The State of Human Security

11 September 2012, 1036 EDT

Eleven years ago today, the human security threat on many policy-makers’ minds was attacks against civilians by transnational terror networks. So it’s a good moment to reflect on the state of human security today – both the issue agenda in this network and the global burden of other human security problems, and particularly the gap between the threats people face and the issues that get global policy attention.

This week I’m attending the Cluster Munitions Convention Third Meeting of States Parties (3MSP) in Oslo, and I was invited to speak on “neglected human security issues” at a seminar for Youth Delegates organized by the NGO Norwegian People’s Aid. As I often do, I delivered my remarks with accompanying video, so here is the YouTube version (minus throat-clearing) for those interested. More updates from the 3MSP conference will arrive presently.

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Charli Carpenter is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She is the author of 'Innocent Women and Children': Gender, Norms and the Protection of Civilians (Ashgate, 2006), Forgetting Children Born of War: Setting the Human Rights
Agenda in Bosnia and Beyond (Columbia, 2010), and ‘Lost’ Causes: Agenda-Setting in Global Issue Networks and the Shaping of Human Security (Cornell, 2014). Her main research interests include national security ethics, the protection of civilians, the laws of war, global agenda-setting, gender and political violence, humanitarian affairs, the role of information technology in human security, and the gap between intentions and outcomes among advocates of human security.