Mitigating humanitarian crises during non-international armed conflicts:the role of human rights and ceasefire agreements

Situations of humanitarian crisis are often caused by armed conflicts. Given the prevalence of non-international armed conflicts today, ways of ameliorating these situations are at the forefront of concerns. The international humanitarian law rules governing non-international armed conflict remain much less developed than those for international armed conflicts. This is exacerbated by the lack of direct human rights obligations for non-state armed groups, which makes governing the behaviour of non-state parties to non-international armed conflicts (non-state armed groups) even more challenging. Although several initiatives have been taken to encourage non-state actors to mitigate situations of humanitarian crisis, the role of human rights law is in need of further clarification. The paper aims to assess what role human rights may have in improving humanitarian crises, suggesting one specific way: The paper will first discuss the international laws applicable to situations of non-international armed conflict, before critically analysing some of the initiatives that have already been taken to govern the behaviour of non-state armed groups. Part 3 will assess the possibility of using cease-fire agreements to impose specific human rights obligations on all parties to a non-international armed conflict. Finally, a conclusion will be drawn in Part 4 as to the role that human rights and ceasefire agreements could have during humanitarian crises

Human security-national perspectives and global agendas: insights from national human development reports

Since its introduction in UNDP's Human Development Report 1994, 'human security' has been a topic of lively debate. The purpose of this paper is to explore empirically how human security has been treated in National Human Development Reports (NHDRs), produced in 13 countries since 1997 with different definitions and points of focus. We use an inductive approach to examine how these stand up to the criticisms levelled in the literature against broader concepts of human security. The NHDRs of Afghanistan, Latvia, Macedonia and Bangladesh are of particular interest, both because of their rich analysis and because of the originality of the methodology they use. The paper concludes that broader definitions of human security are operational for both analysis and policy making. Limits to define a core of high-priority concerns with human security can be set after exploring the concerns of people in specific situations rather than before. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Human Security from Paradigm Shift to Operationalization: Job Description for a Human Security Worker

This article shows how human security has functioned as both a paradigm-shifting and a bridging concept, with its most significant implications being, first, the shift from a focus on state security to one on human rights, and, second, the indivisibility of physical and material security. The article will argue that, despite attempts at narrowing and appropriation, human security has lost neither its radical edge nor its holistic character; however, the bulk of the literature on the subject is theoretical, and there has not been a serious enough effort to operationalize the term so as to enable a real shift in policymaking. The second half of the article is an attempt to operationalize human security while respecting its paradigm-shifting and holistic character. It discusses necessary connections with wider policy shifts before outlining ways in which current intelligence, development, military and ‘state-building’ practices would have to be transformed to serve human security. Finally, a sketch is drawn of the ideal ‘human security worker’ of the future and the contexts in which she might work