Cross-border citizens' network for peace, inter-communal

reconciliation & human security

Overall objective

• To establish a human security dialogue including research, advocacy and capacity building activities

Major outputs

• HS Annual Monitoring Reports

• Annual Thematic Reports on Particular Human Security Areas – based on compiled Country-Specific Thematic Reports

Major outputs• HS Annual Monitoring Reports - Development, Preparation and

Publishing of 3 reports, analysing HS topics in a regional context and presenting country/regional level indicators and evaluations that will allow the monitoring of HS throughout the region in a comparative and structured basis.

• These reports will include an HS Monitoring Index to facilitate a comparative analysis and highlight priority problems across borders.

• The reports will review the public sector reforms and changes in codes of conduct in the region, examine the political, economic, and social environment around HS and provide insights on the appropriate direction and focus of further reforms and EU level policies.

Major outputs

• Annual Thematic Reports on Particular Human Security Areas based on compiled Country-Specific Thematic Reports

The reports are to include, tentatively: (i) a country-level analysis based on desktop literature review,

field research, outputs from consultation & stakeholder dialogue process conducted by partner’s research teams;

(ii) meeting reports; (iii) a brief regional level analysis framing the cross-cutting

issues; and (iv) an analysis in relation to EU level policies and processes.

First 6 months

• identify local level needs, capacities and issues• unravelling the local strategies of action• assessment of the capacities and needs of

local stakeholders• identify issues and local partners (desktop

research, outreach activities and a fact-finding workshop will be conducted.

Until next meeting

Each partner will present(i) a short country brief on how they approach HS in their own local context, (ii) the legislative/institutional framework and the local reform agenda related to HS; (iii) a brief draft list of civil society actors, institutions, public bodies, and policy-makers to be engaged to Project activities.

Objective of this meeting

• identify the research capacity of partners, • transfer knowledge among partnership members

on the general approaches and methods of human security research and advocacy,

• highlight issues of peace, reconciliation and human security with respect to each local country setting

• develop a common ground on the concepts, methods and approaches of human security

Why Human Security?

• «a dangerous disjunction between traditional security instruments and actual security needs» • «inseparability of internal and external security » • «increasing difficulty in defending a particular territory or group of people in isolation»• «new sources of insecurity that are less amenable to traditional military methods»• «growing interconnectedness in all fields, deterritorialization of authority, and the erosion of the autonomy of states.

Definition

in search of a regionally relevant common definition/understanding Some definitions:«freedom from fear», «freedom from want», «freedom to live in dignity» (1994 HDR+)«The capacity of individuals and communities to respond to threats to their social, human and environmental rights».(Global Environmental Change and Human Security Research Program )«to protect the vital core of all human lives in ways that enhance human freedoms and human fulfillment» UN Commission on Human Security

Human Security as the Nexus between Safety, Rights, and Equity

Dimensions

• security for or of whom? • security against which threats?• security using which means?• secured by whom?

Methodology and Methods

Combination of empirically grounded fundamental research on human security with applied research on insecurity preventive measures.

Regional research groups will generate data relating to areas for priority attention and protection relating to central societal target groups

Target Groups• We differentiate between various target groups constituted as follows:

Focus Group Constitution Data Generation Politics Policy makers in positions related to

human security at local, country and regional levels.

Public statements, statements of formal obligation

Public servants Police forces, public order related

officials, public prosecutors, lawyers,

military officers (?)

Strategy reports, statistics, other available documents.

Civil Society Organisations active in the public sphere and their representatives interested/engaged in democratization, HR, citizenship, pluralism & minority rights, vulnerable groups, Internally displaced people, youth organizations, reconciliation good governance, poverty, environmental and health issues (?)

Statements and strategy papers, reports, etc. issued by these initiatives

Academia national, regional, international policy oriented research organizations and scholars working in relation to HRs, human security, civil society, peace, reconciliation and democratic governance; poverty

All kinds of relevant current academic documents

Methodology and Methods

• Two types of data are to be generated pertaining to each target group: – Documents from the target groups’ field of

activity related to the issues at hand – Expert interviews employed to record and

evaluate the personal experiences of target group members regarding insecurities and priorities

Methodology and Methods

• Our assumption of empirical research: the ‘bottom-up’ definitions held within ‘everyday theories’ of insecurity are anchored in social patterns of perception that actors apply unconsciously.

• They cannot be polled in the direct method commonly used in opinion research. They must be reconstructed from administrative and other official documents and recorded statements in interviews.

Methodology and Methods

Building on this insight, both the documents as well as the expert interviews are to be subjected to a qualitative content analysis for reports.

H.S.I.

• link the levels of human (in)security to numbers referring to the dimensions of the human security and the main threats in each region.

WHY an H.S.I?

• an instrument to assess the actual threats to human beings

• measure the actual threats related to insecurity to find appropriate policy responses,

• identify priorities for policy agendas

Steps for Constracting HSI

• Compilation of cross country raw data on insecurities

• Idetification of the dimensions• Selection of indicators• Formulation of the index

Evaluation criteria for Indicator selection

• the indicator measures either key structural relationships (i.e., linkages and defining characteristics) or key functional relationships (i.e., process flows) of the system with reference to either environmental, economic, societal, or institutional components (Table 1);

• existence of a theoretical or empirical link between the indicator and insecurity (see below);

• general availability of the data;• consistency of the data with other selected indicators to allow for

future modeling of the system; adequacy of the spatial coverage based on the number of countries represented and adequacy of the time series available.

Source: Index of Human Insecurity (IHI) developed by the GECHS

Some HSI examples

• Human (In)Security Index of INEF– Dimensions:

– Economic security (being able to provide for a minimum standard of living or, if this is not the case, being secured by some kind of social security provided by the state or private actors.)

– Food Security implies that all people at all times have both physical and economic access to basic food. This requires that people have ready access to food – that they have an ‘entitlement’ to food, by growing it for themselves, by buying it or by taking advantage of a public food distribution system (UNDP 1994: 27)

– Health Security protection from major causes of death, including mainly infectious and parasitic diseases.

Human (In)Security Index of INEF

– Environmental Security includes threats inflicted by the degradation of local eco systems and that of the global system, mainly global warming

– The combined dimension of Personal Security and Community Security • Personal Security is defined as security from threats from physical violence.

These threats may come from the state (physical torture), from other states (war), from other groups of people (ethnic conflicts), from individuals (crime or street violence, they might be directed against women (rape or domestic violence) and threat to self such as drugs or suicide (UNDP 1994: 30).

• Community Security aims at the protection of people from their loss of traditional practices and membership in certain groups, be it a family, a community, an organization or a racial or ethnic group from which people derive cultural identity, that provide them with security. A loss of traditional practices may be caused by modernization, but also by sectarian and ethnic violence (UNDP 1994: 31f.).

Index of Human Insecurity (IHI) by the GECHS

Dimensions:• environment, • economy, • society,• İnstitutions.

Index of Human Insecurity (IHI) by the GECHS• The 16 indicators, equally weighted, present a one-to-one mapping of human

insecurity

Index of Human Security made by David A. Hastings.

Dimensions:• protection of (and benefiting from) diversity, • peace,• environmental protection,• freedom from corruption and • information empowerment

Main pillars of the project

• good governance, • reconciliation• social inclusion – from regional & country-specific perspectives.

HS dimensions of the Project

a) political economy of crime & corruption; b) militarism/nationalism;c) justice & rule of law in transitional-reconciliatory processes; d) poverty, inequality & social inclusion;e) security sector policies & “policing”

f) environment (?)h) health (?)i) institutional (?)