States in Southeast Asia adopted the concept to defend their...

States in Southeast Asia adopted the concept to defend their national boundaries from both military and non military threats. Malaysia, an Islamic country, for instance, declared illicit drug, what is today’s nontraditional security issue, as a threat to its national security in 1983, during the Cold War. Closer assessment revealed that while many nontraditional issues, including HIV-AIDS, considered as threats, but there appears to be no common understanding of what human security is all about.

Similarly, the problems of diluting the concept of human security by making all issues somehow relate to it, presents another challenge. Like others, the author tends to agree that there should be a boundary to differentiate what constitute threats. As discussed, human security is about protection of the people. The author has mentioned elsewhere that threat to security of the people at least can be grouped into three categories.

First, societal security, which includes security for the most vulnerable groups such as the impoverished, the disabled, ethnic minority groups, and women and children. The second category refers to the threats to human security due to the unevenness of globalization. The third refers to threats to the survival of individuals which include the preservation of the quality of life (Zarina 2006). In addition to those categories, in Asia, we should add another important term.

This is what this author refers to as “human safety.” An important question that needs to be examined is the vulnerability of the people due to the many natural disaster such as volcanic eruptions, floods, tsunamis, hurricanes and may more.

It is proposed that threats to these people can not be grouped under human security rather they are the victims of human safety.[i] Thus based on this definition, we can sum up that human safety refer to the safety of the people due to the unintended threats while human security refers to the intended (controllable) threats one of which is the armed conflicts, illegal activities of organized crime, landmines, and others.

Following the above definition, threats to human security is therefore preventable. (The above discussion can be summarize as follows) Characteristics of Comprehensive Security and Human Security Source: Zarina Othman, “Human Security Concepts, Approaches and Debates in SE Asia” (AFES Press2007). Previous…