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War on Terror brought the issue of security to the forefront. In addition to
the these events there have been food riots, civil wars, irregular warfare,
warlordism, reappearances of genocides and failing states (Hettne, 2002;
Saul, 2005), also referred to as the 'new wars'. Ghani and Lockhart (2009: 4)
suggest that 40-60 states which are home to close to two billion people are
either sliding backward and teetering on the brink of implosion or have
already collapsed. This increasing global chaos contradicts everything that
the concept of development has come to represent (Hettne, 2002). Security
has been increasingly linked to human development as there has been a wid-
ening and deepening of the concept of security involving many more organ-
isations below and above the level of the state (Beswick & Jackson, 2011).
The 1994 UNDP Human Development Report is widely regarded as signal-
ing a sea-change in thinking on security with a shift from a focus on nation-
states to individuals or human security (Beswick & Jackson, 2011). Human
security has a focus on freedom from fear and freedom from want (UNDP
Report, 1994, in Beswick & Jackson, 2011). The report outlined the need to
change from an exclusive stress on territorial security through armaments to
a greater stress on people's security through sustainable human development
(Beswick & Jackson, 2011). The sources of threats to human security in the
1994 UNDP Report include economic security, food security, health security,
environmental security, personal security, community security and political
security (Beswick & Jackson, 2011). It is important to note, however, that
most contemporary interventions would involve both state and human-cen-
tric approaches. Beswick and Jackson (2011: 18) argue that 'development in
mainstream policy discourse has since the 1990s been dominated by attempts
to define and find ways of (re)producing liberal states, both in the aftermath
of conflict and in more ambiguous contexts of considerable instability and
insecurity'. Knutsson (2009: 29) notes that 'new wars' opened up the con-
cept of humanitarian interventionism in conflict areas, bending the tradi-
tional UN principle of sovereignty, indicating 'the world community to a
larger extent acknowledged its own existence'.
Given the diversity of approaches in human development, there are vari-
ous criticisms that have been raised. For example, one of the new indicators
of human development is the HDI and by only relying on life expectancy,
education and income, it fails to embrace the rich variety of development
capabilities and deprivations and it also reveals little of the experiences of
individuals (Holden, 2013). Criticisms have also been directed at the
Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers; as Fraser (2005) indicates, they are a
technology of social control that seeks to shape domestic political space.
Reflecting on a 'Decade of Human Development', and the diversity of
approaches, Sen (2010: 23) states that 'the human development approach
assumed the leadership of a pluralist world of multiple concerns, and its
intellectual departure has a coordinating function that is quite central to the
entire enterprise'.
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