700,000 and
2 million people are estimated to be the victims of human
trafficking in the hemisphere. The main victims are women,
children and the poor.
Human trafficking is a business whose profitability is
exceeded only by arms running and drug smuggling.
Advances in communications and globalization have been
reflected in the extension and diversification of the human rights
violations to which the victims of trafficking are subject. The
report presented at the Hemispheric Conference on Migration
distinguishes different mechanisms of trafficking and sexual
exploitation of women, minors and adolescents:
the marriage market;
trafficked women installed close to military bases for
sexual use by soldiers;
trafficking of women to supply cheap labour;
women lured by contracts for the purposes of sexual
exploitation;
women and children used to meet the demand for sex
tourism;
women and children trafficked for the purposes of organ
trading;
children sold for service in armed conflicts;
trafficking of persons to transport drugs.

20 http://www.unfpa.org

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 Although most of the women trafficked are from Asia and
Eastern Europe, the number of Latin American women and
children transported to the United States and European countries
as objects of the sex trade has increased in recent years.
It is estimated that 40 million children are working as
prostitutes in Latin America as a result of poor economic
conditions (Kovaleski, 2001). In Nicaragua, a study carried out
by the Government in 1999 stated that 82 per cent of child
prostitutes had been in this situation for at least a year previously;
47 per cent of these minors worked as prostitutes for economic
reasons and 96 per cent to be able to fund their drug
dependency (Casa Alianza, 2001).
In Guatemala, local police estimate that in the capital
alone some 2,000 girls and boys are sexually exploited in brothels
(Varney, 2001).
Costa Rica is estimated to have one of the largest child
prostitution problems in the region. The Instituto Nacional de
Menores calculates that 3,000 minors participate in prostitution
networks in the capital (Varney, 2001).
In the case of women, Brazil, Colombia and the Dominican
Republic are the regions main suppliers for the global sex trade.
In Chile, according to a study conducted by Races, the
trafficking of minors for the sex trade is not of alarming
proportions, but cases associated with international paedophile
rings have been detected. The problem is, however, that the
countrys laws are extremely lax, as they do not adequately punish
this type of crime. This leaves the way clear for organized
international networks to recruit women and minors and to
produce pornographic material in countries such as Chile, which
is then sold in Europe, Asian countries and the United States.

(ii) Illegality and vulnerability

The demand for workers prepared to carry out low-skilled jobs

and the inequalities between the worlds economies create a

125
permanent migratory pressure. The measures taken by states to
control and check immigration have resulted in the growth of illegal
immigration controlled by organized mafias that endanger the lives of
all those who are obliged to have recourse to illegal entry mechanisms.
Labour deregulation, meanwhile, has resulted in the
growth of irregular forms of employment, the outcome being
that huge numbers of people are left unprotected by the
instruments that guarantee workers rights.
At the international level there are instruments to protect
migrants, such as the International Convention on the Protection
of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their
Families. However, the countries classified as recipients of
migration have not yet ratified these. Table 15 shows which
countries have ratified the Convention.

Table 15
Ratification of the International Convention on the Protection
of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families

Source: International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant

Workers and Members of their Families (http://www.december18.net).

126
 (iii) Exclusion, marginalization and discrimination

One of the problems that immigrants from poor countries

have to cope with when they arrive in large cities and urban centres
is the social and cultural discrimination they are subjected to.
The exacerbation of xenophobic attitudes and the
hardening of migration policies (which have become more
restrictive since 11 September 2001) are creating a range of
problems for future migrations. Serious difficulties stand in the
way of real economic, political and social integration for these
groups.
This situation is not confined to the industrialized
countries. The cases of Bolivians in Argentina, Guatemalans in
Mexico, Dominicans in Costa Rica and Peruvians in Chile, to
mention some examples, highlight the marginalization and
exclusion suffered by immigrants. In the case of Chile, the 2002
Census gave a figure of some 40,000 for the number of
immigrants originating from Peru. Most of these are employed in
low-skilled jobs (domestic service, construction and street selling)
and are viewed unfavourably by Chileans. According to the
National Public Opinion Survey conducted by FLACSO in
2001, 70.7 per cent of respondents agreed with the proposition
Immigrants should adapt to Chilean culture, while 68.6 per
cent agreed with the statement Immigrants take jobs from us
(FLACSO-Chile, 2003b).

(iv) Remittances

One aspect of particular interest to the states concerned is

the transfer of funds. While it is difficult to estimate the amount
involved (owing to the informal nature of transactions), the
regional total was calculated as US$17 billion in 2000. Mexico
is the largest recipient country (US$7 billion, or 1.1 per cent of
GDP). In countries such as El Salvador and Nicaragua, however,

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remittances are very substantial as a proportion of GDP (13.6
per cent and 13.4 per cent, respectively).
The dependence of some countries on remittances from
abroad has strengthened the link between the communities of
origin and transnational communities, and this can be a vital
resource for the poorest economies. It does mean, however, that
they are more vulnerable to the vagaries and fluctuations of the
developed economies.
Table 16 shows the amounts received by the countries of
the region in the form of remittances.

Table 16
Remittances in Latin America and the Caribbean: main recipient
countries (1990 and 2000)a

a
Figures are for remittances entering the declaring country only.
b
1999 figure.
c
1998 figure.
d
1992 figure.

Source: ECLAC, on the basis of figures from the IMF (2001). Cuba: national estimates.

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 Existing instruments and proposals

Migration is a worldwide phenomenon affecting men and

women from the moment they decide to emigrate to a particular
country.
Progress is urgently needed in protecting immigrants
rights and ensuring that they can participate properly in the host
society and realize their plans as human beings. This requires
solutions that involve the different actors in society. Whereas
states have a basic responsibility, civil society organizations,
immigrants themselves and the host communities need to take a
lead.
There are international agreements and conventions that
point the way. Table 17 gives some of the international
instruments that seek to secure migrants human rights.

Table 17

International legal instruments to protect the human rights of migrants

Source: Rodrguez (2002).

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 It is essential for states to accede to these agreements and
undertake to abide by them. Merely signing or ratifying them
clearly does not guarantee a substantial improvement in the
situation of vulnerability and insecurity affecting immigrants and
the community of origin, but civil society needs to play a leading
role in demanding that the agreements, rights and commitments
accepted by states in this area should be enforced.

(b) Indigenous peoples and multiculturalism

Historically, the demands of indigenous peoples in Latin

America have been neglected by governments. This has created
situations of great uncertainty and given rise in the last decade to
the indigenous movements in Chiapas (Mexico), Ecuador and
Bolivia, which in some cases have created strong pressure for
governments to meet their requirements.
Everywhere in the region there are at least three parties to
these conflicts: indigenous communities, states, and the domestic
and international businesses that are placing pressure on natural
resources in indigenous lands. Although these conflicts have
particular characteristics in different countries and contexts,
there are certain elements common to all of them, such as:
long-neglected demands;
increasing pressure on the land and natural resources
traditionally used by indigenous peoples;
an increasing expectation among indigenous
communities and peoples that they will be able to participate in
the democratic process;
greater awareness of these peoples situation on the part
of the world community;
strong links with civil society organizations
(environmentalists, unions, peasants associations).
Indigenous peoples are marginalized to a significant degree
in areas where the indigenous population is large, such as the
Andean countries. This marginalization is also linked to the high

130
levels of poverty seen in the area. Here again, it is essential to
empower indigenous populations with the objective of reducing
the multiple insecurities that affect them in the economic,
political and cultural spheres.

(c) Technology and social integration: internet, politics

and human security

The general objective of this section is to describe and

characterize the new forms of political relationship between
governments and citizens resulting from internet use and the
implications of these for human security. Particular attention is
paid to the digital divide as a new source of insecurity.

(i) The digital divide as a source of human insecurity

The digital divide is one of the small group of issues that

are of the highest priority for development. Along with
controlling HIV, it is now right at the top of international
organizations agendas. The demand for information and
knowledge on the subject is increasing, best practice studies and
country rankings are multiplying, and there is a dawning
awareness of how dangerous it can be to have a world split down
the middle, this time in respect of information access.
The institutionalization process has been consolidated by
the first World Summit on the Information Society, convened by
the United Nations in two stages. The first phase was held in
December 2003 in Geneva and the second will take place in
Tunis in 2005.

