States have traditionally dominated the orthodox concept of security. This is not without reason, as history attests to an international community ravaged by deadly wars, with the two World Wars as probably the most infamous examples. Given the ever-present possibility of threats from external aggressors, the notion of (in)security has been heavily associated with states.
But amidst the ongoing health crisis, this pandemic has clearly demonstrated that security is indeed a far more complex notion than nuclear threats and military build-ups. A non-state threat, such as a microscopic virus, can very much threaten and erode a nation’s sense of security.
COVID-19 has taught the world how closely societies are interwoven with one another, and it has highlighted that the international community is only as strong as its weakest link. It is within this context that the world’s great powers will have to play a critical role for the necessary international cooperation that would aid the entire globe and enable other countries to be assisted in a more effective manner.
In fact, the world just might have become aware that its default security paradigm needs to change, and focus more on living human beings rather than states and institutions.
Reshaping the security framework
With the push for a greater understanding of human needs and the emergence of other, equally pressing phenomena such as climate change, migration, health issues and the rise of Information Technology, the concept of security has been expanded and intertwined with the concept of human development. Human development pertains to the broadening of people’s choices, while human security involves protecting people’s freedoms to exercise those choices.
In 1982, the Independent Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues articulated the first stretch of the idea of security beyond a state-centric conceptualisation and military-heavy approach when it proposed to incorporate the well-being of people. The concept of human security, however, was only formally defined and enshrined in 1994 in the United Nations Development Programme’s publication, the Human Development Report, which puts forward a holistic vision of security that incorporates not only state-security and military solutions but also lays emphasis on the forgotten needs of human beings.
Hinged on three pillars – the freedom from fear, freedom from want, and freedom from indignity – human security advocates an expanded notion of security that involves different facets (security, economic, food, environmental, personal, community, political, and health) and fields (security studies, international relations, development studies, human rights, among others), and locates it at all levels (global, regional, national, local).
Expanding the notion of security resonates greatly at the individual level because, after all, a sense of insecurity may easily arise in the face of hunger, disease, or repression, and not necessarily from a war – although these could be tightly interwoven in some occasions.
Security beyond conflicts and weapons
By the end of July, the John Hopkins Corona Virus Resource Center has reported that the outbreak of the coronavirus, known officially as the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has already yielded 16,747,268 confirmed infections and claimed 660,593 deaths at the global scale. What started as a pneumonia of unknown cause detected in Wuhan, China, as the World Health Organisation’s Office in China reported on 31 December 2019, rapidly spread across borders in a very short time.
Further still, the consequences of this pandemic extend beyond the boundaries of health. Lockdowns causing a halt to business operations and goods transfers have triggered a global recession. CleverMaps, a spatial data analytics company displaying the number of COVID-19 cases alongside the expected economic impact on GDP, shows that the change over time in terms of economic effect from 22 January to 2 June 2020 is a loss in filtered time of US$152,952,074,798, with the United States of America, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Spain as the top five countries incurring economic losses.
In terms of the impact on the labour market, millions of workers have been directly affected by the lockdown. Although some have been able to continue their work through remote working arrangements, many have experienced temporary unemployment, the reduction or total loss of their livelihood. Upon the onset of the spread of COVID-19 at the beginning of this year, around 190 million people across the world were already unemployed, and the lockdowns, whether partial or full, have only intensified these.
At present, the disruption in work has affected 2.7 billion workers, which is equivalent to four out of every five members of the world’s workforce. Those in the informal sector are among the most vulnerable in the labour market, with 1.6 billion being drastically impacted by the lockdowns.
Unemployment is linked to the concept of relative poverty, which the International Labour Organisation defines as “the proportion of workers with monthly earnings that fall below 50 per cent of the median earnings in the population”, a figure that is estimated to increase by almost 34 percentage points globally for informal workers, 21 percentage points for upper-middle-income countries, and 56 percentage points for lower-middle-income countries.
Juxtaposed to the economic woes are mental health issues that have been triggered or magnified by the crisis. As pointed out by the World Health Organisation, past pandemics escalated the number of people dealing with mental health issues, resulting in suicide or substance abuse.
A recent study published in Lancet Psychiatry about the psychiatric consequences of coronavirus infections (including SARS, MERS, and COVID-19) reveals that patients have experienced confusion, depressive moods and insomnia during acute illnesses, and insomnia, anxiety, irritability, traumatic disorders and sleep disorders in the post-illness stage. Other forms of violence have also increased rapidly, including the intensification of domestic abuse. Although there are still no comprehensive reports on intimate partner violence due to the pandemic, there are already reports from the United States, China, Canada and Turkey, among others, pointing to increased rates of domestic violence.
