The Importance of Care in the Theory and Practice of Human Security.

The concept of ‘human security’ has been the focus of much attention in both academic and policy circles since the end of the Cold War. Broadly speaking, this approach was characterized by, first, a shift from the state to the individual as the primary referent of security, and second, a broadening of the sources of insecurity beyond direct military threats to include, especially economic insecurity. This approach sees human rights as central to human security; thus, the human security approach is usually constructed as an ‘ethical alternative’ to realist conceptions of national security, which focus exclusively on state interest.While this would suggest that human security could accommodate the issues relating to women and gender, this paper will argue that this is not the case. By exploring the discourse of human security, the paper will expose its still militarized, and highly gendered, assumptions about the nature of security and humanitarianism. The dominant constructions of ‘human security’ obscure from view the nature, causes and consequences of insecurity for many of the world’s women, their families and their communities. This paper will seek to reconceptualize human security from the perspective of a critical, feminist ethics of care; here, security is understood as relational … I will argue that making human security ‘care-based’â€"rather than rights-based -- is integral to its success both conceptually and operationally. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]