Journal of Peace, Conflict and Development

[Link]
Issue 17, August 2011
ISSN 1742-0601

Human Security: A Framework for

Peace Constructs, Gendered
Perspectives and Cosmopolitan Security
Ian Gibson*

Abstract
This paper seeks to detail the emerging security concept of human security and place it as both
a framework for peace constructs and as a cosmopolitan formulation of security. While human
security remains contested, it nevertheless contains possibilities for a more equitable reading of
security particularly when seen in relation to the suggestions of the 1999 Hague Agenda for
Peace. The Hague Agenda drew particular attention to the importance of human security and
how it encompassed citizenship formulations that in turn emphasized the importance of citizen
rights detailed in the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights. Furthermore, the Hague Agenda
remains important because it acknowledges a gender perspective both in peace formulations
and security formulations countering ‘traditional’ militarist notions, and as such underpins
current peace education theory as proposed by actors such as Betty Reardon. Reardon has
suggested in her work that a gender perspective would more firmly establish a cosmopolitan
perspective. By conflating human security with a cosmopolitan perspective and employing the
Hague Agenda as a working framework for peace this paper argues that this linkage would
fully incorporate all actors of all areas in a quest for a peaceful future.

Keywords: human security, Hague Agenda, cosmopolitanism, gender perspectives, peace

education.

Introduction
Human Security is often referred to as the wellbeing of citizens in society and has been
recognized within peace education as an alternative to ‘traditional’ discourses of security.1

*Ian Gibson is an Associate Professor in the Inter-faculty Institute for International Studies at Ritsumeikan
University, Kyoto Japan. He recently co-authored a chapter with Betty Reardon in Shani et al.(eds)
Protecting Human Security in a Post 9/11 World, published by Palgrave Macmillan.

1See for example, Ian Gibson and Betty Reardon, “Human security: Towards gender inclusion”, in
Giorgio Shani, Makoto Sato and Mustapha Pasha (eds.), “Protecting human security in a post 9/11
world: Critical and global insights”(London: Palgrave Macmillan. 2007), pp. 50-63. For discourses of
 Journal of Peace, Conflict and Development - Issue 17, August 2011

Human Security is focused on the safeguarding and expanding of people’s vital freedoms
while protecting them from acute threats and establishing means of empowerment in order
for people to take control of their own livelihoods.2 For women, as Betty Reardon, a foremost
exponent of peace education, explains, peace and security is often not seen in ‘narrow’
militarist terms but in wider socio-economic terms in securing rights for all for a stable
environment. Effective security therefore entails protecting the rights of all people, particularly
the most vulnerable, in all areas of the world, in other words, a cosmopolitan formulation of
security. Such a formulation would provide a global security concept rather than that of
narrow state security, which has for many regions entailed insecurity, oppression and inter,
and intra state conflict. Indeed state centred security has in many cases merely exercised
only the rights of the military and other security forces together with their controlling elites, as
seen for example, in Myanmar, North Korea, Libya and Egypt, before the events of early 2011,
and also wide areas of the African continent. State security in its narrow militarist form
perpetuates violence; its blunt law is the weapon – detrimental to peace and detrimental to
those who see the world as a space for all to enjoy and co-habit equitably.3

Reardon for example in her explication of a cosmopolitan security construct calls for a
gender perspective to be included in security formulations. Certainly acts of war and inter-
state conflict have shown a propensity for exploiting gender stereotypes and according to
Reardon exacerbates, even encourages violence against women.4 Nanking, in 1937, was
one such terrible ‘incident’; in 1945 Berlin the Soviet army carried out many rapes on women;
and there continue to be systematic rapes in the camps of Darfur in the beginning of the 21st
century and so it continues. One encouraging move to introduce a cosmopolitan inclusion of
gender within peace action was Security Council Resolution 1325 (adopted by the Security

human security see for example Lincoln Chen, Sakiko Fukuda-Parrand and Ellen Seidensticker (eds.),
Human Insecurity in a Global World (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); Yukiko. Nishikawa,
“Human security in Southeast Asia: Viable solution or empty slogan?” Security Dialogue, 40-2, (2009), pp.
213–236; Yoshihide Soeya, “Japanese Security Policy in Transition: the Rise of International and Human ...
Security,” Asia-Pacific Review, 12-1, (2005), pp. 103-116; Shin-wha, Lee, “Promoting human security:
Ethical, normative and educational frameworks in East Asia” (Paris: UNESCO, 2004).
2Commission on Human Security Human security now: Protecting and empowering people, 2003.
Available from http/[Link]. p. iv. (Accessed 22 June 2009).
3 See for example discussions of the cosmopolitan notions of justice and the construct of the global
citizen in Luis Carbrera, Political theory of global justice. (Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2004) and
Janet McIntyre-Mills Global citizenship and social movements. (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic
Publishing, 2000).
4Betty Reardon and Alicia Cabezudo, Learning to abolish war: Teaching for a culture of peace. (New
York: Hague Appeal for Peace, 2002).

