Interview with Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh

Security, seen from the perspective of people, is not only about preventing wars and protecting the sovereignty of states against threats from other states. What we call ‘Human Security’ goes beyond stability to include other ways that the survival, well-being and dignity of people can be ensured: managing pandemics, saving jobs in the midst of a financial crisis, having access to a reliable supply of quality food and clean water, being protected from pollution, being free from gross violations of human rights, etc. When they ask me ‘what is Human Security,’ I like to quote the 1994 UNDP Human Development Report where it made its debut. It is a “child who did not die, a disease that did not spread, a job that was not cut, an ethnic tension that did not explode in violence, a dissident who was not silenced. Human security is not a concern with weapons, it is a concern with human life and dignity.” I teach it as an interdisciplinary subject that sits at the intersection between the academic fields and policy practices of development, security studies and human rights. The course is designed to heighten the sense of empathy in students by making them aware of the implications of crisis situations - be they wars, pandemic, environmental catastrophes, financial crisis, etc. - on the everyday lives of people.

The Covid-19 pandemic was a perfect – though sad - example of a global human security crisis. More than six million people died worldwide, almost 450 million people became sick, an additional 88 million people fell into extreme poverty, cases of domestic violence increased by around 20%, 1.5 billion students were kept out of schools at the peak of the pandemic in March 2020 and almost 100 million people were added to the number of undernourished. Heads of states declared ‘war’ on the pandemic but defence expenditures, increased military capabilities, reinforced border security etc, which are all traditional security tools, and were not able to stop its spread. The course analyses how a health emergency has devastating impacts on the economic, food, personal, environmental, and political security of states and people everywhere in different ways and to different degrees. Using the human security lens, the course also shows how gender, age, geography, location, housing and ethnicity created more vulnerabilities and insecurities. These multi-dimensional security threats that spread in a domino effect across sectors and people in different nations require a rethinking of traditional national security paradigms. The course engages students to develop mock human security strategies at the regional, national, local and community levels in response to the pandemic.

It is always difficult to teach a course that engages with big questions when we are in the midst of a war. But it is necessary to try to gain some perspective. When students discuss implications and options around a case they are very familiar with, they learn lessons about what it takes to prevent future disasters. At least I hope so!

The devastating war in Ukraine is being played out on our screens through exploding social media and affecting each and every one of us, even those of us thousands of kilometres away. The extent of killing of civilians and destruction of people’s homes is making us think: What can be done to stop wars and prevent further atrocities? What is the responsibility of the international community to prevent, to protect and to rebuild? The course will engage with these questions and make students think whether the solution to increase military expenditures and send arms are the best solutions in the long run. We need to think of long-term implications of actions taken in emergency situations, from the perspective of people’s security, livelihoods and dignity. In this course, we will engage with these difficult questions in two specific sessions devoted to responsibility to protect and peacebuilding. We will also examine various national security strategies of different countries to see how countries try to balance focus on guns and butter, warfare and welfare.

Applying the human security approach to the field of terrorism and violent extremism has one strong message; In order to develop adequate response policies and mechanisms, we need to understand motivations of people who commit acts of violence. These motivations may not be the same for everyone, but they form a body of knowledge that has to be addressed. For example, policy makers often believe that the response to violent extremism or terrorism should be the law and order approach from a security perspective: Eradication, isolation, persecution, intelligence, etc. Or, alternatively, it has to do with the lack of ability of institutions to integrate, hence solutions are sought in terms of providing jobs. People’s personal experiences with marginalization, discrimination and indignity is seldom taken into account. We need to consider how ideological, psychological, sociological, gender and economic factors become drivers of extremism. From the human security perspective, we try to look at violence as an interaction between structures in society and peoples’ own experiences and perceptions of their agency.

One of the most valuable and unique experiences of this course is the field work that they conduct among refugees, be they in Paris or by Zoom in other parts of the world. Students get into groups of 4-5 and interview a refugee on their perceptions of their insecurities in their countries of origin, during their transit route and in their host country. Conducting this fieldwork teaches students to listen to and value people’s own experiences with security and insecurity in their lives. This is a valuable lesson in thinking about solutions – be they in the field of security, development or human rights - by taking as point of departure the perspective of people for whom policies are made and solutions sought. After students have conducted and presented their field work among refugees, I usually bring a high-level official from UNHCR to talk to them for an hour about how the UN agency is addressing the fears, wants and indignities of refugees. Students then get a chance to ask questions.

Another unique advantage of the course is that they get to hear from professionals from the UN and from humanitarian organizations like the ICRC who have devoted decades to working on human security in the field. Given my own background at the UN and connections, I make sure that students get to hear about the behind-the-scene challenges of working among communities: the need for empathy combined with professionalism, the need to balance experience in the field with working on policy at headquarters, and the very important need to balance work and private life when working in an international career.

This course, which has been taught at the Summer School since 2015, has been an eye opener for many students from different backgrounds. No matter where they come from, where they live, and what their background is, each person has his/her own perspective on what security means in his/ her context. The course benefits from this variety of subjectivities when students exchange their experiences and perspectives.

The importance of the human perspective in everything they will do from now on. Students will hopefully remember that we each have different experiences with security and insecurity, objectively and subjectively, and that policy needs to be made on the basis of these differences. That and empathy. I strongly believe that we need to cultivate our sense of empathy for better policy choices.