Peoples, Rights and Development: the Recipe for Peace
People must be at the centre of any effort to promote peace, prosperity and sustainable development. This may sound as a banal, rhetoric statement. Yet nowadays, threats to the so-called “human security” are very much overshadowed by a focus on the overarching threats to state security, national interests and economies. Factors such as human rights violations and abuses; limitations to religious freedom or belief; the lack of a free and independent press; the right to adequate living standards; access to quality education, jobs, food, and health; inadequate levels of social welfare; violent extremism; forced displacement, and many others; all of these are as important as macroeconomic and “macrosecurity” issues, as they undermine human security. Threats to individuals and communities do not simply hamper human development, but they can progressively erode the stability of the state and jeopardize sustainable and lasting peace in the entire region. Afghanistan is the most blatant example, but also Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and the countries of the Sahel are cases in point. What is “human security” today and why is it important? How should the region’s political and social actors address human security issues? Is an integrated MENA approach to this subject possible?
