What Might Human Security Thinking Contribute Towards Arab Region Social Development and Positive Peace ?

This paper explores claims that the human security approach can contribute to social development
analysis, with special reference to the Arab region and understandings of and responses to conflict.
It considers ideas in a series of United NaVons documents, including the 1994 global Human
Development Report (HDR) that arVculated a human security perspecVve, through the 2009 Arab
HDR that applied and extended the perspecVve, to the 2022 UNDP Special Report on Human
Security and the 2022 global HDR ‘Uncertain Times, Unse]led Lives’. It asks whether elements of
human security thinking add something disVncVve to other current internaVonal development
policy languages, including the SDGs, human development, risk, vulnerability and resilience,
ciVzenship, and social contract. To do this it undertakes an inventory of human security thinking,
under four headings: a) human security as concept and objecVve; b) elements of an analyVcal
framework for understanding (non-)fulfilment of that objecVve; c) elements of a policy orientaVon
for pursuing the objecVve; d) parVcular research and planning tools. It reviews a series of UN-system
documents, including also the Arab HDR 2022, and associated literature. The study suggests that
human security thinking adds to agendas of social development and peace an umbrella framework
for connecVng and moVvaVng narrower streams of work, such as on risk, resilience, and social
contracts; and also the following: modificaVon of the prioriVsing language of ‘security’ by a focus
on basic needs; a stronger integraVng cross-sector focus; greater a]enVon to percepVons and
feelings concerning security and insecurity, dignity and indignity, and to the conflict potenVal of felt
indignity; and greater a]enVon to human solidarity, intra-naVonally and globally, with emphases on
common (shared) security and shared human idenVty. It proposes that human security thinking can
strengthen the diagnosVc and moVvaVonal content of social development analysis and orient it
be]er towards promoVng posiVve peace.