GENDER AND HUMAN SECURITY:
TRANSCENDING THE NORTH/SOUTH DIVIDE
Gunhild Hoogensen
Department of Political Science,University of Tromsø
N-9037 Tromsø, Norway
tlf. +47 77645593/fax. +47 77644905
email.
## email not listed ##
DRAFT
Until the end of the Cold War, security was largely confined to the militarised and
elite notion of state security bound within an anarchic international system regulated by
superpowers. Establishing and maintaining state security did not, however, ensure individual
or community security, particularly with regard to poverty, access to basic resources and care,
and general human well-being. The security referent has moved from the state and system to
other levels such as the individual or group. The implementation of the human security
agenda, adopted by many Northern countries as a ”new” way of providing assistance to
Southern countries, was intended to eradicate both the traditional and obsolete notion of
security, and the problems associated with it, such as continuing poverty and human strife.
However, a common critique of the human security agenda is its perpetuation of the superior-
subordinate relationship such that the concept entrenches linear and elitist thinking with
regard to security. Thus far the general assumption has been that the North has eradicated its
own human security issues, and is well placed to assist the South in eradicating the same. The
result becomes an imbalance in perceptions and explanations of what occurs within and
across regions. Assuming that human security has no application in the global North serves to
disguise and prevent shared human security concerns and experiences. The bottom line is
essentially this: by securitizing the notion of security, making it narrow, we make a value
judgement about what we deem to be important (requiring extraordinary measures), and what
we deem to be less important. Sometimes we miss opportunities to take extraordinary
measures at times when things are not a traditional security issues, just because they do not
qualify.
Human security notions can nevertheless be very useful if applied in a more lateral
instead of hierarchical fashion. Thus, instead of broadly brushing one area of the world as
“secure” and another as “insecure”, we can look at securities of non-dominance. Relations of
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