6 Human Security

The 1994 UNDP Human Development Report shifted security's referent from the state to the individual: freedom from fear and freedom from want. Its seven categories (memorize): economic security, food security, health security, environmental security, personal security, community security, political security. The doctrine's significance: legitimized interventions for people (the 2005 World Summit's endorsement of the Responsibility to Protect being the institutional high-water mark), broadened security agendas (pandemics, trafficking, climate), and reshaped development policy. Critique: analytical sprawl (if everything is security, nothing is — the Paris school's objection); a Trojan horse for intervention; and the securitization trap (framing poverty as threat can militarize aid). Nepal: the concept fits the national experience precisely — the conflict's civilian toll, the peace process's "relief, reconstruction and reintegration," disaster risk (the 2015 earthquake as the human-security event of the generation), labour migrants' protection as a security matter, and the National Security Policy's widening scope. For the law student: human security is the normative bridge between human rights (below) and state security — and the vocabulary of Nepal's international advocacy.