Human Security: A Thematic Guidance Note for Regional and National Human Development Report Teams

Abstract Many important aspects of human development relate also to people’s security: loosely defined as people’s freedom from fear and freedom from want in a broad sense. Applying a human security approach offers an opportunity to analyse many issues in an informative way. This note explains how one might go about doing that. Human security relates to much more than security from violence and crime. A report team wanting to look at the security of people’s livelihoods (economic, food, environment or health security) might apply a human security approach. Human security can also be used to look into personal, community and political security. Indeed, human development reports from around the world have applied the approach in other innovative ways. But on each occasion, these reports have analysed a threat, or groups of threats, and how they affect particular groups of people. And so if one is interested in preparing a human development report that is focused on one or more of the threats people face, then a human security approach is worth considering. This note explains how such an approach could help, and how it might be applied.