A Challenging project of Global Humane Security
Governance for sustainable development
by Salomeea Romanescu
This essay would like to introduce concepts; as Humane
security, sustainable development and humane
governance able to curb the ignored threats, in a
feminine perspective.
1. New humane security paradigm as a common
denominator of all European actors against common
challenges
This chapter deals with the concept of Humane security
and his potential positive impact on the quality of
life; first section put the security redefinition need
in the international context, second tries to define
humane security and third shows the importance of
humane security in transforming the losers of European
Integration in winners, as a potential modality for a
positive scenarios of Integration, as win-win game.
World politics should not be viewed as a historically
frozen process of power-hungry states, but rather as a
dynamic process of interaction among individuals,
groups, states and international institutions, all of
which are capable of adapting their sense of
self-interest.
After the Cold War the militarised conception of
security was challenged by multifaceted and holistic
conceptions like humane security, concept which lacks
a clear definition and any agreed upon measures on it.
We have to notice that the Military security failed to
ensure the territorial security of a nation-state. The
collapse of so called communism and of Soviet hegemony
in Central and Eastern Europe, removed the immediate
military threat. The replacement of the major military
threats from the East by the multilevel and
multidimensional threats has lent great instability to
the European Security System, which was not prepared
to deal with it, in term of competences, policies and
institutions.
Because Europeans face so many security challenges and
promising opportunities, all of which compete for
higher attention and resources, it will be difficult
to deal with non-traditional threats. However, some of
them will not be ignored for long time. Individual
security of the community or of the individual can no
longer be satisfied only through military measures; it
needs multidimensional understanding.
Humane Security is difficult to be achieved in actual
existing international system mainly dominated by
sovereign states. A current state - centred system has
been inadequate to provide security and welfare as we
have analysed in the first and second chapter. Nation
states risk losing their external and internal
sovereignty. In our logic of humane security nation
states have to reorder priorities, problem is what
criteria? These could be:
- The sovereignty of the Human Person,
- Participation in decision- making and
- Response to Unmet Human Needs.
The following issue needs the priority of governments
and international organisations: hunger, housing,
health care, education, employment, environment, war
prevention, crime prevention, care of the aged, racial
justice, womens rights, religious freedom, penal
reform, urban planning, population, democratic
participation, prevention of alienation and addiction.
Most of the leaders would insist that they personally
embrace the above agenda. Pragmatically, however,
these issues are subordinated to national security
priorities. In the present world system, national
policies developed primarily around the above criteria
would threaten the ability of their nations to
survive.
The lights of Humane development will remain out for a
majority of humankind until the emergence of a
world-order system. It is important to emphasize that
we are not advocating constant mobilization for
national security. It is rather a question of
recognizing the reality that present corporate
priorities and elite rule are not primarily due to
ideological or personal demons. The world does not
need more demonology. What is needed is objectivity -
not the rationalize, fatalistic acceptance of the
status quo, but to identify the all sources of
powerlessness: of leaders as well as of citizens. The
surest way to entrench the status quo is to focus too
exclusively on the powerlessness of the people and to
rely on demonology at the cost of a more holistic
analysis.
The definition of security issues, the way in which
they were analyzed and the policies that resulted were
the fruits of the dominant geopolitical and
ideological atmosphere during the Cold War period.
Security concept has a strong political base and it
changes according to it
Security continues to be calculated by the degree of
destructive capacity possessed in relation to an
expected enemy. The achievement of security in a
global setting is largely reduced to the management of
boundaries of the territorial state- the degree of
capacity to keep unwanted persons, ideas, things out,
and to keep what is wanted within.
To extent that security is globalised, it is
associated with establishing the conditions that best
enable the expansion of gross planetary product and
stimulate the growth of world trade within a framework
stabilized by policies that produce the triple
indictment
What is remarkable about this geopolitical image of
security is its durability, one that traverses the
distinction drawn earlier between modern,
state-centric geopolitics and post-modern
market-geared geopolitics. The absence of critical
self-reflection is terrible. What needs to be
acknowledged here, among other challenging
perspectives, is the relevance of feminist voices from
around the world in fashioning other possible
responses to the actual. The revision of security is
crucial to the all enterprises of global civil society
and the shaping of the global polity in accordance
with the criteria of humane governance.