(ii) Opportunities for access to information

More and better information: the availability of public

service information on the internet means a substantial increase
in the information of public interest that citizens have access to.

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This has a variety of consequences: it fulfils the promise of
transparency in public administration and can help improve
public services for citizens.
Greater control and influence: access to more
information can mean the opportunity to use this to monitor
public administration. The more obscure areas of administration,
such as public procurement, have their sphere of autonomy
reduced by the simple fact that they can be scrutinized by
citizens, the media or political parties. The range of tools
available to the public for detecting and scrutinizing fraud,
inefficiency or irregularities is widened.
Better quality of life and human development: UNDP
reports and studies on the factors that promote or constrain
human development highlight the important link between
information access, social capital and quality of life. The promise,
in this case, lies in the prospects for more efficient time and
resource use that can be aspired to, greater trust in institutions
and the possibility of enlarging social networks, among other
things.
One aspect of the promise held out by the internet, albeit
a less obvious and visible one, is the empowerment of groups,
communities or social movements, as channels of communication
between citizens themselves become available.

(iii) Internet governance

The internet has no government. Utopian and

egalitarian visions coexist with the reality of a world in which
there are still countries, borders, laws, fraud and abuses. There
is a body which acts as a semi-regulator of the internet,
however. This is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers (ICANN), responsible, by its own definition, for
the general technical administration of the internet, for
designing and supervising the domain name allocation system,
and for allocating internet protocol (IP) addresses. ICANN was

132
created in September 1998 as a non-profit corporation under
Californian law. It was an initiative of the United States
Commerce Department, the objective of which was to take the
control of names and numbers (communication protocols)
away from the state and to create a structure that would reflect
the worldwide reality of the internet. This is a crucial
organization, as it is ultimately thanks to ICANN that e-mail
messages reach their destinations and websites can be accessed.
Year after year, this minimal institutional structure generates
heated disputes about the basic regulations and protocols
needed for the internet to work as we know it. It is a new focus
of conflict and dispute.

(iv) Defence and security

The geopolitical dimension of the internet also needs to be

considered. The problem today is how the soft power (Nye and
Owens, 1996) derived from information technologies is
controlled. The information revolution is changing the nature of
conflicts and introducing new methods into warfare, terrorism
and crime. It is altering military and security doctrines. It is now
common to hear of the new security agenda (Rojas Aravena,
1999) concerned with new threats, such as crime and terrorism
networks. They are asymmetrical threats, where those with less
military power enhance their capabilities by operating in
accordance with a network logic (centralized strategy and
decentralized tactics) and effective use of soft power.
Cyberwar is the disruption of the enemys command,
communication and planning structures, rather than their
physical destruction (Pisani, 2002), while netwar refers to
confrontations between or with protagonists other than states.
Following the attacks by Islamic fundamentalist networks
in New York and Washington, D.C., reference has begun to be
made to terrorism on a new scale or worldwide terrorism. After
September 11, a number of countries quickly passed new laws to

133
strengthen internet supervision. The antiterrorism plan made
public by the U.S. Department of State sets two priorities in this
war: intercepting the financial flows and communications of
terrorist networks, and granting special powers to the FBI to
monitor communications.

(v) Networked local communities

This area of relationship between the internet and

politics entails the incorporation of technology into the
dynamics of local groups and communities. These are small
organizations, local in their work and impact, whose operating
capacities are thus amplified. They might be organizations
whose work centres around some particular function or
geographical location and which acquire new tools for
interacting with local or central government and also with other
organizations, so that citizen networks are formed. From the
local base, links can also be created with equivalent groups in
distant places. The result is the empowerment of groups and the
virtualization of social capital. These are new patterns of civic
participation and sociability.

(vi) New forms and dynamics of social movements

The new patterns of sociability and communication made

possible by this technology are profoundly altering the forms and
dynamics of group formation and collective action.
It is now being argued that the internet is a tool for
empowering groups, communities or social movements, because
its use enhances the operational capabilities of different
groupings. It is also observed that one general tendency is the
globalization of citizens. Causes such as the environment and
human rights are being globalized, as are adversaries (the
institutions of global capitalism, poverty). Other manifestations
of the new dynamics of collective action are those connected

134
with intensive technology use. This is the case with new forms
of protest such as the netstrike, which is a method of
sabotaging the adversarys communications, and hacker
activism which, along with new methods of action, establishes a
novel framework of principles associated with collective
creation, freedom of information and defence of the internets
open architecture.
Campaigning is a special instance of these changes in the
dynamics of groups and social movements. It is now common for
internet users to receive different types of appeals for the most
disparate causes. Besides unwanted chain e-mail there are more
structured campaigns, like those of Mdecins sans Frontires and
Greenpeace.

(vii) Practical politics and democracy

The arrival of the internet has aroused great expectations

about its impact on the exercise of politics and democracy. From
the point of view of governments, internet use promises
efficiency gains and savings, greater administrative transparency
and closer contact with citizens. From the point of view of
citizens, expectations centre on access to more and better
information, control over the authorities, wider influence and, in
general, greater efficiency in the use of time and resources.
Public and political institutions are coming under
increasing pressure from citizens who have begun to question the
traditional ways of doing things. Before the internet made it
possible, nobody could have imagined accessing all the files with
the voting record of each member of parliament, carrying out
administrative procedures on-line or presenting complaints
about poor service from the home or office.
This increasing communication between the state and
citizens by electronic means has been a novel component of the
state modernization process. The novelty, however, is not the use
of technology as such but the possibility of opening up ever more

135
direct channels of communication to bring the authorities closer
to citizens. This is a new form of mediation which is
unquestionably having its effect on traditional systems of
representation.
One interesting prospect here is the future possibility of
voting by internet, as one of the major advances that will help to
resolve practical problems with the staging of elections. Some are
even postulating a deliberative democracy in the purest Greek
style (Coleman and Gotze, 2001; Cebrin, 1998).

3 Politico-institutional vulnerabilities: weak democracies

In Latin America and the Caribbean, democracy has

proved to be the best political system for attaining the goals of
freedom from fear and want. The region has a disastrous history
of violations of human rights and political rights during the
periods of dictatorship, when the doctrine of national security
was paramount. This is why it is important to consolidate
democracy, as a system that has an inbuilt preference for dialogue
and policy agreement, to solve disputes and promote human
rights among the different actors and agents of society.
Latin American democracies tend to be weak. With a
few exceptions, the region displays serious politico-
institutional shortcomings that manifest themselves in
recurring crises, unwarranted interference by the armed forces
in domestic political matters in certain countries, lack of
respect for political and civil rights and basic guarantees, high
indices of corruption and institutionalized violence. It is not
surprising that the result of this should have been a feeling of
profound mistrust towards political parties and the crisis of
representation affecting these.

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 (a) Recurrent crises

The instability and weakness of the regions democracies

are creating a regressive environment characterized by increasing
polarization and the growing use of instruments of force, so that
violations of basic human rights are multiplying. Furthermore,
when these situations worsen, as has happened lately in the
Andean area, there is a risk that polarization will give way to
increasing militarization. Humanitarian emergencies have their
origin in this escalation. This is why it is so important to
establish preventive mechanisms to ensure democratic stability.
Every one of the more or less acute crisis situations summarized
in Table 18 has had a major retrograde effect on peoples
security, sometimes because of political and military fears and
sometimes because of rising poverty and the consequent increase
in basic needs.
Thus, despite the third wave of democratization in the
early 1990s which created a window of opportunity for
democratic consolidation, many countries have been affected by
serious political crises that are tending to be resolved outside
democratic parameters. From 1990 to the present, political
and/or military elites have used the threat of military force on a
number of occasions to disrupt the democratic process. The most
emblematic cases in the 1990s were those of Paraguay, Haiti and
Peru. In the last few years, however, new sources of tension have
arisen in Argentina and Venezuela.

