Human Security and the SDGs: Rebalancing Security Discourse in a Pandemic World

This chapter explores the relevance of human security to SDG 16 against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. In so doing it identifies ways in which the concept can be framed and deployed to prioritize the needs of individuals and communities in a manner that reprioritizes local voices in the Global Governance of Violence. This chapter asserts that human security should be a core narrative for achieving the aims of SDG 16, but that for it to achieve the aims of more just societies, the insights of disaster studies, and crucially of the growing focus on intersections of vulnerabilities is essential. In so doing we can shift away from a focus on disaggregated individuals to better appreciate how sources of human insecurity play out in complex ways

Securitization of HIV/AIDS in context: gendered vulnerability in Burundi

In this article, it is argued that concerns about the impact of HIV/AIDS on national and international security do not adequately address the ways in which people, particularly women, are made vulnerable to HIV/AIDS in conflicts. In fact, policies inspired by the security framing of HIV/AIDS can engender new vulnerabilities in post-conflict contexts. The article analyses the ways in which gender relations create vulnerabilities for various groups when such relations are put under pressure during periods of conflict. Drawing on research conducted in Burundi, the article argues that postulated links between security and HIV/AIDS fail to take into account the vulnerability structures that exist in societies, the ways in which these are instrumentalized during conflict and in post-conflict contexts, and how they are also maintained and changed as a result of people's experiences during conflict