Subrahmanyam clearly identifies this element of
necessity in the following passage:
Either humanity unites to survive, or it is bound to
face a bleak future. The strategy of a non-violent and
nuclear free world has no alternative, if future
generations are to survive in condition of sustainable
development. We of this generation have to stark
choice before us. Either we become saviours of our
posterity or its executioners. Either we opt for life
or shatter the future of mankind.
This sense of urgency is here affirmed. Also to be
underscored in the idea that continued democratisation
depends on the establishment of a security, which
radically breaks with perceptions and practices that
have given substance to geopolitics throughout modern
history.
It is obvious that to initiate a discussion of
security on this radical note is to highlight the
distance separating such a position from the
mainstream thought in the North and from the outlook
of most governing elites in the South. And it is
equally predictable that it will be dismissed thereby
as utopian. To respond helpfully to the challenge
ahead it is necessary to summon the intellectual and
political courage to face the depth and extent of the
problem that faces humanity.
What, exactly, is meant by the term humane security
and why humane security is so important in a optimist
scenarious of Integration. What is humane security?
«There are two basic aspects to humane security -
freedom from fear and freedom from want. Freedom from
want is no less important than freedom from fear
because his objectives are to ensure the survival and
dignity of individuals as human beings. The
epoch-making 1994 UNDP Development Report discussed
the concept of human security in depth, and identified
seven main categories of human security economic
security (or freedom from poverty); food security
(freedom from hunger), health security (freedom from
disease), environmental security (the availability of
clean water and air, for example), personal security
(freedom from fear of violence, crimes, drugs),
community security (freedom to participate in family
life and one's ethnic group), and political security
(freedom to exercise one's basic human rights)».
Why is humane security important for the optimistic
scenarious of Integration? What is the trend in Europe
regarding the social fracture of Globalisation? Any
balanced view, the Europe success was supported by
social settlments that allowed equity and efficiency.
Employment relations institutions and process
associated with this model of development are under
strain. They suffer of crises of economic
functionality and out of line with new emerging
patterns of economic and social life. Despite the
social forces that identify themselfs with values of
The European social model (see annex 8a) there is a
tendency to defend inherited institutions rather than
to construct new forms of social solidarity compatible
with the complexity of modern economic life. In his
book Paul Teague points out that any innovations need
to address three important themes: the democratization
of the EU, the future association between the
nation-state and economic citizenship; and the
institutional reform of the labour-market governance".
In a stark prediction European Governments will soon
have to choose between a free market and free society
with the top concern about social justice, by placing
the organisation of society secondary to business
activity may not be an efficient model of economic
competition. The political game between neo-liberal
Europe and Social Europe is still on. The key
benchmarks, which could test if human security has
been revived, would be: lower unemployment, better
labour market access and more democratic and
participatory work places. Some humane security
concerns can no longer be kept hidden from critical
scrutiny. The performance of governments and
international organisations will be judged
increasingly by the extent to which they seriously and
effectively deal with humane security concerns. We
hope that Europe could marry again, economic
efficiency with social justice, in a feminine
perspective different of masculin anglo-saxon
perspective.
2. Sustainable development as a common denominator for
all European Actors and new opportunity
First section of this chapter will make an anthology
of the actual trends of defining sustainable
development in contrast with development concept used
in standard economic theory, actual position of EU
concerning sustainable development and the
implications of it for the employment in Europe and
finally participation as an important aspect of
sustainable development. We have chosen to do it by
using Internet resources and relevant literature. We
will try to make a synthesis of all of them for
economic reasons.