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 Table 18
Politico-institutional crises in Latin America (1990-2003)

Source: Prepared by FLACSO-Chile on the basis of press reports.

Coup dtat
Military uprising or tension
Removal/resignation of president

138
 (b) Low-density democracies

The tendencies indicated by Table 18 reveal the

difficulties that Latin American and Caribbean countries are
having in consolidating approaches that ensure respect for
essential political and civil rights and thereby consolidate
democratic systems. This finding highlights the need to promote
the central issues of human security as a fundamental part of
democratic transition and consolidation.
After more than a decade of democratic transition, it
transpires that full respect for political rights (suffrage,
alternation in power and the right to vote in secret and without
pressure, among others) exists in only half of a total of twenty-
one Latin American countries. Figure 19 shows that from 1988
to 2002 an average of ten countries can be considered fully
democratic from the point of view of political rights.
More serious still is the fact that civil liberties, including
the right to assembly, freedom of speech and association,
protection against abuses of power by the authorities, etc., are
fully respected in only six of those twenty-one countries. From
1988 to 2002, we cannot discern any major change in the trend
where respect for civil liberties is concerned.
This gap between the larger number of countries that now
fully respect political rights and the number fully respecting civil
liberties bespeaks a situation in which electoral democracies are
being consolidated while the wider penetration of democracy
remains pending. In other words, citizens are able to vote and
elect their representatives but there is less protection for other
rights that are essential in a democratic system.

139
 Figure 19
Political and civil rights in Latin America

Source: Prepared by FLACSO-Chile with information from Freedom House.

(c) Corruption exacerbates politico-institutional vulnerability

One of the factors contributing most to the weakness of

democratic systems is the persistence of corruption. The concept of
corruption refers to the use of public resources for private ends. This
use may consist in the personal benefit obtained by officials thanks
to their control over certain public resources, or in the benefits an
official may receive from private-sector agents in return for
favouring them in decisions and/or applications of a public nature.
Each year, Transparency International measures how elites
perceive the situation with corruption in different countries of the
world. Although this indicator mainly highlights the second
dimension of corruption, i.e. benefits obtained in the
public/private relationship, data for the region are significant.
Table 19 shows that only Chile, Costa Rica and Uruguay are

140
perceived as countries where the level of corruption is low or
medium. In all the other countries of the region the levels are high.
Three elements go to perpetuate high levels of corruption:
Institutional weakness. The first problem is the
institutional weakness that hinders states from punishing
corruption. Weak systems of supervision within the state have
helped to sustain the situation, as have legal systems that lack
independence and are highly bureaucratic and inefficient.
Numerous reforms are being applied in the region to improve
legal systems, but their results will be seen only in the long term.
Inequality. Latin America is the most unequal region in
the world, and economic power has historically been highly
concentrated. With weak institutions and few control
mechanisms, powerful sectors are more likely to be able to
exercise influence over public policies and politics in general.
Weak mechanisms of social control. A third factor behind
corruption is the weakness of social checks and balances. In a
number of Latin American countries, for example, there is a high
degree of media concentration, and in certain circumstances this can
reduce the opportunities for exercising effective control over public
policies.21 Meanwhile, widespread practices of political patronage in
some countries of the region creates a complex network of social and
institutional dependence that weakens yet further the ability of
citizens to respond to abuses (Schedler et al., 1999).
Institutional reforms are necessary but not sufficient to
put an end to corruption. Besides legal mechanisms to control
and punish corruption, it is also necessary: (a) to regulate the
relationship between the state, politics and money following
criteria of transparency, equality of opportunities and
responsibility, and (b) to strengthen the role of civil society in
monitoring public policy.

21 In Chile, the media are highly concentrated in a few private sector hands,
mainly associated with the opposition. Nonetheless, the press has played an
important role in bringing to light cases of corruption in the state machinery.

141
 Table 19
Perceived corruption index

Source: Prepared by FLACSO-Chile on the basis of Transparency International

reports (http://www.transparency.org/).

(d) Crisis of representation

The situation described, combined with the poor

performance of political leaders, whether because of corruption
or economic and political mismanagement, has sapped citizen
confidence in political parties and individuals. The church and
television are cited in Latin American surveys as the social actors
most trusted by citizens of both genders (Figure 20). Political
parties and individuals as social actors are the least trusted by
citizens, behind the armed forces and police.
The fear inspired by institutions means vulnerability and,
in extreme cases, a search for solutions outside the rule of law.

142
 Figure 20
Level of trust percentages in Latin America

Source: Latinobarmetro (2002). Based on a sample of seventeen countries.

(e) Public perceptions

Latin America is a vulnerable region with problems of

governance due to a range of political, economic and social
circumstances that are far from being a matter of indifference to
citizens. Although efforts have been made by multilateral
agencies, governments and civil society to support and promote
democracy as a system, this has not commanded the hoped-for
support.
While most people (56 per cent) support democracy in
Latin America, almost a fifth of Latin American citizens support
authoritarian governments. Furthermore, indifference about the
system of government is tending to increase (Figure 21).

143
 Figure 21
Latin America: democracyauthoritarianismindifference

Source: Latinobarmetro (2002). Based on a sample of seventeen countries.

To this should be added the preference of Latin Americans for

economic development over democracy. It seems that individual and/or
collective economic welfare is more important to them than the rights
and freedoms that accompany democratic development (Figure 22).
Figure 22
Latin America: democracy vs economic development (2002)

Source: Latinobarmetro (2002). Based on a sample of seventeen

countries.

144
 If we analyse satisfaction with democracy in the Latin
American countries, we find that in the South American
subregion satisfaction with this system of government is low.
In most of the countries the satisfaction index is a mere
1520 per cent, with Colombia, Argentina and Paraguay being
the most extreme cases (Figure 23). Certainly, politico-
institutional crises can explain this in the cases of Argentina and
Paraguay, and the intensification of conflict in the case of
Colombia.

Figure 23
South America: satisfaction with democracy (2002)

Source: Latinobarmetro (2002). Based on a sample of seventeen countries.

With the exception of Mexico, however, all the countries

of North and Central America are more satisfied with democracy
(Figure 24). Costa Rica is the paradigmatic case, with the
highest approval level, followed by Honduras and Nicaragua.

145
 Figure 24
North and Central America: satisfaction with democracy (2002)

Source: Latinobarmetro (2002). Based on a sample of seventeen countries.

To sum up, the relationship between human security and

democracy ties in at the global level with the theoretical debate
about democratic peace. It is observed that democracies have no
propensity whatsoever to go to war with countries that have
similar systems; this basically holds for systems that are
established, both in relation to political and socio-economic
aspects. In the case of Latin America, the debate is whether this
theoretical framework can be applied when democracies are fragile
and all have high levels of inequality in the distribution of income.
A reckoning of what has happened in the region over the
last decade yields mixed results. On the one hand, great progress
has been made with dialogue to resolve differences previously
associated with the use of force; on the other, force has actually
been used in the region by formally democratic governments. It
is clear, though, that the level and, above all, the intensity of
conflict were much greater when military regimes were the rule.
Placing the individual at the centre of the system changes
the parameters used to evaluate the different situations and it
becomes clear that the democratic system needs to be
consolidated in this part of the world as one of the keys to
reducing the level of tension within and between countries.

146
4 International security vulnerabilities (traditional)

(a) Inter-state conflicts

It needs to be stressed that one of the highest levels of

human insecurity results from inter-state conflicts. In this
respect, the low incidence of inter-state conflicts in Latin
America throughout the decade, making the region the worlds
most peaceful, is cause for celebration. Confrontations and
tensions between states tend to be limited and short-lived. By
and large, they are triggered by the territorial claims of some
state. The most severe conflict during the 1990s was that between
Peru and Ecuador in 1995, which resulted in a confrontation
between the two countries armies. Multilateral intervention
helped to reduce tensions between these countries.

