*This article also appears as a chapter in the 2023 KCIS Conference volume that was published Nov. 2024

Introduction

In recent years, the lines between the “hard issues” of national security and “soft issues” of human security have blurred. Hard issues of security that are directed towards state security are seen as “military defence of state interests and territory,” whereas soft security embodies the everyday security of individuals and communities.[1] In 1994, the United Nations (UN) outlined the objective of human security as wishing to safeguard the vital core of human life from critical pervasive threats, adding seven additional areas of security threats. These included economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community, and political security. This prompted a shift in focus from traditional perceptions of security to new and emerging threats as insecurity.[2] Some will argue that the concept of human security is not new and that the return of great power competition is more deserving of our attention. While it is true that human security has been part of policy and academic discourse for many years, the ways in which the current operating environment is likely to exacerbate myriad human security pressures—ranging from ideologically motivated violent extremism, the spread of misinformation and disinformation, cyber-attacks on critical civilian infrastructure, intra-state conflict, and climate change—demand a formalized approach rather than an ad hoc one. On April 8, 2024, the renewed Canadian Defence Policy was released, drawing attention to the changing conflict environment and the actors influencing it:

Although [Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran are pursuing] different goals at different scales, they share a broader disregard for the stable and predictable rules that have governed our international relations—sovereignty, non-intervention, basic principles of human security, and free and open trade. …they normalize the use of violence, coercion and intimidation to achieve their political ambitions.[i]

The undermining of stability, and the overt use of violent means to advance agendas suggests that measures of human insecurity will surpass norms in the twentieth, and early part of the twenty-first, centuries. Human security is not removed or separate from great power competition and the undermining of the rules-based international order, but rather is nested within and greatly affected by it. Within this environment, the renewed policy suggests that:

The Canadian Armed Forces will also continue to promote the integration of human security considerations into planning, emphasizing the prevention of escalation in conflict zones, and collaborating with partners to address cross-cutting issues such as the protection of civilians and the impact of technology on security.[ii]

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is approaching human security with seriousness to better comprehend the human environment, especially through analyzing the different ways women, men, girls, and boys are impacted by conflict, and thus the modern security situation. As NATO adopts a human security approach, inclusive of strategic people-centered agendas, it establishes a focus through which the CAF and allied militaries can participate and influence. In NATO’s backyard, the war in Ukraine has brought this to the fore, galvanizing the importance of viewing threats to security beyond state security and recognizing that civilians are now frequently deliberately targeted. The wider view achieved by a human security approach enhances a more robust understanding of the human environment, and what actions could be taken to deepen resilience at the community level. Achieving a more defined and articulated understanding of wider human security allows for the military to properly visualize its role. So, too, could it effectively support “whole of mission” planning and actions by creating a common vocabulary leading to better coordination with other actors. A human security framework can assist military commanders and planners to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the context/operating environment and potential courses of action to shape an environment that could lead to more durable peace.

Strategy

As human security has evolved, both as a concept and operational concern, it has provided a foundation for discussions on broader security challenges for the wider international community, including NATO. For the largest defence alliance in the world, the lessons learned from out-of-area operations, primarily drawn from the Afghanistan International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and NATO Mission Iraq, highlighted the necessity of integrating a people-centric strategic and operational objective in terms of understanding the human environment, protection of civilians, and a comprehensive approach.[iii] The adoption of human security for NATO has deviated from the traditional UN approach, focusing on the aspects relevant to a political-military Alliance. For many years NATO has referenced broader security challenges and, through its Strategic Concepts and Summit Communiques, has introduced language that mildly promotes the concept of human security within its traditional defence posture. For the Alliance it has increasingly become clear that, by understanding local or regional populations, military actors can have a clearer picture of social factors and potential drivers of conflict and therefore a better understanding of the operational environment. However, the road to clarity on human security has not been a straight one and numerous challenges continue to encumber the concept and its application within the defence realm.

There is currently no accepted standardised definition for human security across the United Nations nor NATO bodies. Without a distinct definition, implementation of human security will remain sporadic. Yet, despite the lack of definition and conceptual agreement, there is, however, a principal acceptance across NATO on the importance of human security writ large and its relevance to NATO’s tasks.[iv] As NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg emphasised:

Human security is at the heart of who we are and what we do: an Alliance working together to protect our people and our values—freedom, equality, human rights. Taking a human security approach is the best way to achieve lasting peace and security.[v]

Over the last few years some NATO allies have attempted to integrate human security into defence policy. Most notably, in 2021 the UK Ministry of Defence issued a Joint Service Publication which provides guidance to the UK Defence Forces on implementation of the elements under Human Security.[vi]

In response to the criticism, human security has built on the extant concepts currently used in complex operations and embraces the commonly accepted and agreed international conventions. Indeed, the last two decades has increased awareness and implementation of the cross-cutting mandates in peace operations and promoted stronger coordination between key operational actors, such as political, military, and humanitarian agencies. Protection of civilians is at the core of United Nations’ peace support operations, the application is implicit within the structure of missions and delivery against imminent threat. However, human security takes the existing practice further. A human security approach bridges military and civilian, political, and operational spaces, providing a central area for mandates to provide a central focus on the insecurities being experienced by individuals and communities to serve as a concept upon which doctrine may be based. Such doctrine could articulate where the military may operate and how it may operate in terms of supporting human security, but also where it cannot effectively operate. In turn, military forces and political (strategic) authorities will be able to better understand the role that the military can play in ensuring and building human security, thus helping to build enduring stability and peace.