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Council on 31 October 2000) which addressed the question of women, peace and security.
The then United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, in his statement to the Security
Council on 24 October 2000, remarked that for generations women have served in important
roles as peace educators both within their families and society and have been highly
effective in building bridges rather than walls. Annan continued by acknowledging how
armed conflict particularly impacts on women and girls who recognise that peace is
inextricably linked to equality between women and men.5 Notions of peace, justice and
security in wider gender-sensitive socio-economic terms were also addressed by the 1999
Conference in the Hague that produced the Hague Agenda for Peace and Justice for the
21st Century. Here human security was seen as a means to redefine security to meet human
and ecological needs instead of the traditionally determined areas of security such as
national borders and national sovereignty. Furthermore the huge funding of armaments
employed by states could best serve the people by being redirected to sustainable
development and human security.6

The empowerment of people is a cogent belief within peace building and peace
education as it encourages the agency of the individual over what is often the abuse of state
power in terms of human rights abuses, torture, and suppression.7 In terms of human security
notes Albie Sharpe, “empowerment may be considered a major tool in building on the efforts
and capabilities of those directly affected by conflict”.8 Like peace education, human
security in turn is a means to encourage good governance, build access to critical
education, encourage human rights, enable better access to health care and ensure the
opportunities and choice of every individual to realise his or her own potential.9 Launched at
the 2000 UN Millennium Summit, The Commission on Human Security (CHS) was an initiative of
the Government of Japan. Chaired by the former UN High Commissioner of Refugees (1991-

5 “Secretary-General calls for council action to ensure women are involved in peace and security
decisions.” UN press release, (24th October 2000) Available at:
[Link] (accessed 19th March 2010).
6“Human Security”, The Hague Agenda for Peace and Justice for the 21st Century, 1999, p. 4. Available
at: [Link]/.../HagueAgendaPeace+[Link]. (accessed 21st
September 2010).
7 Barry Buzan, People, states and fear, (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991 Second Edition),
pp. 43-45
8Albie Sharpe, “The ‘vital core’ of human security: Evaluating health security in Japanese overseas
development aid in Sri Lanka”. Ritsumeikan Annual Review of International Studies, (2009), 8, p. 84.
9Commission on Human Security. Human security now: Protecting and empowering people, (2003).
Available at: http/[Link]. (accessed 22nd June 2009).

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2000) Sadako Ogata and Professor Amartya Sen (awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize for
Economics) the CHS was concerned with moving security away from state-managed security
to security centered on people, since human security takes the central concept of
‘humanity’ and not the territorially bounded sovereign nation states as the primary unit of
analysis to be protected from internal and external threats.10 According to Makoto Sato,
human security’s conceptual formulation resulted from official development assistance
(ODA) in Japan, mostly corresponding to that of the United Nation’s Development Fund
(UNDP).11 Sato details the emergence of human security as a diplomatic aid in Japan, as
Japan’s wish not to be seen using military force as a solution to international conflicts. This
stemmed from actors such as Masayoshi Ohira, Prime Minister of Japan from 1978 to 1980,
who stressed the importance of non-military security using strategies such as energy security
(stockpiling for example, energy resources) and food security. Japan’s security based on the
precept of Pax Americana could only be sustained through the twin structures of
international cooperation and interdependence.12

This paper discusses the concept of human security as both a construct for a
cosmopolitan formulation of security and as a theoretical and practical tool for peace. The
paper will seek to explain how human security incorporates a cosmopolitan perspective and
can be positioned as an effective alternative to state security. This wider construct thus
places security not as a limited state concern but as an ambitious global concern, one that
offers protection from the myriad forms of harm whether harm from the environment, from
violence or from other socio-economic or political threats.13 In order to substantiate how
human security utilises a cosmopolitan approach for a more effective and peaceful
alternative to traditional security measures, this paper employs the Hague Agenda. The
Hague Agenda emerged from a grass-roots citizen-based course of action that called for a

10 Giorgio Shani “Democratic imperialism’, ‘neo-liberal globalization’ and human in/security in the
global south.” In Giorgio Shani, Makoto Sato, and Mustapha Pasha (eds.) Protecting human security in a
post 9/11 world: Critical and global insights, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 17.
11 Makoto Sato, “Human security and Japanese diplomacy: Debates on the role of human security in
Japanese Policy”, In Giorgio Shani, Makoto Sato, and Mustapha Pasha (eds.) Protecting human security
in a post 9/11 world: Critical and global insights, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 84.
12 Ibid. p. 85
13 Witness for example the March 2011 earthquakes and tsunamis in North-east Japan, and their effects
both on the people in the areas affected and the Japanese economy, which in turn impacted on the
wider global economy. Moreover there was (is at the time of writing) the potential danger of radiation
spreading from the nuclear reactor in Fukushima to both the people living in Japan and the wider
community raising health apprehensions. The earthquakes and tsunamis in just one area cogently
illustrate the interlocking concerns of our world.