(b) Unresolved border conflicts

The situation with unresolved border conflicts is

contained throughout the region and is not an imminent security
concern (Table 20). Historically, territorial claims have been
resolved bilaterally or with the assistance of arbitrators. The most
sensitive situation is with the territorial claims of certain Central
American countries. The characteristics of the internal conflict in
Colombia, meanwhile, mean a possibility of guerrilla warfare
spreading into areas that are the subject of territorial dispute.
Nonetheless, there is no expectation that confrontations
will escalate to the point where inter-state conflicts break out in
the hemisphere.

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 Table 20
Unresolved inter-state conflicts in Latin America

Source: Mares (2000, p. 36), adapted from Rojas Aravena (1997).

(c) Transnational security threats

Drug trafficking and organized crime, including money

laundering and terrorism, are transnational threats to peoples
security. The nature of these threats means that they need to be
considered from a multidimensional perspective, both to
understand the type of issues involved and to arrive at
appropriate, concerted responses. From the human security point
of view, transnational threats have two specific characteristics.
First, they lend themselves to a more comprehensive approach to
the analysis of the structural factors and conditions that give rise
to them. Second, they highlight the need for concerted
international, multilateral action to deal with problems of a
transnational nature on the basis of common interests and shared
values in which democracy and the protection of human rights
take pride of place.

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 (i) Drug trafficking: a multilateral problem

Drug trafficking is a problem that affects peoples security

in all sorts of ways, including health and personal safety (Figure
25). Drug trafficking has stimulated a range of illegal activities
such as arms trafficking and money laundering, all of which has
resulted in the creation of criminal structures whose methods
tend to be particularly violent and complex. It is also a major
source of financing for guerrilla groups and internal conflicts.
Drug trafficking is multilateral in nature for two reasons.
First, there is the issue of supply and demand. At present, while
much of the supply is in the Andean region, the demand is from
the United States and Europe. Second, the policies applied in one
country have immediate effects on others. Thus, for example, the
reduction in coca plantations in Peru and Bolivia in the 199095
period generated pressure for a substantial increase in coca
production in Colombia from 1995 (Table 21). Likewise,
eradication policies do not seem to be having a direct effect in the
form of a decline in coca growing (Table 22).

149
 Table 21
Estimated coca harvest, hectares (19902002)

a
First half.
Source: U.S. Department of State, International Narcotics Control Strategy Reports
(various years).

Table 22
Growth of coca growing (GG) versus growth of eradication (GE)
(% growth over previous year)

Source: Prepared by FLACSO-Chile from U.S. Department of State data (various

years).

150
 Figure 25
Geonarcotics: overview
Source: Ivelaw 1997).
151
 (ii) Money laundering

Laundering is a technique used to conceal the fact that

money has been illegally acquired. It is the means whereby drug
traffickers, terrorists, illegal arms dealers, corrupt officials and so
on can conduct and extend their illegal activities. Crime is
increasingly international in scope and its financial aspects are
becoming more complex because of the rapid advance of
technology and the globalization of the financial services
industry. According to some international bodies, money
laundering involves funds equivalent to between 2 per cent and
5 per cent of world GDP. In Mexico alone the amounts involved
are calculated at some US$25 billion (2002).
In 2002, the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF, an
autonomous fund administered by the Inter-American
Development Bank) approved a donation of US$1.23 million to
help eight countries in Latin America to combat money
laundering. Resources from MIF will support the efforts of
beneficiary countries to create or strengthen Financial
Intelligence Units whose task will be to detect and analyse
suspicious transactions that could be money-laundering
operations. The MIF-backed programme will be implemented by
the OAS Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission. The
beneficiaries will be the anti-money-laundering Financial
Intelligence Units of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador,
Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. The funds made available will
finance technical assistance for the improvement of legal
structures and for institutional development, training and
communications technology.
Money laundering is a major source of vulnerability,
particularly because it is associated with illegal activities, helps to
strengthen crime networks at the national level, and has a
corrosive effect on state institutions, particularly in the legal
system.

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 (iii) Terrorism: worldwide cooperation to prevent it

Terrorism is a major threat to individuals and to

international peace. According to international sources, between
1976 and 1987 there were 7,000 terrorist incidents in the world,
leaving a toll of 6,000 dead. That figure changed dramatically on 11
September 2001 with the attacks on New York and Washington,
D.C., in which some 3,500 people died (Rojas Aravena, 2003c).
More recent data for Latin America and the Caribbean give
a figure of 782 incidents between 1990 and 1995. The number of
casualties was put at 975. In the same period, the number of
international terrorist incidents was 2,558. The Report of the
Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism of the U.S.
Department of State indicates that in 2000 there were 8 per cent
more incidents than the year before. There were 423 attacks, of
which half were against US targets or citizens. Asia was the region
with the largest number of incidents, with 281. There were 73
attacks in Africa, 19 each in the Latin America and Middle East
subregions, and 12 in the Eurasia region (Rojas Aravena, 2003c).
In Latin America, it is important to note that terrorism has
been among regional political priorities. Violence at the service of
subversion and counterinsurgency has become a permanent
feature, especially in Colombia. In many of these cases, the use of
violence takes on terrorist characteristics. Argentina has suffered
from two serious attacks, one against the Israeli Embassy and one
against a Jewish organization, the Asociacin de Entidades
Judas. In Peru, one of the most violent manifestations of
terrorism, the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), was eliminated
at a high cost to democracy. Even so, there have been incidents
recently, such as the one that occurred a few days after President
Bushs visit to Lima in March 2002. The area where the borders
of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet has been marked down as
a breeding ground of terrorism. So far, however, there are no
specific data to prove that actual incidents originating there have
any relationship with what is called global terrorism.

153
 The way to prevent terrorism is essentially through
international cooperation and action. In the field of international
action, for example, new forms of cooperation have been created
by exchanging information between intelligence services. The most
important measure in the Americas in relation to this issue was the
Inter-American Convention against Terrorism, adopted on 3 June
2002. The objective of the Convention is to prevent, punish and
eliminate terrorism. For this, the States Parties undertake to adopt
a number of specific measures and to strengthen cooperation
among themselves. One important aspect is that of terrorist
financing measures. The Convention reinforces the institutional
architecture and legal framework for the struggle against terrorism
in the Americas, and has become the most important of the
instruments of coordination established since 11 September 2001.
Lastly, it is important to realize that anti-terrorism policies
and the instruments devised to deal with this threat have
generated an intense international debate on the challenge raised
for the protection of human rights and civil liberties. The
tracking of funds, information and people can be cited as an
example. From the human security perspective it is interesting to
analyse this tension between the protection of human rights and
the instruments for combating terrorism.

(iv) Light arms trafficking: a multilateral problem

The trafficking of light arms may be one of the factors that

has contributed most to the increase in social violence in the region.
It is estimated that 1,300 people die each day as a result of violence
involving firearms. Worldwide, it has been calculated that over 500
million light and small arms are in circulation and that they are still
being manufactured on an industrial scale in approximately seventy
countries, mainly developed ones, while home-made weapons are
widely produced in many others. Unless substantial progress is
made in reducing the availability and unwarranted use of small
arms, human security will continue to be an elusive goal.

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 The international community has recognized that the illegal
trafficking of small and light arms in all its aspects has many facets
including, among others, issues of security, conflict prevention and
resolution, the prevention of crime, and health and development.
Central America is one of the regions where most light
arms are in circulation, as over a million and a half legal and
illegal weapons are held there. The illegal weapons are the result
of Central Americas civil wars and rising crime (Tables 23, 24).

Table 23
Legally held firearms in Central America (2000)

Source: Godnick et al. (2002).

Table 24
Estimate of civilian and military weapons in Central America

Source: Godnick et al. (2002).

There is little available in the way of reliable statistics for

the South American countries, although a rise in the number of
small arms entering Brazil has been observed, as has an increase
in production in that country.

155
 In Argentina, it is estimated that there are some 14 firearms
for every 100 people (Figure 26). This figure is considerably
lower than that for other countries such as the United States, but
it must be noted that 53 per cent belong to civilians without gun
licences. The rise in the illegal possession of small arms by civilians
is a critical issue in many Latin American countries.

Figure 26
Small arms in Argentina (2001)

Source: GIIS, 2002.

