Why does global human security need to be emphasized along with economic security? Explain with examples. (2016, 20 Marks)
For most of the twentieth century, security meant defending the state and development meant growth in national income. The UNDP Human Development Report (1994), shaped by Mahbub ul Haq, rejected both equations. It made the individual the referent object and listed economic security (an assured basic income) as one of seven components, beside food, health, environmental, personal, community and political security. The case for emphasising human security along with economic security rests on one claim: growth is a means; people are the end.
Why economic security alone is not enough
- Growth does not ensure entitlement. Amartya Sen showed in Poverty and Famines (1981) that the Bengal famine of 1943 struck without a collapse in food supply: people starved because they lost their entitlements. Development as Freedom (1999) treats development as the expansion of capabilities, not of GDP.
- Rich states are not safe states. COVID-19 killed heavily in high-income countries. UNDP’s 2022 special report found that about six in seven people felt insecure, even in countries with the highest human development.
- Violence destroys the gains of growth. Wars in Sudan, Yemen, Syria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have erased decades of development; UNHCR’s June 2026 count put the forcibly displaced at nearly 118 million.
- Hunger amid plenty. About 645 million people, 7.8% of humanity, faced hunger in 2025, though the world grows enough food.
- Insecurities markets do not price: trafficking, forced and child labour, the abuse of refugees and denial of schooling.
Why the two must go together
- Economic security is a component of human security, not its rival. Sri Lanka’s 2022 debt crisis turned a balance-of-payments failure into shortages of fuel, food and medicine within weeks.
- Human insecurity wrecks economic security in turn. The Strait of Hormuz disruption during the 2026 war on Iran threatened India’s crude, LNG and LPG supplies, and so household budgets, not only GDP.
- Priorities, not just resources. The UN Secretary-General’s report The Security We Need (September 2025) found that less than 4% of 2024 world military spending would end hunger by 2030.
- The global commons require it. Climate change, pandemics and terrorism cross borders, so no state can buy its way out alone. The Commission on Human Security (Sadako Ogata and Amartya Sen, Human Security Now, 2003) therefore paired protection by institutions with empowerment of people.
- Indian illustration: rapid growth has coexisted with child stunting, unprotected informal work, and heat and air-pollution risks. Free foodgrains under the National Food Security Act for some 81 crore people, and public health insurance, treat human security as a condition of growth, not its by-product.
Objections and reply
Stephen M. Walt (1991) warned that stretching “security” to cover pollution or disease destroys the concept’s coherence, and Roland Paris (2001) called human security too expansive to guide policy or research. Many developing states feared it could license intervention, so UNGA Resolution 66/290 (2012) separated it from the use of force and from R2P. The reply: a definition that misses most deaths from insecurity is precise but irrelevant, and Resolution 66/290 shows the concept can be bounded without being abandoned.
Conclusion
Economic security is necessary but not sufficient. Growth without freedom from fear, want and indignity produces wealthier but insecure societies, while human security without an economic base is empty. The two must advance together, with the individual as the measure, as the Sustainable Development Goals attempt.