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more equitable and peaceful world for the new century; a world that offered more rights and
options, grounded in the belief that peace education would be an underpinning to this ideal.
In employing the Hague Agenda as a blueprint for action this paper will demonstrate how
human security is a new and dynamic way of approaching security and how by
incorporating a cosmopolitan perspective can produce new understandings as to how we as
humans can strive to build a more just and peaceful world.

Cosmopolitanism: A Theoretical Underpinning for Tolerance

and Peace
Many scholars throughout the course of human existence have sought to explain the
importance of how a cosmopolitan perspective can enable a more peaceful and equitable
world. A cosmopolitan notion stems from the early works of Zeno, Seneca, Diogenes and
Marcus Aurelius, through the enlightenment works of Spinoza and Kant to Martin Luther King’s
notion (looping back to the Greeks) of a “citizen of the world”. The cosmopolitan viewpoint
can be best summarised by the Stoics in Ancient Greece who believed that we inhabit two
worlds – the world assigned to us by our birth and the other that according to Seneca is both
“truly great and truly common”. Each person inhabits both communities; one local and one a
wider community, of what Martha Nussbaum terms “equal worth of reason in every person”.14

Kwame Anthony Appiah of Princeton University sees cosmopolitanism beginning with

the essential idea embedded in the human community as in national communities of the
need to develop habits of coexistence, based on dialogue; what he views as being the
oldest meaning of conversation, one that fosters the art of living together and in turn
recognises a mutual association with one another.15 Appiah explores the concepts of
cosmopolitanism in his 2007 study, identifying key factors such as toleration, a system of values
and a respect for difference, arriving at a succinct summary that cosmopolitanism is
“universality plus difference”, that is a moral duty to the protection of others enjoined with the
consideration and acknowledgement of the inherent biological and social constructions of
each person.16 In this way Appiah deftly avoids the essentialist argument aimed at

14Seneca and Nussbaum quoted in David Held, Cosmopolitanism: Ideas and Realities. (Cambridge;
Polity, 2010), p. 40.
15 Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers. (New York: Norton, 2007), p.
xix.
16Ibid. p. 151. see also to Kwame Anthony Appiah, The ethics of identity. (New Jersey: Princeton
University Press. 2005), pp. 213-272.

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cosmopolitanism that it advocates a western viewpoint of human rights or a western cultural

imperialism. Rightly acknowledging that even in the west there is now a hybridity of cultural
interchange and identity that makes the notion of “the west” somewhat redundant Appiah
uses his idea of universality plus difference to argue that universality need not be a bludgeon
to subsume cultures. Yes we all share certain universal characteristics – the needs for food,
clean air, love and protection from harm for example, and yes we also have differences of
cultural understanding (culture being the stories we tell ourselves to paraphrase Margaret
Mead) but these differences should not be placed as barriers for understanding but rather as
means to gain understanding – to explore difference and to inquire into difference. In other
words we share needs, we may have different ways of approaching these needs but
provided that harm is avoided (by understanding and tolerating differences as long as these
differences do not perpetuate harm within the respective cultures) we can achieve these
needs more effectively and peaceably.

Appiah’s construct of cosmopolitan tolerance and a more equitable assessment of

needs addresses the violence of poverty which many commentators such as Vandana Shiva
have identified as being institutionally driven by inequitable economic systems within
globalisation, together with the conditions of conflict formed from many differing sources –
among them the need for resources or the imperious decisions, or some might say the
coercive arrogance, of extremist nationalism.17 Indeed feminist scholars point to structural
systems such as patriarchy as a fundamental barrier to peace.18 It is to these inequitable
systems that cosmopolitan literature has been focused in recent years and many important
works have emerged from this area.19

One of the most foremost scholars on cosmopolitanism has been David Held who has
written extensively on cosmopolitanism’s potential to rectify the faults of the current
international order. In Held’s latest work he sees cosmopolitan principles as those that can be

17See as example the Japanese six member Supreme Council for the Direction of the War together with
the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, and the Emperor who argued for the continuance of a lost cause in
August 1945, having the control over the lives of one nation and control of a decision that might have
involved the loss of many more lives, see Richard Frank, Downfall: The end of the imperial Japanese
empire. (New York: Random House, 1999), p. 343.
18 See Betty Reardon, Sexism and the war system. (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1996) for a
critique of patriarchal-driven violent conflict and how its impact on societies perpetuates a poverty
both abstract and real.
For example Ulrich Beck, The Cosmopolitan Vision. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006) and the extensive
19

works of Thomas Pogge, Peter Singer, Charles Beitz, Martha Nussbaum, David Held and Anthony
McGrew.