International concertation is indispensable to solve the

problem of light arms trafficking, as the worlds main producers
and exporters of small arms are China, the Russian Federation
and the United States. The latter is the largest supplier of small
arms to developing countries, with sales averaging US$7.6
billion a year and over 300 manufacturers. The sales of the
Russian Federation amount to about US$3.8 billion a year and
those of China to US$970 million. Another ten countries can be
classified as intermediate producers: Austria, Belgium, Brazil,
France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and the United
Kingdom. Brazil is the largest developing-country producer and
exports mainly to the US market.

156
 The worldwide scope of the problem of illegal small arms
manufacturing and trafficking necessitates multilateral measures
and a strong emphasis on regional initiatives and institutions to
address this problem. The 1997 Inter-American Convention
against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms,
Ammunition, Explosives, and Other Related Materials, from the
Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission, and a variety
of regional initiatives in Central and South America are useful
starting points for progress in resolving this conflict.

(v) Colombia: high levels of human insecurity

Colombia presents a highly involved situation combining drug

trafficking, guerrilla warfare, arms dealing, environmental devastation,
institutional violence, displaced persons and a keen interest on the part
of the United States in the drug trade of which it is a destination. It is
certainly the country where peoples security is most affected. Figure
27 shows the escalation of violence in the period 19992002.
The problem of Colombia is unquestionably one of the
main security conflicts in the hemisphere, as it is having a
destabilizing effect not just on that country but on the whole
Andean region, with ramifications throughout the Americas.
In relation to the Colombian conflict in general it is true
to say that:
(a) It is the main internal conflict at the present time
owing to its tendency towards militarization, which also has
subregional repercussions.
(b) It is an essentially multilateral conflict, and resolving it
will therefore require concerted action by different countries
(including the European Union, the Russian Federation and the
United States).
(c) It is having repercussions in different areas of the social,
economic and political life of the regions countries, for example
in relation to displaced persons, access to and exploitation of
natural resources, environmental damage, human rights

157
violations and the effect on economic growth and economic
instability, among other factors.

Figure 27
Armed actions by guerrillas and security forces, by initiative

5 Internal security vulnerabilities

(a) Social violence and crime

As in the area of health, the rise in social violence is a human

security problem, as peoples lives are ultimately at stake. According
to comparative studies, the Latin American countries display a
tendency towards steadily rising criminality and have some of the
worlds highest rates of murder and kidnapping (Figures 28, 29).

158
 This tendency can be explained in part by the rise of
organized crime and its strong links with drug trafficking and the
activities that derive from this. In Nicaragua, for example, the
large number of illegal weapons in circulation and the increase in
drug trafficking has resulted in weapons being traded for drugs.
Crime is associated with a complex combination of
factors, including:
High levels of poverty in the population.
A legal system that does not rehabilitate offenders.
A lack of opportunities for sectors of the population at
social risk, mainly the young poor.
A system of police organization that has traditionally
been oriented towards the maintenance of social order rather
than towards crime prevention planning.
A lack of resources for urban planning to integrate
citizens into a welcoming environment.
Ease of access to arms by criminals.
Figure 28
Homicides per 100,000 inhabitants (most recent annual figures 19902000)

Source: WHO (2003).

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 Figure 29
Urban violence in Latin America: homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants

Source: IDB, Buvinic and Morrison (2000).

This situation is particularly apparent in Central America,

where the rate of violent deaths is high in most countries, the
exception being Costa Rica. In Guatemala City and San
Salvador, homicide rates are close to 100 for every 100,000
inhabitants. Meanwhile, victim surveys indicate that in most
Central American countries over 20 per cent of the population
are affected by crime.
In this context there has been an upsurge in lynchings,
particularly in Guatemalan society (Figure 30). Since 1996 the
United Nations Verification Mission in Guatemala has recorded
421 cases with 817 victims, of whom 215 died. As the report of
the Verification Mission notes, certain situations that are
historical in origin, such as exclusion and the culture of violence

160
inherited from the armed conflict, along with the inadequate
response of state authorities, have meant that lynchings continue
to go unpunished. The characteristics of these and the failure of
the state to act against them have made them a central source of
fundamental rights violations and one of the clearest
manifestations of the worsening human rights situation.

Figure 30
Lynchings in Guatemala (19942001)

Source: Mendoza and Torres-Rivas (2003).

Crime has also been increasing in the South American

countries, particularly Argentina and Brazil. According to a
Nueva Mayora report (2003), analysis of the period 19912002
reveals a systematic increase in the number of criminal acts in
Argentina, giving an increase of 166 per cent over a period of
eleven and a half years (Figure 31). Whereas 489,290 crimes
were committed in the country in 1991, the figure for the first
half of 2002 alone was 646,850 (3,574 crimes a day).

161
 Figure 31
Daily average of reported crime in Argentina (19912003)

(*) The 2002 figures are for the first half of that year, while those for 2003 are
forecasts based on the average annual growth in the period.
Source: Centro de Estudios Nueva Mayora, June 2003. www.nuevamayoria.com

Violence also has a profoundly negative impact on

development and entails costs of various kinds for society as a
whole. At the macroeconomic level, violence reduces foreign and
domestic investment, thereby damaging the prospects for long-
term growth. At the microeconomic level, it discourages people
from investing time and money in education and encourages
them to develop criminal skills instead of studying.
Health and material losses are estimated at up to 8.4 per
cent of national GDP in Colombia and 9 per cent in Venezuela
(Figure 32).

162
 Figure 32
Economic costs of violence in Latin America
(as percentage of 1997 GDP)

Source: Buvinic et al. (2002).

(b) Institutionalized violence

Another of the problems found in some of the regions

countries is the degree of violence used by domestic security
agencies in their work of overseeing public security. According to
the Human Rights Watch World Report 2003, there is police
violence in most Latin American countries. Brazil, Colombia and
Guatemala are examples of countries where institutionalized
violence has been a constant over the last decade. More recently,

163
however, the most violent cases have been seen in Argentina,
Bolivia, Colombia, Paraguay and Venezuela. Political instability
and social and economic crises are factors common to all these
situations.
The cases of Venezuela and Argentina are the most
significant, being the result of social upheaval, protests and street
disturbances. A recent and disturbing event in Venezuela is the
appearance in some states of death squads linked to the police. In
Argentina, this is combined with police violence against journalists.
There are various explanations for these recurring abuses
of power by the regions security forces. However, there are four
factors that, taken together, explain this behaviour:
Poor legal control of the security forces. In a number of
countries, the civilian authorities face serious legal impediments
in seeking to control the internal procedures of the police and
punish abuses of power by the security forces. Generally
speaking, in Latin America parliamentary institutions have little
or no power to supervise the working of police forces.
Weak civilian control of security forces. Because the
maintenance of public order is also a government objective, on
some occasions the civilian authorities have used the forces of law
and order to control social protests.
Poorly paid security forces. The security forces are usually
poorly paid, which is an incentive for officers and NCOs to
engage in illegal activities.
Lack of human rights education. Another major problem
in several of the regions countries is the lack of human rights
programmes for NCOs and refresher mechanisms for higher
officers. It is vital to create programmes to train the security
forces in negotiated resolution techniques for dealing with social
conflicts.
To illustrate the scale of the problem, Figure 33 shows a
comparison of civilian and police deaths in confrontations in
Greater Buenos Aires (Argentina), according to the Centro de
Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS).

164
 Figure 33
Civilian and police deaths in confrontations in Greater Buenos Aires

Source: CELS (2001).

