9 October 2020, NIICE Commentary 6114
Waseem Ahmad Bhat & Adil Qayoom Mallah
The contemporary world is an insecure place, full of threats on many fronts. Natural disasters, violent conflicts, chronic and persistent poverty, pandemics, terrorism and sudden economic and financial downturns can impose significant threats for the prospects of sustainable development, peace, order and stability. Such crises are complex, entailing multiple forms of human insecurity.
When insecurities overlap, they can grow exponentially spreading into all aspects of people’s lives, destroying entire communities and crossing national borders. The human security approach provides a new way of thinking about the range of challenges that the world confronts and how the global community responds them.
Human security is about security for the people, rather than for states or governments. The advocates of human security look not only at threats to the survival and safety of the individual from violent conflicts but also from such non-violent factors as poverty, disease, environmental degradation and natural disasters. Subsequently, it has been reinforced by new security threats such as genocides, financial meltdowns and global pandemics.
At present, the world is confronting the biggest pandemic – COVID-19 (Coronavirus) that emerged in the Wuhan city of China in December 2019. The spread of this pandemic remains unabated, impacting nearly 85 percent of the globe. Surprisingly, the worst affected are the developed economies of the Europe and the United States, despite their advanced health care systems and a very favourable doctor-population ratio. No vaccine has been developed so far, yet certain preventive measures can help in minimizing the impact of this deadly virus, such as frequent hand washing, coughing into the bend of one’s elbow and maintaining physical distance etc.
COVID-19 is not the first human security threat of its kind faced by the world community. There have been threats like Ebola, SARS, HIV/AIDS, Global Warming, Bird Flu etc. Though these have not been eliminated completely, yet controlled to a large extent. What makes COVID-19 such a global threat is the rate at which it has spread and the rate of intensity at which it has multiplied its victims.
The COVID-19 pandemic has touched each and every aspect of human life, be it socio-cultural, political or economic. The impact has been such that the whole world is in lockdown. From most advanced countries to least developed, it has left no one unaffected. The world is facing the financial meltdown which has culminated into the death of thousands of lives.
The workers associated with informal sector have to face the brunt of the crises all over the world. India is no exception to this pandemic. The International Labour Organization (ILO) reported in April 2020 that if the lockdown in India continues, it may push 400 million informal sector workers into deep poverty. The report further says, India is among the countries ill equipped to handle the situation, as they have limited access to basic services, particularly health and sanitation; decent work; social protection and safety, has weak institutions and social dialogue is impaired or absent.
As the COVID-19 is a pandemic which has spread around the world, it needs greater cooperation to combat this deadly virus at international, national and local level. The precautions and preventive measures need to be adhered by the people vis-à-vis the governments, have to make sure that the security threats other than COVID-19 does not take toll on the human beings (like Hunger, Starvation, Poverty, Mal-nutrition etc.). Indeed, these are the testing times for the governments as well as the people. It is very important that they work in coordination and cooperate with each other so that the most vulnerable sections, the poor, the marginalized can be taken care off and the lives can be saved. The people need to play an active and positive role in defeating this newly emerged security threat till the antidote arrives.
To sum up, the COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the traditional notion of security, and there is increasing acceptance that focusing on the traditional notion of security would no longer suffice, the nation-states and the international community must develop new responses to ensure the protection of people from transnational dangers in an era of globalization. International community is combating a threat where it has to find ways of promoting human security as a means of addressing a growing range of complex transnational dangers (among which COVID-19 is one) which is having a much more drastic and destructive impact on the lives of the people than conventional military threats.
