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"Human Security" published on by Oxford University Press.

Human security is understood as a reponse to the proliferation of new security threats which fit awkwardly within the relatively narrow confines of the traditional, state-centric national security paradigm. This volume serves as a valuable compilation of a disparate discourse and a core reference for scholars and practitioners

"Since the end of the Cold War, Human Security has become an important approach in international politics, law, and political science. In contrast to the so-called 'Westphalian System' that knows only states as subjects and objects of security, human security aims at the security of individual human beings if failed or failing states do not protect them nor provide for their basic needs. Thereby, such heterogeneous forms of security as security from war, food security, energy security or security from crime and traffic accidents become common problems of international politics. Developing this new concept of security, UN documents as well as some experts suggest that the extended concept of security is a recurrence of the premodern concept of security that prevailed before the clear-cut distinction between domestic and international politics and the evolution of the system of states. This introduction discusses contributions on the premodern and contemporary history of (human) security and tries to assess the heuristic potential of the concept for historical research." (author's abstract)

There is a real security gap in the world today. Millions of people in regions like the Middle East or East and Central Africa or Central Asia where new wars are taking place live in daily fear of violence. Moreover new wars are increasingly intertwined with other global risks the spread of disease, vulnerability to natural disasters, poverty and homelessness. Yet our security conceptions, drawn from the dominant experience of World War II and based on the use of conventional military force, do not reduce that insecurity; rather they make it worse. This book is an exploration of this security gap. It makes the case for a new approach to security based on a global conversation- a public debate among civil society groups and individuals as well as states and international institutions. The chapters follow on from Kaldors path breaking analysis of the character of new wars in places like the Balkans or Africa during the 1990s. The first four chapters provide a context; they cover the experience of humanitarian intervention, the nature of American power, the new nationalist and religious movements that are associated with globalization, and how these various aspects of current security dilemmas have played out in the Balkans. The last three chapters are more normative, dealing with the evolution of the idea of global civil society, the relevance of just war theory in a global era, and the concept of human security and what it might mean to implement such a concept. This book will appeal to all those interested in issues of peace and conflict, in particular to students of politics and international relations.

An at-a-glance illustrated guide to global and regional trends in human insecurity, the miniAtlas provides a succinct introduction to today's most pressing security challenges. It maps political violence, the links between poverty and conflict, assaults on human rights including the use of child soldiers and the causes of war and peace.