6 Environmental vulnerabilities

Much has been made in recent years of the existence of a

world environmental crisis. It has also been emphasized that this
is a problem of planetary scale whose origins are essentially
human and not natural.
For example, deforestation resulting from over-
exploitation of woodland is reducing plant cover, diminishing
genetic variety and triggering alluvial erosion and desertification
(Figures 34, 35). According to an FAO regional study (2002),
net losses of forest totalled 4.28 million hectares in the
19992000 period. Of the different subregions, North America
(excluding Canada) had a net loss of 0.24 million hectares,
Central America of 0.34 million hectares, and South America of
3.71 million hectares.
Water shortages are also a serious problem for future
development. During the twentieth century, water consumption
grew more than twice as fast as population (Figure 36). Four in

165
every ten of the worlds inhabitants live in areas where water is
scarce. It is possible that by 2025, no less than two-thirds of the
worlds population, or some 5.5 billion people, will be living in
countries where there is a serious shortage of water.
This context of deforestation and loss of plant species,
water shortages and drought is generally intertwined with socio-
political disasters such as armed conflict and forced migration
that exacerbate the degradation, erosion and desertification of
soils. The resultant loss of farming land is largely responsible for
one of the main threats to peoples security in the region and
worldwide: food security.

Figure 34
Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean:
percentage annual loss of woodland (19902000)

Source: FAOCOFLAC (2002).

166
 Figure 35
South America: percentage annual loss of woodland (19902000)

Source: FAOCOFLAC (2002).

Figure 36
Water consumption per capita (m3)

Source: UNEP GEO Data Portal (http://geodata.grid.unep.cl).

167
 Environmental resources, and fresh water in particular, are
a critical part of peoples living requirements. When these
resources are threatened by environmental change, so is human
security. What needs to be emphasized here is sustainable
development.

168
 Part Eight

Empowerment for human security

Illiteracy and innumeracy are forms of insecurity in themselves

(Commission on Human Security, Human Security Now, 2003)

The relationship between education and human security

has been recognized ever since the concept of human security
originated, as the section dealing with this concept in the present
study shows. As the idea of human security has evolved towards
greater inclusion and leadership for individuals, the importance
of education and the demands made on it have been increasing.
This section offers fourteen proposals for the development of
education policies and strategies to further human security. They
were formulated with an awareness of what this report has
illustrated: this is an emerging issue that serves to bring together
national and international policy-making, covers multiple
dimensions, and therefore requires interdisciplinary and multi-
causal approaches if the problems to which the concept relates are
to be understood and overcome.
The World Conference on Education for All (Jomtien,
Thailand, 1990) provides a very good framework for considering
education in relation to human security. On the one hand, it
treated education as an instrument for empowering people by
meeting their basic learning needs with or without institutional
support. On the other, it affirmed the commitment of states to
helping ensure that basic life skills were acquired, and not just
during the years of school.

169
 To be an instrument of empowerment, education has to be
considered from the standpoint of the learning needs that people
have if they are to be in a position to acquire life skills, including
those relating to human security.

1 An education that brings new individuals and social actors into

the construction of a human security culture

Going by the principle that education can be used to build

culture and not merely to transmit or reproduce it, we can affirm
that education will be required to contribute to the development
of the collective awareness of human security that is needed if this
is to be realized. The aim of education, by definition, is the
realization of peoples potential so that they can play an active
part in obtaining what they require for their welfare and the
exercise of universally recognized human rights.
In the context of human security, the relationship between
education and culture is also an emerging one. While culture is
the explicit and implicit objective of education, human security
culture is still developing and is an area where there is as yet no
consensus or clear agreement as to what action is required. On
the one hand, human security involves the construction of a civic
ethos. On the other, it entails the recognition of everyday social
experiences in which the security/insecurity relationship
constitutes a field of participation and shared responsibility.
Looked at this way, human security education needs to be
planned with a view to a cultural construction project that itself
requires social actors prepared to take on this task as an aspect of
active citizenship.

170
2 An education whereby people can learn how to learn to think,
act, be and share in reflection and action that bears on human
security/insecurity

Considering that the best thing to come out of education

is the acquisition of learning capabilities, there is a need to create
the conditions for thinking about and acting on the relationship
between human security and insecurity, as leading actors in a
history of which we are part. The acquisition of knowledge, both
theoretical and practical, becomes meaningful when this is able
to dynamize our thinking about the daily life of individuals and
the way this life is connected with the community, regional,
national and international contexts.
Reflection, in a context of democratic dialogue,
undoubtedly contributes to both the personal and cultural
construction of human security.

3 Education that recognizes and encourages both formal learning

and non-formal and informal learning is an emerging concept
that has not yet been codified into school syllabuses and
practices

The idea of learning-centred education, as recommended

by the 1990 World Conference on Education for All, brings to
light the importance of informal learning for subjects that cannot
be codified into a discipline or course, as is the case with human
security. On this basis, then, part of the work of education is to
enhance peoples learning capabilities, whether formal, non-
formal or informal. Thus, enhancing independent learning
capabilities in situations connected with the experiences of daily
life provides an indispensable field of action for empowering
individuals and constructing social actors on a basis of human
security.
Among formal institutions we recognize school systems
where education is carried out by a teaching staff. Non-formal

171
institutions, which also involve educators, include lectures or
one-off pedagogic situations. Informal learning mechanisms,
conversely, are situations of self-learning in which people learn
without being taught as a result of daily activities that they
undertake not in order to learn but to socialize or enjoy
themselves. These activities include reading, observation,
conversation, recreation with the media, analysis of their own
experiences, family life, etc.
This kind of strategic conception of education offers a
broader arena of reflection in which people, social actors and
culture can develop on the basis of human security.

4 An education that enables people to learn how to build

solidarity and social relationships as a way both of
understanding human security and of constructing social
networks on the basis of an enlarged individual responsibility

Human security probably poses a greater challenge to

education in its capacity for learning how to learn to live in
society than in other aspects of development and the exercise of
human rights. As this study shows, human security directly
relates to otherness, to the possibility of creating mutual trust, to
relationships of cooperation and solidarity. This being so, there
will always be a tension at the heart of learning between the
setting of limits for individual responsibility and its relationship
with institutional, group and community responsibilities.

5 An education that sets out from a territorial and community

strategy for human security

Other parts of this study have shown that human security

is experienced in territories forming part of a nations political
organization. In recognition of this, and to open up
opportunities, education for human security should form part of
a community strategy where neighbourhood units and the places

172
where people meet and circulate become places of education in
which reflection and action underpin the educational process.
Schools, all the institutions of the commune, public and
private bodies, companies, different organizations and social
networks can join forces to promote educational strategies
forming part of the effort to construct bonds of mutual
protection and community life that improve individual and
collective welfare.

6 An education that both constructs culture and imparts the

capabilities needed to achieve specific forms of security

The dimensions of people-centred human security have

been identified in this study as:
(1) economic/financial security
(1) economic security
(2) occupational security
(3) food security
(4) health security
(5) environmental security
(6) personal security
(7) gender security
(8) community security
(8) political security
Approached in this way, education for human security
includes basic skills such as reading, writing, mathematics and
problem-solving, as well as the specific capabilities required for
the forms of security referred to above. Thus, basic schooling and
occupational training are in themselves instruments of human
security.

173
7 An education for understanding fears, interpreting the
generation of feelings of insecurity, contemplating personal
subjectivities and inter-subjectivities and generating spaces of
affective behaviour

As stated, human security has objective and subjective

dimensions, both of these being dimensions of a reality that is
constructed dynamically, day after day, by circumstances internal
and external to individuals, whether in isolation or in a
community.
Thus, an education that fosters the habit of forming small
discussion groups to analyse practices and fears can provide the
ideal opportunity both to understand fears, shared or otherwise,
and to develop affective resources for daily life or situations of
crisis.

8 An education that creates partnership networks between

people who are experiencing situations of distress, crisis or
extreme vulnerability

As a rule, educational efforts have a long-term perspective.

This means that educational strategies should be devised for
emergencies, for short-lived events, to respond to the need for
social crisis training. What is suggested is the adoption of an
education that fosters emergency partnerships capable of turning
quickly into autonomous, self-regulating forms of organization
that combine protection and foresight with learning and
individual and group protection.

9 An education for the pacific solution of conflicts or problems in

daily life

An education centred on the analysis of issues and

episodes of conflict shortly after they have occurred. This analysis
may be carried out as a group with the objective of learning to

174
resolve conflicts on the basis of experience and developing forms
of group learning and conflict resolution. Mediation can be a
useful resource for acquiring a culture of this kind.