In standard economic theory, Development implies both
quantitative change (growth in Gross Domestic Product)
and qualitative change (transformation from a
pre-capitalist economy based on agriculture to a
capitalist industrial economy) etc. Theory of
sustainable development involves both a critic of
quantitative GDP measure and a different view of
qualitative transformation. The goals of sustainable
development include a harmonization of economic,
social and environmental goals:
Economic - an economically sustainable system must be
able to produce goods and services on a continuing
basis, to maintain manageable levels of government and
external debt, and avoid extreme sector imbalances
that damage agriculture or industrial production.
Environmental - an environmentally sustainable system
must maintain a stable resource base, avoiding
overexploitation of renewable resources systems or
environmental sink functions and depleting non
renewable resources only to the extent that investment
is made in adequate substitutes: this include
maintenance of biodiversity, atmospheric stability,
and other ecosystem functions not ordinarily classed
as economic resources.
Social - a socially sustainable system must achieve
fairness in distribution and opportunity, adequate
provision of social services, including health,
including health and education, gender equality, and
political accountability and participation. These
three elements of sustainability introduce many
potential complications to the original, simple
definition of economic development.
This new concerns for development will create new
opportunities for job creation in the area of Social
and Environment. It could be a good opportunity for
CEEC countries to get job in this new domains.
Together with sharing job opportunity and highest
wages strategy will contribute to bridging the gap
between Western and Eastern disparities, following the
logic of balance in a chines way.
EU has a strategy for sustainable development and what
is relevant for our thesis is the fact that EU
recognizes the necessity to work together for
achieving this aim, on his declaration at the World
Summit for sustainable development from Johannesburg,
September 2002.
Economic growth along side environmental and social
concern: Sustainable development demands a fundamental
change in the way we live our lives. In a complete
break with the past this calls for a major
reorientation of public and private behavior and
thinking. The challenge is to bond economic growth
with social concerns and to decouple economic
development from environmental degradation. It calls
for creative, long-term policy making, efficient and
responsible use of resources, cost-effective
environmental policy and cleaner technology.
Governments, business, and citizens need to work
together to create the conditions in which sustainable
development can happen.
To bridge the gap between the popular agenda and
elitist agenda of Global governance we need to find
common values upon which a viable future can be built.
We start by considering five aspects of sustainable
development analized by UNDP: Empowerment,
Cooperation, Equity, Sustainability, and Security.
Related to these aspects are nine principles, which
could help political institutions to achieve
sustainable development, as suggested by UNDP:
Participation, Transparency, Responsivness, Consensus
orientation, Equity, Effectivness and Efficiency,
Accountability, Strategic vision.
We would prefere to choose to speak on Participation
forced by the economy of our thesis.True democracy is
characterised by horizontal processes across a broad
spectrum of relationships, in contrast with
parliamentary democracies based on vertical
hierarchies.
The euphoria developed over events in Eastern Europe
after the fall of one party political system a decade
ago has masked the irreparable inadequacies in the new
capitalist democratic system. The fundamental
proposition of democracy needs to focus on an ongoing
process than the structure of representation.
Egalitarian interaction have to be a new democratic
principle in considering that development of Western
democratic systems in the 19th century coincided with
expansion of European Colonialism. Economic
decentralisation is a more appropriate form of
integrating nature and society. Sensitivity towards
the human subject in economic planning shall overcome
foundations laid down by modern economies. It would
reduce the widespread global structural violence
maintained by the political and economic elites of
dominant Western powers.
Next subchapter will try to put light on the concept
of global governance and his relevance for curbing the
actual social fracture of Globalisation, big threat
for International security. The conflicting logics of
actual actors are dangereous and the problem is how to
make them to coexist, what would be the appropiate
mechanism and strategy to make them to work together
with common agenda, taking into account their
conflicting interests. It would not be enough for each
state or people to have its own vision of a better
future, in our case not only the Countries from CEEC
space have to have a strategy for the accession into
EU, or ERT a strategy for a free market, but the EU as
a whole, as a new political entity able to deal with
all these challenges. EU, as an international actor,
has the economic and logistic power to do it, to
transform its self on an entity dealing with
sustainable development using humane governance
mechanism, creating the framework of working together
for all actors.
