With the broadening of the security agenda to human security and the emergence of new concepts such as 'responsibility to protect', a number of topics have emerged that can be studied from a regional perspective. Amongst them are democracy and regional approaches to states emerging from crises, regional dimensions of the tensions between public security and human rights or the relation between regional identities and the quest for peace and security. Currently our mean focus of research is on:

1. Regional identities and the quest for peace and security

Concomitant to the dissolution and movement of borders that is intrinsic to regional integration are changes in people’s identities. While these changes can generate strife, they also present an opportunity for (new) productive and peaceful relations with others. The aim of this project is twofold: first, to explore how regional, national, ethnic and other identities are being formulated and how these promote conflict or peace, and second, to generate identity discourse that promote peace and human security. Thus, the work aims both to illuminate the process of meaning (identity) construction and to provide discursive tools that can be employed to promote respect among all peoples. The format will be an edited book in which the various chapters explore different regions of the world. Introductory chapters will set the work within a theoretical background that draws upon multiple disciplines and provide a methodological framework for analysis, which will facilitate a comparative approach. Consecutive volumes to the initial book will endeavour to explore this topic with greater depth and nuance in specific world regions, beginning with Africa.

Contact person: Nikki Slocum-Bradley

2. Delivering Human Security through Multi-Level Governance

This project is the result of cooperation between staff working in their personal capacity of UNU-CRIS and UNDP in Brussels. Both UN entities share an interest: in contributing to the mutual reinforcement of global and regional governance structures. Hence, the idea emerged to embark upon a joint intellectual exercise to analyse the implications of the concept of human security for interactions between global, regional and local governance actors, in order to offer policy reflections and operational tools to those responsible for putting human security into practice.

The quest for human security can be seen as part of a broader paradigm shift from government to governance. In the old paradigm, states were considered to have a monopoly on the provision of public goods, including security. States were depicted as the sovereign building blocks of an international order. In the new paradigm, states are no longer seen as the sole provider of public goods. Other actors such as NGOs or regional organisations also play a role. At the same time, the two-level approach to international relations (level one being the state and level two, intergovernmental organisations) is being replaced by a much more complex multi-level system of governance that also involves local, sub-national providers of public goods as well as regional governance actors acting at a supranational but not a global level. If one adds to that complexity the fact that meanwhile all kinds of new security threats have been put on the agenda, it becomes clear that there is a need for new thinking about security that is adapted to this new reality of multilevel governance and to expanded concepts of security.

Concepts play a major role in thinking, debating upon and shaping the world. Using new concepts is therefore not neutral. They can be an instrument of change in their own right. Human security is such a concept with the power to change approaches to security and it already represents new shared understanding in International Relations. Yet it is also an ambiguous and elastic concept that needs further analysis. This project aims to contribute to that analysis through a multi-level, governance-based approach to human security.

Contact person: Tiziana Scaramagli