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universally shared “and can form the basis for the protection and nurturing of each person’s
equal significance in the ‘moral realm’ of humanity.”20 Held identifies eight principles as key:
equal worth and dignity, active agency, personal responsibility and accountability, consent,
collective decision-making about public matters involving voting procedures, inclusiveness
and subsidiary, avoidance of serious harm and sustainablilty. By identifying these
cosmopolitan principles primarily the concept of equal worth and dignity (Held here
acknowledging the work of other prominent cosmopolitan scholars Thomas Pogge and
Charles Beitz) he supports the premise of how cosmopolitanism dovetails with human security
as a humanist construction. This construction is supported by human security scholars such as
Mark Duffield who writes in 2007 that human security is largely portrayed within the literature
as emerging from a growing humanism within international relations – one that borrows
heavily from “increasingly accepted norms and conventions”. These norms and conventions
are associated most prominently with the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, the Geneva Conventions and the initiation of the International Criminal Court. Quoting
Astri Suhrke, Duffield pronounces, “human security ‘evokes’ progressive values”.21

Held documents in his work many of the concerns that are shared by human security.
Human needs can affect the length of human life in terms of determining factors such as
hunger, health and loneliness. Moreover without the stabilisation of an environment to satisfy
basic needs for wellbeing, an environment that provides education for empowerment, health
standards, equitable distribution of resources and a democratic socio-political structure that
guarantees the rights of all members of the community, the environment will prove
unsustainable and quickly collapse into conflict. It is these factors – the rights of all that must
be justly met, the needs of all that must be carefully sustained and the safety of all that must
be protected, especially the most vulnerable, that are addressed by both cosmopolitanism
and human security. Thus by adopting a cosmopolitan perspective the basic requirements of
a human security can be best met.

20 David Held, Cosmopolitanism: Ideas and Realities. (Cambridge; Polity, 2010), p. 69.
21Mark Duffield, Development, security and unending war: Governing the world of peoples.
(Cambridge: Polity Press. 2007), p. 113

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Human Security: Security for the Emerging Century

As outlined in the introduction of this paper the concept of human security was
strongly supported and encouraged by the government of Japan.22After a seemingly
ambiguous period in Japan where security strategies were often conflated with the need for
military security measures, human security began to be mentioned in speeches by notaries
such as Prime Minister Murayama in 1995, speaking at the UN Summit for Social Development,
and Prime Minister Hashimoto at the UN Special Session of the General Assembly for
Environment and Sustainable Development in 1997.

It was Prime Minister Obuchi however who decided that human security was to be the
main focus of the Japan’s foreign policy during the midst of the Asian economic crisis in 1998.
Subsequently as a bid for a seat on the UN Security Council, Japan proposed the concept of
human security as a means of maintaining a stable international environment. The 2004
Gaiko-Seisho, (the 2004 Diplomatic Blue Book) put forward two “major efforts by Japan based
on the human security ideal”23 The first was by providing political and financial support for the
UN Security Fund, whereby by the end of 2003 Japan had given aid to ninety four cases
including malaria education schemes in Nigeria and educational training in Cambodia for
street children. The second major effort was an integration of the ideal of human security into
Japan’s ODA policy. From the year 2000 the Diplomatic Blue book has finished with an entry
describing human security as a key perspective in developing the country’s foreign policy
while at the UN Millennium Summit Prime Minister Mori in his speech identified human security
as one of the pillars of Japanese Foreign Policy.24

Both Akiko Fukushima and Sato have outlined the considerable debate over human
security in Japan. Fukushima notes that the Japanese Defense Agency (JDA) has so far
ignored the concept of human security, for example in its annual Defense White Paper there
is no reference and she explains that human security has made no impact on the Japanese
defense community. Moreover the JDA maintains that refugees, for example, are created by

22A country that at the time of this writing (March 2011) is facing punishing security demands both of an
environmental and social nature.
23Makoto Sato, “Human security and Japanese diplomacy: Debates on the role of human security in
Japanese Policy”, In Giorgio Shani, Makoto Sato, and Mustapha Pasha (eds.), Protecting human
security in a post 9/11 world: Critical and global insights, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 89.
24Akiko Fukushima, “Human security and Japanese foreign policy”. Proceedings from the International
Conference on Human Security in East Asia, 16-17 June 2003, Seoul, Republic of Korea. UNESCO. (2004).
Available at: [Link] (accessed 15th July 2010).

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states and accordingly such situations should be categorized as national security issues. Other
criticisms range from its dangerous potential for non-democratic institutions to control
governments and populations to conceptual vagueness. It is, according to some, a poorly
defined universalistic policy that has little practical utility and many civil society groups in
Japan remain divided some arguing that the concept is one that can be easily manipulated
by governments for national interest.25 Sato cites critical theorists in Japan who object to the
concept because the people are identified as an object of protection but hardly a subject
of their own security, a further criticism by such theorists reject human security by saying that
the concept appears an unwarranted abuse of the term security making every state policy a
policy of security.26