We give more space to the prospect for humane
security, which eventually will be part of the new
security identity of Europe, civilian approach (see
the non-violent peace force network-making the bridge
between USA and Europe).
In order to find a global humane governance system, we
need first a constitution developed around the
following functions: disarmament, involving the
protection of human rights; social justice,
environmental protection; economic and social
development; and the regulation of international
processes such as trade, transportation and
communication. What the new world-order models have in
common is a commitment to the basic human values as
fundamental criteria of world order. They begin with
common problems and then formulate functional
institutions to cope with those problems. In todays
nation-state competition, those values that conflict
with national security goals have little chance to
become operative on any significant scale.
The starting point of each Model or governance is the
necessity to have as a common denominator but the
problem is which one? Sustainable development and
Humane security for all actors of international system
and the Right to development can be the key words, as
integrative concepts of all human needs for the
humanity as a whole. In public policy debates, few
argue openly in terms of their own self-interest.
Everything is couched in terms of general interest.
Fourth section deals with humane governance opposite
concept of geo-governance. Humane geo-governance is
the preferred variant of geo-governance. Humane
geo-governance is not a structure to be blueprinted,
but a process of engagement that is guided by a
principle of non-violence. Humane governance is a
preferred form of governance being a process and a
goal, which emphasizes the achievement of
comprehensive rights for all peoples on earth. We have
to worn that our passivity will ensure the triumph of
the G-7 view of the human future. The prospect for
human governance is urgency.
In sum, Humane governance emphasizes people-centered
criteria of success, as measured by declines in
poverty, violence and pollution and by increasing
adherence to human rights and constitutional
practices, especially in relation to vulnerable
segments of society, as well as by axiological shifts
away from materialist/consumerist and patriarchal
conceptions of human fulfillment. The perspectives of
humane governance stress the accountability of elites
and the participation by the peoples of the world and
their directly elected representatives. It is
necessary to explore the meaning of humane governance
in a series of conceptual and policy settings, as well
as some implications of counter-projects to shape
geo-governance in more beneficial ways than those
resulting from global market forces.
The political imaginations of the rich and powerful
are still caught up in greed and by efforts to retain
short-run advantage. As a consequence, the historical
opening at the end of the Cold War has been largely
squandered, being treated as one more opportunity to
consolidate power and wealth.
If Globalisation brought negative aspects, the
positive aspect of Globalisation is that it has
brought an active civil society, fighting for more
democracy and greater social justice.
4. Conclusions and perspectives on the future project
of the European Civil Society
We could conclude that a civilization the more it
advances in sacrificing ideals and values to
interests, the more perverse and degenerate is. A
"civilization" that conveniently and unscrupulously
subordinates values to interests is not really worthy
of being called a civilization. No matter how it may
develop its material aspects, it will remain empty at
its human core, which is always moral-spiritual based.
In this regard, world politics is shifting from a
horizontal axis of Right vs. Left, to a vertical axis
of economic materialist values vs. ecological,
feminist, spiritual values; and the central struggle
for the next generation.
As a perspective we propose that EU restructure all
institutions according with humaine security values
and so to become an Ethical superpower able to bring
prosperity to the community (in political terms) and
to the individual (in ethic terms).This imply not only
the transformation of EU but the restructuring of the
World System. We have also to reconcile politics with
ethics. The problem is of the leadership. Who will be
the leader of this challenging project?
Further research has to be made to see if EU could
make alliances for example with India and China in
order to create a peaceful and harmonious world
structure?
Asociatia/The Association"Proeducatia Rromilor Europeni in Contextul Integrarii
Euro-Atlantice si Mondiale"Vizitati pagina
http://www.geocities.com/survivor1977roVisit the web page
http://www.geocities.com/survivor1977ro
____________________________________________________________________________________
Food fight? Enjoy some healthy debate
in the Yahoo! Answers Food & Drink Q&A.
http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545367
