The canadian Foreign Minister, Lloyd Axworthy, bolstered by two successive political achievements - the «Ottawa process» adopting the Convention prohibiting anti-personnel mines and the Rome Conference on the creation of the International Penal Court - has published a wide-ranging paper on personal safety intended to move things on from «practice to theory».

Returning to the method which was so successful in the early stages of the Ottawa process, an informal group of eleven countries met recently on the 19 Th. of may 1999 at Bergen in Norway. This group brought together European states dominated by those which have been traditionally neutral (Austria, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Switzerland) and Middle-ranking third world Powers (South Africa, Chile, Jordan and Thailand). but above all, by giving a wide circulation to Lloyd Axworthy’s introductory document - «Human Safety: the safety of Individual in a changing World», Canadian diplomats intend to emphasise the role of non-governmental agencies in this thought process and give rise to a debate involving public opinion around the world.

The idea which informs the Canadian initiative is the change from the classic concept of safety based on military force - what Lloyd Axworthy calls «National security» - to a new approach to security focusing on the «safety of the individual». The conflict between national security and personal safety seems greater until it is explained. Is it not true that the first duty of the state is to protect the individual and to ensure that human rights can be enjoyed in peace and tranquillity? Moreover the Canadian paper emphasises the fact that the most flagrant cases of violation of these rights involve «failing states whose governments are quite simply incapable of ensuring the most elementary security for their inhabitants».

The fact remains that all too often security between states has been seen as a balance of power striving for stability, a situation where there is no actual war, rather than the creation of a just and lasting peace. The end of the cold war has allowed European organisations to transcend this dichotomy between collective security and Human Rights. The OSCE as a champion of the «Human Dimension» , puts forward the notion of a co-operative security, while the council of Europe proposes democratic security. The crisis in Kosovo has shown the limitations of these vague concepts and the Canadian Minister emphasises that “when circumstances demand, it will be necessary to intervene robustly to defend the interests of human security. Indeed, human security may involve having rescourse to coercive measures, including sanctions and military intervention as in Bosnia and Kosovo”.(§ 20)

Moreover the military element in security is not excluded as the Canadian approach draws its inspiration from humanitarian law and the right of armed conflict to limit the suffering caused to civilian populations. Nuclear disarmament must remain a priority, otherwise there is a risk of both the nuclear threat and military adventurism, as the Bob Denard Style raid by Russian troops on Pristina airport or the Pakistani revival of the crisis in Cashmere amply demonstrate. But as Lloyd Axworthy’s paper shows, the logic of nuclear dissuasion and the clash between East and West have for a long time masked other aspects of security.

Strangely, the paper omits a stage between the cold war and globalisation. Facing the Oil Crisis at the end of the seventies, the concept of economic security headed the concerns of the industrialised countries to the detriment of the interests of developing countries. It fails to comment on that period when Human Rights were too often sacrificed to economic interest, but the Canadian paper links the idea of Human security to the first endeavours of the UNDP in 1994 regarding Human Development. This concept attached to under-development must be taken up again, stressing the human cost of violent conflict, in order to provide a point of reference to guide the development of policies. This was not possible at the time of the Copenhagen Summit on Human Development.

Human security is defined as “the protection of the individual against threats, whether or not accompanied by violence. This refers to a state or situation where there is no attack on the fundamental rights of a person, on his safety or even his life” (§12). However new this may seem, such an approach is strongly rooted in the logic of the United Nations Charter which aimed at founding a new international order of justice and peace, taken from Kant’s original vision. “The constructing of a democratic and effective state which recognises the value of its population and protects minorities is an essential element in a strategy for the promotion of Human Safety. When a state practises external aggression or internal oppression, or is too weak to govern effectively, it threatens the safety of it’s population“.(§ 14)

By crystallising in this way the widespread longings for Human Rights, the just state or merely good governance, the idea of human security has linked international stability with the needs of civilians. The silence of victims no longer constitutes peace as in «order reigns in Warsaw»... In the spirit of the preamble to the Universal Declaration, referring to Roosevelt’s «four freedom» - a world has to be constructed «where human beings will have freedom of speech and belief, and be delivered from terror and Misery». As Lloyd Axworthy stresses “human safety and human development converge towards a dual target: the freeing of individuals from fear and need” (§16).

But this new concept must also be operate providing «a yardstick for assessing the effects of policy and practice on the safety of the individual» (§19). It is in this arena that the Canadian document tests public opinion to the limit. An initial consequence which is only implied - where the reference of Kosovo appears centre stage - is the overriding of the principle of non-intervention in internal policy, since the internal and international spheres are no longer watertight: «internal security» is no longer the monopoly of dictators. It must be a true «civic security» in the fullest sense of the term. To put it in more concrete manner, it is necessary “to evaluate explicitly the human cost of strategies aiming to promote the security of the state as well as international security”. To the light shed by the crisis in Kosovo could be added a mention of the Human cost of human security... «Other policies relating to security, like the imposition of global economic sanctions should likewise take into account their effect on innocent persons» as the document goes on to make clear (§21). By advocating a global approach to human security, the Canadian Initiative must take the credit for putting individual rights at the heart of the debate on collective security, in this way going beyond the logic of the States, those «cold monsters».

 

Emmanuel Decaux
Prof. of international Law
Member of the UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights
(From La Lettre n° 20, 8th July)