Other Japanese scholars such as Tatsuo Harada and Kinhide Mushakoji have
continued a critical analysis of human security in their work at the Center for Human Security
studies at Chubu University, Aichi. They note that Canada and Japan have utilised human
security as part of their diplomatic strategy, Japan putting emphasis on human security as a
means of peace keeping whereas Canada has stressed human security in the field of official
economic cooperation. These two scholars have tried to position human security away from
a state role and centre it as a basis of study for how globalisation impacts on human
insecurity for migrants and their communities in global city networks in the North and South.
Here analyses can be intensified and other coping arrangements drawn from new modes of
solidarity can help combat the discrimination that these actors experience. Harada and
Mushakoji’s five-year project summarising the main findings of cross-regional research offers
constructive analyses of migrant problems in city areas of South East Asia, Europe Central
America and West Africa – allowing a cosmopolitan perspective to develop.27

Japan has tried to arrange the auspices of human security beyond the state and as
alluded to above in its attempt to secure a permanent seat on the United Nations Security
Council initiated and funded the Commission of Human Security (CHS) in 2003. The

25Ibid., p. 24. See also Albie Sharpe, “The ‘vital core’ of human security: Evaluating health security in
Japanese overseas development aid in Sri Lanka”. Ritsumeikan Annual Review of International Studies,
(2009)..
26Makoto Sato, “Human security and Japanese diplomacy: Debates on the role of human security in
Japanese Policy”, In Giorgio Shani, Makoto Sato, and Mustapha Pasha (eds)., Protecting human
security in a post 9/11 world: Critical and global insights, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 91-5.
27Harada, Tatsuo. and Mushakoji, Kinhide “Human (in)security of migrants in Japan. In Kinhide
Mushakoji, & Mustapha. Pasha, (eds.) Human (in)security in the networks of global cities: The final report.
(Chubu University, Aichi: Center for Human Security Studies [CHS] 2008), pp. 122-44.

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Commission’s Final Report of the Commission on Human Security was extensive in its scope
and ambitions, positioning human security as a means of protecting vital freedoms and
suggested a ten point policy framework to initiate this plan. The ten points were to protect
people in violent conflict, protect people from the proliferation of arms, support the security
of people on the move, establish human security transition funds for post-conflict situations,
encourage fair trade and markets to benefit the extreme poor, work to provide minimum
standards everywhere, accord higher priority to ensuring universal access to basic health
care, develop an efficient and equitable system for patent rights, empower all people with
universal basic education and clarify the need for a global human identity while respecting
the freedom of individuals to have diverse identities and affiliations.28 These points clearly
demonstrate that human security is rather more than a traditional understanding of what is
known by security. Instead human security becomes more of a philosophical underpinning for
protection and empowerment of the human body, no matter where that body is situated.
Again these proposals fuse very much with a cosmopolitan vision of security and wellbeing.

Kofi Annan when Secretary-General of the United Nations (January 1st 1997 to
December 31st 2006 was a prominent advocate of human security as a form of security that
addressed wider goals beyond borders. Acutely aware of how important cooperation was to
our wellbeing as well as our increasing interconnectedness on the planet, he was active in
the move to empower the powerless whether in calling for the protection of women in
Security Council 1325 or for more education for the vulnerable. As a vocal supporter of the
United Nation’s Culture of Peace programme Kofi Annan understood well the need for a
global system that encouraged cooperation and nonviolence. He noted therefore that a
new concept of security must be understood where:

We must also broaden our view of what is meant by peace and security. Peace means much
more than the absence of war. Human security can no longer be understood in purely military
terms. Rather, it must encompass economic development, social justice, environmental
protection, democratization, disarmament, and respect for human rights and the rule of law.29

United Nation departments have amply recorded the United Nation’s role as a global
practitioner for human security and scholars such as Neil MacFarlane and Yuen Foong Khong

28Commission of Human Security. “Outline of the Report of the Commission on Human Security”
Available at: [Link] (accessed 16th March
2011.
29 Kofi Annan. “Towards a Culture of Peace.” Available at: [Link]
Anglais/[Link]. 2001. Accessed 16th March 2011.

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amongst many others have documented the promotion, critique and development of
human security.30 Meanwhile human security has been the centre of much discussion on its
viability and its implications for global governance, international law, human rights and
ideological construct.31 However as Kofi Annan well knows, particularly as the Iraq war
showed, the state system refuses to relinquish its hold on global structures, traditional thinking
as well as traditional approaches to security issues remain entrenched.32 Human security is
now in the position of being juxtaposed against fragmented state security. Together with
cosmopolitanism constructs it can now be suggested an alternative wider-encompassing
security, an alternative proposal for the emergent century. The paper now turns to a
framework that encapsulates both the theoretical and practical aspects of human security
and cosmopolitanism and demonstrates a potential means of attaining peace for the new
century.