As some groups of people may feel neglected or excluded, this situation could potentially lead to or aggravate ongoing conflicts, whereby the possibilities of such are broader in the poorer and more vulnerable countries in the world.
It is within this context that armed groups, terrorists and organised criminals might take advantage of the pandemic to further their cause.
Another area that the impact of COVID-19 is infiltrating is the political arena. The pandemic has started to incur democracy deficits as government officials politicise the pandemic and government agencies scale down their operations.
In the US, President Donald Trump’s allies have exhibited favouritism by extending coronavirus contracts based partly on personal relationships. In India, Muslim minorities have been scapegoated during the pandemic, as Muslims have been specifically accused of spreading the virus.
In the Philippines, press freedom has been further curtailed with more restrictive measures imposed during the pandemic such as intimidation, surveillance, red tagging, and restriction of movement for journalists.
Human security first
That being said, this ongoing pandemic has driven home the point of the pressing need to strive for integral human security. The traditional realist concept of security tends to put a premium on military security, which tries to anticipate imminent external threats posed by other states.
It stresses the conflictual and competitive context of the international system, due to an anarchic nature that pushes states to act out of their own self-interest and struggle for power.
The security threat imposed by COVID-19 departs from the orthodox notion of security that heavily locates it at the level of the state and associates it with inter-state conflict.
This pandemic has pushed states to fight a different kind of foe – a plague – whereby large-scale investments in arms and ammunitions are of no use. As weapons lie idle, this lethal pandemic has ‘attacked’ the health sector, which has proven itself to be unprepared as it suffers from shortages of hospital beds, masks and doctors.
This situation has, in turn, rapidly and violently affected economic, political, social and personal aspects of life. Over the past few months, shattering events such as deaths, hunger and economic meltdown have truly tested the state-centric notion of state security.
What started as a health risk has leaked into all other spheres of society, posing threats and disrupting the lives of numerous individuals and communities.
This crisis has shown that human security is relevant across countries, whether from the so-called North or South, East or West, developed or developing state.
Crises such as this demonstrate that security threats are no longer isolated events cooped up solely within the borders of one country. The impact of this kind of security threat travels around the world and threatens the whole community.
In spite of the coronavirus being an equal threat for everyone, there have been unequal responses from states, highlighting the asymmetrical consequences of the virus.
With rising intra- and inter-national polarisation and power rivalry in the twenty-first century, this has impeded the much-needed close cooperation among states. It has demonstrated that the international community is unprepared to wage this kind of war.
Preparing for other kinds of security threats demands building friendly relations among countries with variegated social systems, as well as investment in the longer term in development support. Short-term and ad hoc humanitarian assistance can never substitute for the development of robust institutions across countries.
Efforts to fortify human security require states to synergise their resources in order to fight off these new threats. Collective problems need a united struggle in order to confront these cross-boundary issues.
Given the devastating impact of this disease that the whole world is grappling with, this current pandemic has drawn attention to the other security frontiers that need attention as well. The crisis has offered ample opportunities to revisit the notion of security in general by focusing on it through the lens of human security.
This pandemic has demonstrated that hinging security on state security alone will leave individual states and the global community in a precarious position if it is not tied to the security of individuals and does not incorporate inter-state cooperation. It regards how other facets of life impinge on the life of an individual person, not just locating it at the state level.
This is not to suggest that national security be brushed aside, but the concept of human security offers us the opportunity to consider all major aspects of security and thereby expand the understanding of security. COVID-19 can help us situate human security in a meaningful context by expanding the discourse on human development, which can only be done through authentic international cooperation.
The integral concept of human security provides both the language and the arena to re-evaluate mankind’s most urgent vulnerabilities and threats to its survival. COVID-19 has shown that health security is a vital area that permeates other facets in society whereby prioritising and putting the needs of people at the heart of discourses and policies serves as a game-changing paradigm.
Maria Pilar Lorenzo is a development professional and researcher based in Belgium. Her research areas focus on governance (regional governance, administration, public sector innovations) and development issues (social (in)equity, human development, higher education). She is currently a fellow of the Regional Academy on the United Nations, a Research Associate of the Philippine Society for Public Administration, and a Research Affiliate of the Asian Society for Public Administration. She is currently completing a Master of Arts in International Politics from the Katholieke Universiteit (KU) Leuven in Belgium, and she holds an Advanced Master of Science in Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies from KU Leuven as a VLIR-UOS scholar, and Master of Public Administration from University of the Philippines (UP).
