Human Security Agenda & Responsibility to Protect

"Human security insists that we focus on the safety of ordinary people rather than on the security of the state."

The main idea behind Canadian Foreign Policy  in the 1990's was the human security agenda backed by Canada's minister of foreign affairs, Lloyd Axworthy. I believe, the concept of the human security agenda is, in theory, a good one. In fact it vaguely resembles another concept that I am very fond of called cosmopolitanism. The security of the people over the security of the state is an idea waiting to be realized. Of course that's not to say the security of the state is unimportant. The integrity of a nation is very important, and yet wouldn't you say that a nation can only be what it is because of the people? After all what is Canada without it's people and it's cultural values? So I think it's wise that security of the people would push security of the state to a close second on the list of interests.

When I say interests it brings to mind the juxtaposition of interests and values in relation to a country's foreign policies. Choosing between a countries interests within or between other countries, in comparison to their morals and values about the issue at hand. This article that I'm responding to deals with the Human Security Agenda and Canada's Response to the crisis in East Timor in the late 1990's. It outlines Canada's support for the Human Security agenda and then examines Canada's foreign policy as it responded to the Timor Crisis. The article also brings to light the juxtaposition of Canada's words and their actions at the time.

The Human Security agenda would fall under the category of values in the Realism v. Idealism discussion. When aid was called for in East Timor the Canadian government found itself having to decide between Moral Politik and Real Politik. "... a hard calculation of interests led to the conclusion that there were in fact no Canadian interests that warranted more than a token and symbolic contribution to the efforts to end the threat for the safety of East Timorese." If Canada had really been behind their support of the Human Security Agenda, that could not have been their conclusion. Clearly Canada was not ready for such grand ideals.

The concept of the Human Security agenda is still a very good one, although it definitely needs some fine tuning. It's a very sweeping and open ended concept that attempts to encompass all problems which always begs the question, "what do we do first?" Given the experience of East Timor, the human security agenda does not seem to be a viable foundation for Canadian foreign policy, but given the right attention and it could be refined and made better so that one day maybe it could become a viable foundation. The right principles are there, but as for execution Canada fell short. But we can only learn from our mistakes. We shouldn't just chuck the agenda out the window because we failed to put it into practice.

General sweeping statement of the day: We can only learn from the mistakes of the past.

And that would be the view from the north.