The Hague Agenda For Peace and Justice for the 21st
Century
Whereas Reardon and Gibson have viewed the Ogata-Sen CHS report as a top town
approach to human security and one that pays scant attention to an engendered
perspective, the Hague Agenda for Peace and Justice for the 21st Century adopts a far more

30UNDIR “Human Security” Available at [Link] (accessed

16th March 2011; United Nations Trust Fund for Human Security, Available at:
[Link] (accessed 16th March
2011); UNESCO, “Human Security and Policy Making”. Available at: [Link]
En/social-and-human-sciences/themes/social-transformations/most-programme. (accessed 16th March
2011); S. Neil MacFarlane and Yuen Foong Khong. Human security and the UN; A Critical History
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006)
31 See for example, Amitav Acharya, “Debating Human Security: East Versus the West.”
Available at: [Link]/hpcr/events/hsworkshop/[Link]
(accessed 16th March 2011); 45; Sverre Lodgaard, “Human Security: Concept and Operationalization.”
Available at; [Link]/hpcr/events/hsworkshop/
lodgaard.pdf_(accessed 16th March 2011); Gerd Oberleitner, “Human Security:
A Challenge to International Law?” Global Governance (2005), 11, pp.185–203.
32 What David Held calls “the model of nation-states at war with one another, based on the
organizational principle of conflicting geopolitical state interests”, David Held, Cosmopolitanism: Ideas
and Realities. (Cambridge; Polity, 2010), p. 9.

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‘cosmopolitan’ approach to human security and the pressing issues challenging citizen
security.33

The Hague Agenda for Peace is one of the primary sources for transformative peace
building that addresses violence within economic systems and military systems by
encouraging both the cosmopolitan and the feminist voice. By stressing the importance of
human security and human security concerns towards the inequitable systems of the globe it
encourages major initiatives and key actions by civil society and non-government
organisations (NGO) coalitions to extend their networks globally. Of note is their
acknowledgement of the work of the International Network on Small Arms (IANSA), the
Global Campaign for Peace Education, the Global Ratification Campaign for the
International Criminal Court, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, the Abolition of
Nuclear Weapons, the Global Action to Prevent War and the Coalition to Stop the Use of
Child Soldiers. These wide ranging global actions are critical for a just system: one that
provides for the protection of the body from violence and for the empowerment of the actor
in attaining a peaceable world.

Human Security as Cosmopolitan Empowerment

Human security as a framework of cosmopolitan empowerment has been adopted
by the Hague Agenda for Peace and Justice for the 21st Century which represents the
members of the Hague Appeal for Peace Organizing and Coordinating Committees and the
hundreds of organizations and individuals that met and consulted on the agenda at the
Hague in May 1999. The Hague Agenda for Peace and Justice for the 21st Century
consolidates the concerns of these citizens and civil society organizations in what they
consider as some of the most important problems that face humanity in the new century and
represents the culmination of citizen action together with NGO campaigns to address global
poverty and violent conflict.34 The agenda offers a far-reaching manifesto for a more
equitable world, echoing the work of the philosopher William James as well as modern
theorists such as Thomas Pogge and Peter Singer, and notes the serious distortion of the

33 Ian Gibson, and Betty Reardon, “Human security: Towards gender inclusion.” In Giorgio Shani, Makoto
Sato, and Mustapha Pasha (eds.) Protecting human security in a post 9/11 world: Critical and global
insights. Edited by (London: Palgrave Macmillan. 2007). p. 64.
34Ian Gibson. “Down and Out in Globality: The Violence of Poverty, The Violence of Capital,”.Peace,
Conflict & Development, (2008) 12, Available at; [Link]. (accessed 1st June
2010)

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allocation of resources where many of today’s conflicts are affected by the economic greed
for raw materials while huge amounts of capital are spent on militarisation and the arms
trade.35 In the fourth strand of The Hague Appeal for Peace, (reflected by the Hague
Agenda), “Disarmament and Human Security”, it calls for the reallocation of resources from
military expenditure to civilian programmes that safeguard human security. The Agenda
proposes for a transformation here of the military economy to a peace economy where
demilitarisation will include the allocating of resources to ensure the well being of the world’s
citizens, providing the basic human rights for shelter, work, health, food, work and peace and
security.36

In its gendered approach The Hague Appeal strongly endorses the aims of the
Women’s Peace Petition, which focuses on a 5 percent reduction a year for 5 years in military
spending with the reallocation of these substantial resources toward human security
programmes and peace education. Continuing its gendered theme the Appeal seeks a
promotion of gender justice in its first strand, “Root Causes of War/Culture of Peace”, noting
that the violent machismo embedded in societies costs most societies highly; most men
experiencing limited choices are sold on the idea of a military career while women continue
to experience violence both in war and in peace.37

The Appeal stresses the need for all effort to recognize and also engage the
capacities of women as peace-makers and to redefine the distortion found in gender roles
that perpetuate violence. In its second strand, addressing International Humanitarian and
Human Rights Law and Institutions, the Appeal pursues an end to the violence against
women in times of armed conflict, and echoing conditions surrounding the U.S. military bases
in Okinawa, Japan38 records that armed conflict, war actions and the continuing presence of
military bases have impacted on women and adolescents as never before in history.
Increasingly women and their families have become targets for violence and war crimes that
include rape, sexual assault, enforced prostitution and the use of sexual slavery.39 Further on in

