The Limits of the human security agenda: the case of Canada's response to the Timor crisis

Enthusiasts of human security argue that what is needed in the post‐Cold‐War period is a foreign policy agenda that is more ‘people‐centred’ than the state‐centred focus of security policy during the Cold War period. Among the most enthusiastic proponents of the human security paradigm in the 1990s was the Canadian government, which, in partnership with a number of other like‐minded governments, sought to press the human security agenda, taking a number of human security initiatives. However, since the late 1990s, we have seen a paradox: the concept has attracted increased attention from scholars while its salience among policy‐makers appears to be declining. Using the case of the Canadian government's policy towards the crisis in Timor in September 1999, we explore the difficulty that policy‐makers have had in moving human security from the rhetorical realm to the level of concrete policy that makes a difference to the safety of people whose security is threatened. We conclude that there was a significant gap between Canada's human security rhetoric and Ottawa's actual policy in Timor. While the Canadian government did eventually contribute troops to the International Force, East Timor (INTERFET), we show that Canada's response was slow, cautious, and minimalist. There was neither the willingness nor the capacity to be at the forefront of the efforts to send a robust force to East Timor. This case demonstrates some important limits of the human security agenda, and why this agenda remained so firmly in the realm of the rhetorical in the 1990s.