Cuestiones de derecho

There is considerable debate as to the meaning and utility of the concept of human security and there are varying approaches to its study. At the same time, despite scepticism among international relations and traditional security academics as to the validity and utility of the concept of human security, it has, with the adoption of the narrow definition, found extensive support in the fields of critical security studies and research on conflict and conflict resolution. It has also gained a high profile among policy makers and international activists in pursuit of peace and human rights agendas. Many academics in international relations and security areas have found it difficult to reconcile security with individuals and groups and therefore continue to adhere to existing theories of state-centric security. There are chinks in the armour and the broad concept of human security is making inroads into the international relations and security disciplines. There is a certain pressure coming from other disciplines such as anthropology where a range of social conditions is being studied in terms of security. There is little to support a view that human security must be only about critical issues and determined by some form of measurable threshold. Indeed, such a demand exceeds the security practice of states, which identify and address all forms of perceived threats and vulnerabilities, not only critical ones. Security practice by states, in peacetime in particular, is mainly about preventing issues from attaining a critical status – be it diplomatically or through military posture.

There is still much research to be done to locate human security within the wider security framework. A start has been made through critical theory studies and through the attempts to formulate development programmes from a human security perspective in Afghanistan. These approaches reveal that human security must be about the actual circumstances of individuals and groups, and about state and international influences on that condition. Human security is either part of a continuum of security from the individual to state to the international, or it may be considered an area of security alongside international security, national security,

environmental security, economic security and so on. I argue that the former is more realistic (as the SARS and Avian Flu examples above demonstrate) and so the next chapter explores how the dominant security policies and practices of other states, as well as domestic events, created decades of human insecurity in Cambodia through war and other forms of violence. The international, national and individual cannot be de-linked in the security context.

I have shown, too, that there is a close link between the human security condition associated with war and violence, and development. Failures in development are shown to be part of the causes of war and violence and, at the same time, development is a critical element in the long-term security of post-conflict states. Studies have variously suggested that human security is guaranteed by such things as the state, civil society, governance, adherence to the rule of law, democratisation or development. I consider all of these are relevant and have also embraced human rights and human development as important contributors to human security—though some would see these as adequate to achieving humanitarian outcomes making the concept of human security redundant. What I have concluded to be critical, however, is how people at the local level identify problems and issues which threaten their basic livelihoods and dignity and what opportunities they have to address these individually, as a group or in association with state and independent institutions.

This chapter concludes that human security must be defined in the broad sense. However, rather than try to produce yet another definition, I have adopted the very open approach of Thakur for the purpose of fieldwork that “… human security refers to the quality of life of the people of a society or polity. Anything which degrades their quality of life – demographic pressures, diminished access to or stock of resources, and so on – is a [human] security threat.”135 As noted above, I also use the definition proposed by the Commission for Africa which incorporates the important provisions of the role of governance, for analytical purposes.

What has also been concluded is that security studies have not focused attention on the predicament of individuals and communities and how they may relate to state, regional and global security. In the next two chapters, therefore, I will demonstrate

how individual and community security have been caught up in international security practice in Cambodia, and how human insecurities persist long into the post-conflict period despite the high level of international development assistance.

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I think Cambodia has an importance beyond itself, because there in its fragile heart paraded, throughout the 1970s, many of the most frightful beasts that now stalked the world. Brutal civil war, superpower intervention carelessly conducted from afar, nationalism exaggerated into paranoid racism, fanatical and vengeful revolution, invasion, starvation and back to unobserved civil war without end.1

The fundamental components of human security – the security of people against threats to personal safety and life expectancy – can be put at risk by external aggression, but also by factors within a country, including ‘security’ forces.2

As Shawcross points out, Cambodians in the 1970s faced some of the worst conditions imaginable and human security was denied to the majority of the population through war and state violence against its own citizens. However, the insecurity of Cambodians was not always a result of domestic factors and the international politics of the cold war played a significant role in the people’s ongoing distress. With the decline of the cold war, the international community played a belated role in bringing a peace settlement to what had become Cambodia’s civil war. It also brought the hope that democracy and development would bring a significant improvement to the human security situation.

The purpose of this chapter is twofold. First, to show that in addition to domestic issues, international security practice and the way in which external states use both military and political power in their own interests, contributed directly to creating and maintaining human insecurity in Cambodia in the 1970s and 1980s. Secondly, to outline the processes of state rebuilding by the Vietnamese installed government of Heng Samrin following the destruction of the Pol Pot years, and the later rebuilding under the auspices of an internationally sponsored post-conflict development assistance programme.

1 _{Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia, 14.} 2 _{Thakur, "A Political Worldview," 347.}

Cambodians through their long history have been subject to the violence of war as a result of tensions with neighbours, rebel activities, banditry and in colonial times in particular, military responses to rural instability. They have also been subject to the harsh demands of a predatory state and the social disruption produced by economic and political change. While it is possible only to hint at the human insecurities present in Cambodia’s early periods, it is important to outline the process of Cambodian state formation and the major forces that have shaped it, because it brings its own social, political and administrative legacy and has a bearing on later events and on human security in Cambodian in more recent times. I have therefore provided, at Appendix A, a short historical background to state formation in Cambodia and to events leading to the 1970 coup which sent Cambodia into the spiral of war and human insecurity.

Cambodia’s descent into war and related violence is outlined from a human rather than state security perspective. The following two sections provide an overview of the different situations of human insecurity endured by Cambodians, in war and as refugees, as a result in part of domestic politics and in part, also, of the security politics of external states. A section is then devoted to the reconstruction of the communist state in Cambodia following the demise of the Pol Pot regime and describes the revival of patrimonial government systems which form the basis for a new state rebuilding exercise taken up by the international development community. The final section outlines the new international engagement with Cambodia through extensive democratisation and development assistance programmes. International assistance in Cambodia is a continuation of international security practice in the belief that democracy and development will bring economic benefit, stability and security to Cambodia and to the region.

The chapter argues that although human security is an essentially local condition, it is not only a domestic issue of state governance but is also strongly influenced by the security interests and practices of other states and of international governance organisations. It will demonstrate how international humanitarian efforts and peace negotiations themselves were at times hampered by the separate security interests of the states involved in the Cambodian conflict. There is evidence of such influence in many aspects of the human insecurities suffered by Cambodians in different situations since the 1970s. Even after the negotiation of the peace agreement, the

international community continued to have an influence on the human security of Cambodians through the development policies and programmes proposed by Western development theories and development organisations such as the World Bank and UNDP.

Cambodia – conflict, devastation and reconstruction 1960-2004