Doctrine

Doctrine related to human security is currently limited to the specific elements of the Law of Armed Conflict and to niche or ad hoc manuals such as the NATO handbook on Protection of Civilians. Despite the extant doctrine that supports military operations related to human security and the ongoing strategic expectations that military forces will indeed contribute to human security, significant work is required to fully implement human security into NATO and its member nations, with human security as a fundamental part of operations, rather than an adjunct to them.[vii] With the ongoing focus in NATO on the various cross-cutting themes, the continual review of NATO doctrine, and the growing prevalence of human security as a necessary foundation for peace, it is hoped that human security can be better incorporated as core military business. Progress in the field requires a proper understanding of, and ordering of, the constituent elements of human security; otherwise, not harmonized, coherent visualization and approach can be achieved.

To better incorporate the military’s support to human security into the military mindset as a standard consideration in both operational and tactical level planning, several incremental steps are required. It is best to address this concurrently through Canadian doctrine and NATO standardisation. Firstly, a coherent definition and clear policy for human security in NATO is required based on the current five cross-cutting themes.[viii] This would support more the integration of human security into a comprehensive policy for more effective incorporation in Alliance activities. This is the basis for a shared understanding and a means by which the military can best define, visualize, explain (to strategic authorities), and implement its appropriate role in supporting human security in each operating environment. Based on this, a formal inclusion within operational design concepts should be developed describing threats that face the civilian population. From this, the logical connection to existing tactical level operations doctrine will be clearer and the links more easily established. In this way, the military’s role in human security can be articulated with minimal change to existing doctrine in Canada and NATO. This extant doctrine, including the NATO handbooks dealing with protection of civilians and building integrity, can easily be adapted with little change. In short, the tools for military support to human security exist, what is needed is an institutional and logical framework with the articulated authority and expectation that the military will have a key role in contributing to human security. This will also better support the operational art, firstly to ensure tactics come to support strategic objectives related to human security (the remit of the government) and secondly to ensure that the strategic objectives themselves are indeed supportable by military capabilities that will always be limited in the broad realm of human security.

Operations

Military planners face a conceptual challenge as they are being asked “to think about international security as something more than the military defense of state interests and territory.”[ix] They are requested to apply a mind-set that has not been highlighted in their education and, to many, is viewed as soft power which detracts from hard warfare.[x] Although much is made about the flexibility and adaptation of militaries to wield tools of soft power, it is the threat of, or direct application of force, which is most exercised by armed forces. In response to American Condoleezza Rice’s remark that the U.S. 82nd Airborne was not in the business of “taking kids to kindergarten,” General Klaus Reinhardt, former commander of the Kosovo Force, has suggested that “it is the business of the military to escort children to school, if that makes people in conflict situations more secure.”[xi] It takes considerable time to develop any changes into military concepts, doctrine, and tactics, and even longer for units in the field to adopt them as ingrained operational principles and tactics.[xii] As traditional ideas die hard in the military, it will take time before military planners reflexively consider a population-centric approach and even longer before they use gender, sex, and age disaggregated analysis models to improve operational campaigns in the broader context of human security.

In considering a human security approach, military personnel may note similarities with the Comprehensive Approach, the whole-of-government approach and the Civil-Military Cooperation “Joint 9” staff branch function. Legal advisors will also see elements of International Human Rights Law in third-generation human security. For those who equate human security and the WPS agenda with International Humanitarian Law and Rules of Engagement, they may perceive human security as the emperor’s new clothes. The Gender Advisor would be correct to recognise that the human security approach overlaps with their own job description. As Vincent Curtis suggests, even though a task is not explicitly labelled as human security, this does not mean that human security is not being done.[xiii] Stability operations, “three block warfare”[xiv] and even “clear, hold and build” have been described as building, or including, human security.

Although the terminology may be new or different, the tools to realise the concept may well already exist, and such appears to be the case with human security. At the strategic level, consideration of objectives related to the well-being and security of a population has become common practice and the philosophy of comprehensive approach brings together the most appropriate agencies to achieve those objectives under strategic authorities, by identifying and addressing the root causes of instability and threats to security, using the best elements of power and agencies available. This is of course realised through the operational level and its operations design and campaign plan that sees the application of capabilities to achieve these objectives in harmony with other agencies. As discussed, this can easily be enhanced by the adoption of a human security approach as a martial philosophy and as a standard line of operation within a campaign, to be refined as the situation and strategic direction dictate. Finally, a well-established body of doctrine exists in NATO and its member nations for the tactical operations and tasks needed to support the building of human security, namely the body of stability operations and activities. Overarching all of this is the requirement for tactical level commanders, at the lowest levels, to be mentally prepared to transition to understanding local insecurities quickly as the need arises and situation demands.[xv] It is important to note that most cross-cutting topics within human security are quantifiable as tactical tasks, thus the extant doctrine for stability operations and tasks remains applicable. While gender is an important facet of human security, the Women, Peace and Security agenda is better considered as a lens or framework through which the operating environment is assessed, objectives are conceived, and operations conducted. It therefore sits above and around and acts as a foundation of human security, rather than sitting in competition with human security and its constituent elements.

