Operationalizing Human Security: What Role for the Responsibility to Protect?

The concept of human security, whose origin could be traced back to the 1994 Human Development Report published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) represents an ambitious attempt to broaden the meaning of security and, perhaps most importantly, challenge the state-centric notion of national security. A resolution (A/RES/66/290) adopted by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in September 2012 has, for the first time in UN history, formally recognized human security as an approach to ‘assist Member States in identifying and addressing widespread and cross-cutting challenges to the survival, livelihood and dignity of their people’. While the discussion of the human security concept continued within the UN, the advocacy of key UN member states for human security had been shifted to the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Considering the fact that the potential role of the R2P to promote and operationalize human security has not been adequately explored, this article seeks to understand the positive potential role that R2P can play in operationalizing human security by exploring the relationship between the two. Acknowledging the efforts of Lloyd Axworthy, the former Canadian foreign minister, in situating ‘human security in the R2P era’, this article argues that R2P plays an important role in clarifying the scope and sharpening the focus of human security. This, therefore, can help strengthen the implementation of the human security concept.