10 An education to generate agreements among the

communications media for promoting and supporting debates
about human security, with responsibility and awareness of the
creation of feelings of security and insecurity

An ethic of human security can only be constructed if

there is consensus on a specific ethic among the mass media so
that human security is adopted as a national cause. Thus, an
education based on reflecting on and generating proposals for
human security among communicators and the media can act in
itself as a form of mass education that promotes and supports
debates in the everyday process of reflecting and constructing a
collective awareness.

11 An education for human security that ties in with efforts

towards human rights education

Education for human security is a branch of experience

with human rights education. Along with this, these are forms of
education whose objectives and recipients meld together because
human security entails the exercise of human rights.

12 An education that gives priority to ideas and action initiated by

the young in respect of human security/insecurity

An education that gives priority to the young of both

genders is justified by their long-term strategic influence. An
education that gives the lead to the young is justified because of
the role of education in constructing culture.
One way of aiding informal learning among the young is
to encourage them to initiate ideas and action in relation to

175
human security as a day-to-day problem for the community and
society as a whole.

13 The construction of technology platforms for training personnel

working in protection and security areas: territorial learning
communities among members of the armed forces and police

Any long-term policy and strategy requires professionals

who can promote human security by bringing their experience to
bear as a prime source of learning. Technological development
now opens up the prospect of these professionals being able to
construct learning communities using technology platforms that
are coordinated and supplied through the internet. Thus, both
the armed forces and the police will be able to follow the
education path to increase their efficiency in human security
matters by learning as they go, both from their own accumulated
experiences and through sharing and collective analysis of the
experience of other professionals facing similar problems.

14 Construction of learning communities among academics and

teachers in intermediate and higher education, relying heavily
on technology platforms so that information, analysis and
teaching experiences can be shared and training in human
security thus procured

The training and preparation of educators who train

educators, and of the educators of new generations of students,
need to be addressed on a mass scale, taking advantage of the
opportunities opened up by virtual technology. The construction
of technology platforms that can be used to create multiple
learning communities on the basis of teaching practice offers the
prospect of progress both in understanding the diversity of
human security-related problems and the effectiveness of
measures for training different human groups living in a variety
of circumstances.

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 Recommendations

Governments

Political

Move towards a common conception of global,

hemispheric and regional security with a view to improving
existing international instruments in this area. In the case of the
American continent, it is proposed that an inter-American
charter of hemispheric security be drawn up.
Cooperate in conflict resolution. This means
consolidating prevention and early warning mechanisms with the
support of academic centres in the region.
Bring in transparency and accountability mechanisms
for national, regional and hemispheric institutions concerned
with security and defence issues.
Move towards more effective coordination of the
institutions responsible for security at the national and
hemispheric levels. This will avoid duplication and strengthen
conflict-prevention mechanisms.
Encourage a regional outlook and strengthen the
development of binding instruments in the following fields:
transnational crime, migration and small arms trafficking. The
nature of these threats requires strong state cooperation.
Involve outside parties in conflict resolution.
Increase efforts to achieve peace and re-establish the rule
of law throughout the territory of Colombia, the main focus of
conflict in the region. The actions of the United Nations, the
different states in the hemisphere and civil society organizations
should converge on this objective.

177
 Reinforce the rule of law and governance in the region

Pursue public policies to reinforce social security with

the objective of reducing economic insecurities. The preparation
of policies to combat extreme poverty should be a priority for the
countries of the region.
Improve civilian/military coordination, within the
framework of democracy, to cope with the new threats to
security. To do this, it is essential to have a clear legal framework
in place so that the police do not become militarized or the
armed forces acquire police functions.
Increase inter-sectoral coordination of the state, in
particular through civil society participation at the national,
regional and hemispheric levels.
Recognize the need to intensify international
cooperation so that the main vulnerabilities affecting stability,
governance and human security in the region can be overcome.

Human Security Network

Set up a permanent working group of civil society

organizations and academic centres under the auspices of the
Human Security Network with a view to enhancing the work of
this partnership of countries.

Academia and civil society

Inclusion and participation of civil society

Strengthen civil society networks involved in promoting

human security and, to this end, create opportunities for participation
within the institutional framework of the OAS. Likewise, the Human
Security Network could set up working groups involving civil society
and academia for priority issues on its agenda.

178
 Promote training for NGOs involved with security
issues and for grass-roots organizations. It is essential to develop
human rights education through formal education syllabuses in
primary and secondary schools and in refresher courses for
administrators.

Knowledge creation and risk evaluation

Continue to develop the concept of human security with

a view to making existing approaches more consistent among
themselves, particularly in the case of Latin America. Here,
progress in three areas is essential: (a) analysis of the link
between security and violence; (b) creation of a human security
index; (c) regional observatories in this field.
As regards the identification and evaluation of the main
risks and threats, it is essential to decide which are the key areas
for strengthening cooperation and to conduct comparative
studies on the basis of the lessons learned.
Continue with analytical work on the function of the
state, essentially with reference to social protection; economic
promotion and sustainability; and protection functions (use of
force).

UNESCO

Continue the work of promoting regional programmes

of action in relation to human security. It is vital for UNESCO
to carry on cooperating with the relevant academic and scientific
institutions in Latin America with a view to the progressive
establishment of a regional framework of analysis, training and
action in the field of human security.
It is suggested that the following activities should be
pursued: (a) a regional pilot programme to train members of
civil society, academics and government representatives in
negotiation and conflict prevention; (b) a regional seminar to

179
analyse exemplary experiences with human security-related
projects of national, regional and local scope; (c) support for
comparative research into the issue of security, including the
various stakeholders concerned.

180
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Appendices
 A brief introduction to the authors

Claudia F. Fuentes is a graduate in communication

sciences and journalism from the University of Santiago (Chile).
She holds a Masters degree in international relations from the
University of Kent (UK), and a Masters degree in military
sciences with special mention in negotiation and conflict
prevention from the War Academy of the Chilean Army. She is a
researcher with the International Relations and Strategic Studies
Area of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO-
Chile) and coordinator of that institutions Human Security
Programme. She is also the holder of the professorial chair Chile
y el sistema internacional at the School of Political Science of the
Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago. Her academic
publications include Seguridad humana y seguridad nacional:
relacin conceptual y prctica (Santiago, ANEPE, 2004).

Francisco Rojas Aravena holds a Ph.D. in political

sciences from the University of Utrecht (Netherlands) and a
Masters degree in political sciences from FLACSO. He is a
specialist in international relations and international security.
Director of FLACSO-Chile from 1996 to 2004, he was
unanimously appointed Secretary-General of the organization for
a four-year term by the General Assembly in Quito (Ecuador) in
July 2004. He has lectured at the Santiago campus of the
University of Stanford. A member of the editorial board of
Diplomacia magazine, of the Academia Diplomtica in Chile,
and of the board of the Spanish edition of Foreign Affairs, he has
written and edited over a dozen books. His latest publication is
Latina pos 11 de septiembre (Caracas, Nueva Sociedad, 2003).

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 Final Recommendations

First International Meeting of Directors

of Peace Research and Training Institutions
on the theme
What Agenda for Human Security
in the Twenty-first Century?*

1. Human security can be considered today as a paradigm

in the making, for ensuring both a better knowledge of the rapidly
evolving large-scale risks and threats that can have a major impact
on individuals and populations, and a strengthened mobilization
of the wide array of actors actually involved in participative
policy formulation in the various fields it encompasses today.
As such, it is an adequate framework for:
accelerating the transition from past restrictive notions of
security, tending to identify it solely with defence issues, to a much
more comprehensive multidimensional concept of security, based
on the respect for all human rights and democratic principles;
contributing to sustainable development and especially
to the eradication of extreme poverty, which is a denial of all
human rights;
reinforcing the prevention at the root of the different
forms of violence, discrimination, conflict and internal strife that
are taking a heavy toll on mainly civilian populations in all
regions of the world without exception;
providing a unifying theme for multilateral action to the
benefit of the populations most affected by partial and

* UNESCO, Paris, 27-28 November 2000. www.unesco.org/securipax/whatagenda.pdf

195
interrelated insecurities. The importance should be underlined of
the multilateral initiatives taken in this respect by Canada and
Japan as well as by other countries.

