Abstract

Jyoti Singh

The world today is facing a wide range of crises and instabilities, causing immense suffering to millions of people and threatening the security of human family into the future. Sometimes, the government that is considered as the fundamental purveyor of security often fails in its obligations and at times becomes itself a threat to its own people most obviously in extreme cases of repressive or failed states. Even in the democratic societies, sometime the acts of government also hurt the rights and safety of individuals. Besides, the threats like war, nuclear weapons, terrorism, environmental degradation, poverty, hunger are also risks to the security of human beings. In the case of Third World countries, these threats become over-determined and complex. Great power tension and stockpiles of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons would negatively affect everyone’s safety. Sometimes violent death dehumanization, deprivation, domination influence one’s safety. To get rid of all these threats, there is a need to change the attention of the world from military or state security to that of human security. There is a strong need to protect the people’s lives from all the critical and pervasive threats. In this paper, an attempt has been made to present a critical analysis of this concept.