35Hague Appeal for Peace. The Hague agenda for peace and justice in the 21st century. UN Ref
A/54/98. p.7. Available at: [Link] (accessed 1 November 2009).
36 Ibid. p.42.
37 Ibid p.18.
38Kozue Akibayashi and Suzuyo Takazato, “Okinawa: Women’s struggle for demilitarization. In Catherine
Lutz, (ed.), The bases of empire: The global struggle against U.S. military posts (New York: New York
University Press, 2009), pp. 243-249.
39Hague Appeal for Peace. The Hague agenda for peace and justice in the 21st century. UN Ref
A/54/98. p.27. Available at [Link] (accessed 1 November 2009).

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the third strand of the appeal, Prevention, Resolution and Transformation of Violent Conflict,
there is a call to engender peace building noting the need for initiatives that are aimed
specifically at understanding the interrelationships between peace building and gender
equality including the need to strengthen women’s capacities to become participants in
peace building initiatives. Governments, the Appeal notes, must strongly commit to include
women representatives of civil society in all peace negotiations.40 The Appeal reinforces
women’s capacity as peace builders and negotiators and draws attention to the need for
peace and security institutions to encompass gender-sensitive perspectives into their
strategies and activities and more importantly to strengthen and build women’s peace
networks between borders.

The Hague Agenda and the Hague Appeal consolidate their cosmopolitan approach
in their calls for global citizen awareness. They stress the need for peace education within
their ‘Global Campaign for Peace Education’ positing that citizens of the world will attain a
culture of peace when they are able to accomplish the skills of conflict resolution in order to
resolve conflicts and struggle for justice non-violently, formulate an understanding of global
problems, acknowledge cultural diversity, live according to the international standards of
human rights and equity, while most importantly respecting the earth and each other. Here
the Appeal stresses that this learning can only be achieved by systematic education for
peace. Taking its cue from the United Nations Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-
Violence for the Children of the World the campaign aims to introduce human rights and
peace education into all educational institutions including medical and law schools and
further underlining its cosmopolitan leanings states that the campaign is being promoted and
conducted through a global network of education associations that incorporates local,
regional and national task forces consisting of citizens and educators.

In addressing the challenges of the 21st century The Hague Appeal argues for a
cosmopolitan interconnectedness. The globalization and cosmopolitan theorist, Anthony
McGrew, identifies cosmopolitans as arguing that there exist “common structures of action
and interconnectedness, which transcend national frontiers” and acknowledging David Held
he notes, “the new circumstances of cosmopolitanism give us little choice but to consider the
possibility of a common framework of standards and political action, given shape and form

40 Ibid. pp. 36-7

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by a common framework of institutional arrangements”.41 The Hague Agenda encompasses

this possibility of a common framework of institutional arrangements and cosmopolitan
evocations where to quote Marcus Aurelius, “[i]t makes no difference whether a person lives
here or there, provided, that wherever he lives, he lives as a citizen of the world”.42

A Global Action Plan is therefore suggested within the appeal to prevent war,
instigated by the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies, Union of Concerned
Scientists and World Order Models Project, where although a comprehensive move towards a
world in which armed conflict is rare the actions of citizens like those involved in the Appeal
attempt to correct the failure of the world’s governments to carry out their responsibility to the
world in preventing conflict, ending war, guaranteeing human rights, eradicating colonialism
and neo-colonisalism, protecting citizens from harm and most importantly creating conditions
that might lead to permanent peace. These actions were endorsed by among others, The
Dalai Lama, Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela, Anisia K. Achieng and Archbishop
Desmond M. Tutu and present a cosmopolitan vision built on the notion of a security
formulation that transcends the outdated construct of that pertaining to limited military
concerns.43

41 Anthony McGrew, Cosmopolitanism and the war of terror. (Paper presented at Faculty of
International Relations, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan. 2009), p. 10.
42 Marcus Aurelius, The meditations. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983), p. 15
43 Nevertheless realist perspectives prevail. One of the main criticisms expressed against the Hague
Agenda in peace education and citizenship classes at higher education institutions where I myself have
facilitated classes charges the Hague Agenda of being idealistic or non-realistic, interestingly similar
criticisms are leveled at the UN Declaration of Human Rights that these conditions will never be met in
the ‘real world’. Betty Reardon (an active participant in the Hague Agenda and its peace education
formulations), when asked about this point in Tokyo 2006 said that it is from ideas that politics begins. In
other words transformations do not and cannot be expected to occur overnight and although people
do not respond well to being told what to do they do however respond well to positive ideas and
practices say of altruism for example. A truism might be suggested that most people like to help others
and that it is a human trait to cooperate, witness responses to Live Aid in the 1980s and natural disasters
where people feel naturally inclined to assist others. It is by harnessing the power of people, the
transnational community in positive nonviolent and constructive ways that action takes hold and
flourishes. The move against slavery, the civil rights movement, the people against the dictator Marcos
in the Philippines – these are all actions that resulted from ideas, positive rather than negative ideas and
actions, that transformed the world to a better place. As Erich Fromm says, “many people begin their
intellectual journey because of their desire to improve the human condition.” Erich Fromm, Beyond the
Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud. (NY: Continuum, 1962/2002).