2. The ongoing globalization process offers new opportunities

for the strengthening of large coalitions working to further human
security, at the multilateral and national levels, and in particular at local
level involving all actors of society. This in turn requires a much
stronger participation of peace research and training institutions,
institutes for security studies, non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) and other bodies dedicated to the promotion of peace and
human security, with a view to enhancing the involvement of civil
society in all aspects of policy formulation and implementation of
actions aimed at enhancing human security at the local, national,
regional and international levels.

3. The promotion of human security today therefore

requires an enhanced exchange of best experiences, practices and
initiatives in the fields of research, training, mobilization and
policy formulation, in which UNESCO can play a major role as
a facilitator, forum and amplifier of proactive human security
initiatives, in particular in the framework of the UNESCO
SecuriPax Forum website launched in September 2000 for that
purpose (http://www.unesco.org/securipax).

4. The strengthening of the action of the United Nations and,

in particular, of UNESCO in favour of human security is essential
today, taking into account the objectives set out in the UN
Millennium Summit Declaration and Programme of Action on a
Culture of Peace, and the Declaration and Plan for an
International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence
for the Children of the World (2001-2010), proclaimed by the
United Nations General Assembly, as well as on the measures
being taken to reach internationally agreed development targets,
in particular in the fields of poverty eradication; education for all;

196
the preservation of the environment and notably of water
resources; and the struggle against AIDS.

5. The compounded impact of a growing number of threats

to the security of populations requires the establishment of
innovative interdisciplinary approaches geared to the requirements of
inducing participative preventive action, involving all social actors. The
intimate links that should exist between research projects and policy
formulation in the field of prevention must also be stressed from the
outset, taking into account the fact that current research on various
dimensions of security is still largely dissociated from the existing
policy formulation mechanisms, particularly at the national and
subregional levels. On the basis of a common agenda for action, the
peace research and training institutions, institutes for security
studies and the NGOs working in related fields can play an essential
role in creating these links, building bridges between the academic
world and the policy formulation mechanisms, contributing to the
establishment of such mechanisms wherever necessary, identifying
priority fields to be tackled and the populations that merit
particular and urgent attention.

6. Regional and subregional approaches should be

elaborated for the promotion of human security in order to more
precisely identify the nature, scope and impact of the risks and
threats that can affect populations in the medium and long term.
UNESCO should contribute to the elaboration of these regional
and subregional approaches, in cooperation with national and
regional organizations and institutions and on the basis of the
regional round tables (on Africa, the Arab States, Asia and the
Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean) held during
the First International Meeting of Directors of Peace Research
and Training Institutions. Urgent attention should be paid to the
reinforcement of the struggle against AIDS, especially in sub-
Saharan Africa, which is a real threat to peace and security, as
stated by the United Nations Security Council.

197
 7. Special attention should be paid to the most highly
populated countries, given the fact that in these countries the
interrelationship between population growth, diminishing natural
resources, environmental degradation and the overall impact of
ongoing globalization processes is of great complexity and must
consequently be dealt with, in particular in terms of designing local
approaches focusing on specific population groups.

8. The development of human resources is a key factor, if not the

most important, for ensuring human security. Basic education for all
and the building of capacities at the national level must therefore be
placed high on the human security agenda. Institutes for peace and
human security can play an important role in national capacity
building in fields such as the setting up of early-warning
mechanisms related to major risks and threats to human security;
and high-level training for the elaboration of regional and
subregional long-term approaches for ensuring human security and
the formulation of preventive action policies.

9. Critical post-conflict issues such as reconciliation processes

and mechanisms and the often harsh impact of sanctions on
populations merit more in-depth analysis in terms of human
security, in the framework of an enhanced respect for
international instruments, in particular of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. Concerning reconciliation
processes and mechanisms, due attention should be paid to the
adequate dissemination of best experiences and practices and to
the comparative analysis of these experiences and practices,
especially of the work of the various truth and justice commissions
set up in last two decades in various countries. Concerning the
impact of sanctions on populations, note should be taken of
ongoing initiatives within the United Nations in order to review
the modalities of the imposition of such sanctions and the action
of UN Specialized Agencies to alleviate their impact on civilian
populations.

198
 10. The impact on human security of migrations and of
movements of populations displaced due to conflict should be
highlighted. Concerning migrations, attention should be paid to
countering practices in host countries that discriminate against
legal immigrants, and in the case of populations displaced due to
conflict, the efforts of the international community should be
reinforced, especially when the displacements take on a semi-
permanent character.

11. Due attention should be paid to countering the

impact of negative paradigms (such as clash of civilizations,
African anarchy, etc.), based on stereotypes and simplistic
analyses of the interactions between cultures, societies and
civilizations and which aim at fostering new divisions and
fractures at the international and regional levels. The principles
underlying the notions of cultural diversity, cultural pluralism,
tolerance and non-discrimination should be stressed and due
attention should be paid to the follow-up to the Plan of Action
of the World Conference against Racism and Racial
Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (Durban,
South Africa, 2001).

12. The role of the state in the promotion of human

security must be addressed on the basis of an exhaustive analysis
of challenges in matters relating to human security, both from
within to ensure sustainable development, and from the rapidly
evolving international processes linked to economic and financial
globalization. States should be encouraged to establish ways of
enlarging their cooperation with civil society, in particular with
those NGOs and institutions that can contribute effectively to
policy formulation and collaborative action in the field.

199
Some UNESCO publications on Human Security,
Peace and Conflict Prevention

Promoting Human Security: Ethical, Normative and Educational Frameworks

in the Arab States, UNESCO, 2005
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001405/140513E.pdf

Promover la Seguridad Humana: Marcos ticos, Normativos y Educacionales

en Amrica Latina y el Caribe, UNESCO, 2005
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001389/138940S.pdf

Promoting Human Security: Ethical, Normative and Educational Frameworks

in East Asia, UNESCO, 2004
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001388/138892e.pdf

Proceedings of the International Conference on Human Security in East Asia,

UNESCO/Korean National Commission for UNESCO/Ilmin International
Relations Institute of Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 2004
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001365/136506e.pdf

International Conference on Contemporary International Security: Consequences

for Human Security in Latin America, Santiago, Chile, August 2003
http://www.flacso.cl/flacso/biblos.php?code=642

Human Security, Conflict Prevention and Peace, Proceedings of the Expert Meeting on
Peace, Human Security and Conflict Prevention in Latin America and the Caribbean,
UNESCO-FLACSO-Chile, 2002
http://www.unesco.org/securipax/sflacsoeboletin.pdf
In Spanish: http://www.unesco.org/securipax/seguridad_humana.pdf
In English: http://www.unesco.org/securipax/seguridad_humana-english.pdf

Peace, Human Security and Conflict Prevention in Africa, Proceedings of the UNESCO-ISS
Expert Meeting held in Pretoria, South Africa, 23-24 July 2001
http://www.unesco.org/securipax/UNESCO_ISSfinal.pdf

What Agenda for Human Security in the Twenty-First Century?, Proceedings of the First
International Meeting of Directors of Peace Research and Training Institutions,
UNESCO, 2001
http://www.unesco.org/securipax/whatagenda.pdf

201
Cooperative Peace in SouthEast Asia, UNESCO/ASEAN, 1999
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0011/001162/116272e.pdf

What Kind of Security? UNESCO, 1998

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0010/001096/109626eo.pdf
Quelle scurit ? UNESCO, 1997
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0010/001096/109626f.pdf

From Partial Insecurity to Global Security, UNESCO/IHEDN, 1997

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0011/001106/110639e.pdf
Des inscurits partielles la scurit globale, UNESCO/IHEDN, 1997
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0011/001106/110639fo.pdf

Website address: http://www.unesco.org/securipax

Contact E-mail address: peace&security@unesco.org

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Promoting Human Security: Ethical, Normative and Educational Frameworks in Latin America and the Caribbean
and Educational
Ethical, Nor
Promoting Huma

in Latin America and