Health and human security - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 163

Health and human security
Communicable diseases in the post-
Soviet Arctic
Lars Rowe, Elana Wilson Rowe and
Geir Hønneland 1
Introduction
The idea of human security was developed to encourage states and international
organizations to direct similar amounts of energy and resources to so-called
'soft issues', such as health, women's issues and child safety, as they would
towards the more familiar aspects of national security, such as border defence
and the maintenance of militaries. The concept of human security has been
applied primarily in the developing world, or the 'Global South'. As stated in
Chapter 4, this tends to imply that human security issues do not exist in First
World or Northern states. The present focus of human security concerns can,
consequently, mask a host of shared concerns, and hinder those of us who are
working actively on issues such as health, protection of women and children and
migration from collaboration across the developed/developing world divide.
Public health problems, such as the spread of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis in the
Former Soviet Union (FSU) and the efforts at international cooperation outlined
in this chapter, form an issue of human security around which such collabora-
tion could occur. The goals of the 2004 Tromsø conference, Human Security in
the Arctic , and of this volume are to explore the extent to which the concept of
human security may contribute to Arctic research and vice versa, and to outline
present and future threats in the Arctic regions of Northern states.
In this chapter, we draw upon the earlier research of Hønneland and Rowe
(2004) in which the Task Force on Communicable Disease Control in the
Baltic Sea Region (referred to as the Task Force below) was evaluated. The
Task Force was a joint venture among 11 states surrounding the Baltic Sea,
and its mandate was to establish local-scale projects in the health systems
and prison health services addressing the control of tuberculosis and HIV/
AIDS . 2 In our research we conducted interviews with approximately 100
individuals within the health sector, the bulk of which were based in Russia
and the Baltic countries, in order to assess their perceptions of the Task Force
specifically, and the challenges facing the health sector generally. Our main
objective in this chapter is to place the threat of communicable diseases in the
FSU in a human security framework.