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Peace Education Human Security and Cosmopolitanism

To perhaps overstress a point often raised in peace education, which strives to guard
against generalisation, there is not one single view of global citizenship, human security or
cosmopolitanism. April Carter states there exists a spectrum of theories incorporating a myriad
of interpretations of ideas of global citizenship with overlapping interpretations involving
cosmopolitanism.44 This point is also extended to loop back on peace education itself that
there is no single view of peace education. In its myriad forms it is holistic, elastic and dwells
on dialectical inquiry. Citizens within their own country have, as Reardon and Cabezudo
assert, the responsibility to persuade their governments to revoke unjust wars or revoke the
maintenance of destructive or unfair policies.45 This responsibility comes from sharing views
with others, for identifying ‘human wrongs’ still lacking in their hard won ‘rights’ and being
concerned in a world that exists beyond their own national border, a world in which they
share a part.

An interdependent construct is thus necessary for peace. As Diana Francis eloquently

states, relating to this point of view, “peace is envisioned as a global society characterised by
just relationships and mutual care; one in which the needs of all are met and all are able to
participate, on the basis of equality and without fear”.46 The society that she envisions
requires habits, culture and institutions which are important for handling conflicts as they arise
in a constructive method and without the means of violence. Moreover male-female
relations must entail equality and respect. Francis’ point is that we depend on our planet and
if it is to be respected and preserved then its resources must be used with care and
sustainability – a point that human security stresses.

Citizen readiness to accept interconnectedness means that constructive actions will

be felt not only within their countries but will impact by processes of trans-nationalism (by
media, by NGOs such as Human Rights Watch or the International Women’s Rights Action
Watch) to other areas of the world less able to currently combat equality and justice. It is by

44 April Carter, The political theory of global citizenship. (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 236.
45Betty Reardon and Alicia Cabezudo. Learning to abolish war: Teaching for a culture of peace. (New
York: Hague Appeal for Peace, 2002), p.79.
46 Diana Francis, Eat or be eaten: Courting disaster. Available from:
[Link] (accessed 18th
March 2010).

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these transnational peaceful means that failures by governments to protect their people will
be raised, questioned and pressured to change.

Rights-driven processes inform peace education. If human rights are assured then
human security can in turn be realised. If the destructive and senseless drive for weapon-
driven security and its wasteful utility of the natural environment is challenged together with
the adoption of a more cooperative stance on common security, rather than a competing
for exclusive national security, this would be a far more beneficial global goal.

Reardon and Cabezudo counter the patriarchal militarist stance so prevalent in the
world and suggest that if the above conditions were met then a strong sense of global
community as well as a common sense of human security would be the greatest possible
nourishment to feed and foster a culture of peace and justice in this century.47 These are the
aims of peace education, to promote an active realisation of this perception, one that
peacekeepers and peace builders will encourage and facilitate, a goal that encompasses
all people in conditions of equity and safety, a cosmopolitan vision.

Conclusion
Reardon and Cabezudo recognise that there is no definitive description of human
security or a comprehensive model for general and complete disarmament in the Hague
Agenda but nevertheless through embracing the fundamental concepts of human security
the Hague Agenda does initiate a foundational underpinning in practical concepts and
strategies to work towards the goals of a culture of peace. Human security provides peace
education guides for teachers to cultivate an understanding of local to international
concepts of security that do not remain dependent on conventional arms, the military or
nuclear weapons. Furthermore it recommends ecological and economic security, universal
human rights and forms of nonviolent conflict resolution to stem from grassroots constructs
that are bottom up and democratised thus enabling inequitable practices of militarised
resource abuse to be revealed within globalisation and shifting these expenditures from war
to peaceful means: in other words a cosmopolitan perspective is required in order to guide
peace educators in facilitating lessons of tolerance, peace, justice and understanding of
difference (echoing Appiah). Moreover, at this time, there needs to be a stronger call for

47Reardon, B. A., & Cabezudo, A. (2002). Learning to abolish war: Teaching for a culture of peace.
(New York: Hague Appeal for Peace),p. 45

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engendering the peace process and to encapsulate this process within human security.
Human security seeks to place security for the body foremost, particularly those excluded
from “traditional security” – the underclass, the girl child and disempowered women in all
areas of the world. It posits a rethinking of security issues; one that following the Hague
Agenda’s recommendations employs a cosmopolitan approach to include a wider
understanding of how and what security ought to be – a security for peace rather than a
security that perpetuates violence.

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