Conclusion

The military’s role in relation to human security is vital. As a strategic instrument of national or coalition power, it will be expected to play a role, from the strategic to the tactical. The military can be guided by a philosophical approach at the highest levels, realised through a standing line of operation at the operational level that ensures a constant attention to human security, all implemented through a known and well-practiced set of tactical operations and tasks, harmonised in execution with the efforts of other agencies. Certainly, the NATO human security approach recognizes that the military has limitations in terms of temporal strategic direction and capabilities needed to create many aspects of human security, particularly as related to governance and development issues. But these limitations, well vocalised to strategic authorities by senior military commanders to set expectations, are not impediments to military forces supporting the most urgent and fundamental aspects of human security, namely protection of civilians, helping to ensure basic needs and contributing to an overall secure environment. Not only are there moral requirements for this support, but there are practical requirements in that it gives campaigning military forces a legitimacy and moral certitude which provides a strategic advantage over adversaries and competitors and helps build the pillars of enduring stability. Human security should be advanced through a logical framework properly ordering the elements of human security and cascading into military doctrine and means.

End Notes:

[1]. Roland Paris, “Human Security: Paradigm Shift or Hot Air?” International Security 26, no. 2 (2001): 87.

[2]. UNDP, Human Development Report 1994: New Dimensions of Human Security (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), https://hdr.undp.org/content/human-development-report-1994.

[i]. Our North, Strong and Free: A Renewed Vision for Canada’s Defence - Canada.ca Accessed April 8, 2024. p. 7,

[ii]. Our North, Strong and Free: A Renewed Vision for Canada’s Defence - Canada.ca Accessed April 8, 2024. p. 14,

[iii]. Trevor Schenk, “ISAF Mission In Afghanistan: Lessons Learned”, NATO Association of Canada, September 11, 2014, https://natoassociation.ca/isaf-mission-in-afghanistan-lessons-learned/#:~:text=They%20learned%20to%20use%20tactical,and%20development%20rather%20than%20fighting.

[iv]. For additional cases and reflections on defining human security broadly or narrowly, and the challenges and limitations involved, refer to Part III of Evolving Human Security: Considerations for Canada’s Military (CDA Press, 2023), in which Wilfrid Greaves and Myriam Denov offer their analyses.

[v]. NATO, “NATO to Step Up Work on Human Security Approach,” NATO Press Release (February 25, 2021), https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_181798.htm.

[vi]. United Kingdom, Ministry of Defence (MOD), Human Security in Defence: Incorporating Human Security in the way we Operate, Joint Service Publication 985, 1 (London: Ministry of Defence, 2021), https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/human-security-in-defence-jsp-985.

[vii]. This issue is reflected in the fact that the NATO handbook was produced by J9 staff rather than J3 staff.

[viii]. NATO structures its human security focus around five, non-exhaustive, cross-cutting themes: (i) Protection of Civilians (POC); (ii) Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC); (iii) Countering Trafficking in Human Beings; (iv) Preventing and Responding to Conflict-Related Sexual Violence (CRSV); and (v) Cultural Property Protection (CPP).

[ix]. Roland Paris, “Human Security: Paradigm Shift or Hot Air?,” International Security 26, no. 2 (2001): 87.

[x]. S. Heffer, “England Sleeps Again While Our Enemies Rage,” The Telegraph, July 15, 2015, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/11717966/England-sleeps-again-as-our-enemies-rampage.html.

[xi]. Quote from the Study Group on Europe’s Security Capabilities, cited in M. Glasius, “Human Security from Paradigm Shift to Operationalization: Job Description for a Human Security Worker,” Security Dialogue 39, no. 1 (March 2008): 46. https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010607086822.

[xii]. Oxford Research Group, What Would Military Security Look Like Through a Human Security Lens? Report of a NATO Advanced Research Workshop on “Reconciling the requirements of contemporary operations with the needs of human security” (ARW 981712) held by Oxford Research Group, Oxfordshire, September 2006 (January 2007). https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/43693/07-01%20What%20would%20military%20security%20look%20like.pdf.

[xiii]. J. Curtis, “Human Security and the Canadian Armed Forces,” International Journal 60, no. 1 (2004): 273–278. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40204033.

[xiv]. Krulak in J.C. Anderson, Changing the Game: Human Security as Grand Strategy (Carlisle Barracks, PA: United States Army War College Press, Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute, 2014). https://publications.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/1263.pdf.

[xv]. Canada, National Defence, Land Operations, 3–23.