Human Security Report 2005
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Human Security Report 2005 is a report outlining declining world trends of global violence from the early 1990s to 2003. The study reports major worldwide declines in the number of armed conflicts, genocides, human rights abuses, military coups and international crises, as well as in the number of battle-related deaths per armed conflict.
Three years in the making and finished in 2005, the report was produced by the Human Security Centre at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia and cost approximately US $2.5 million. The Human Security Report is very similar to the long-running Peace and Conflict series. According to Centre Director, Andrew Mack, the Human Security Centre will publish a 'Brief' in late 2006 and a double–issue Human Security Report in 2007. The complete Human Security Report 2005 can be read online for free; it was also published as a book by Oxford University Press in January 2006 (ISBN 0195307399).
According to the report, the world saw a shift in global security after the end of the Cold War with a 40% decrease in the number of armed conflicts being waged around the world since the early 1990s, and an 80% decrease of genocides between 1998 and 2001, notwithstanding the atrocities that took place in the Balkans and Rwanda in the last decade.
Some critics have questioned the relevance of this data noting that conflict and violence are still significant obstacles for human development, worldwide security and sustainable peace. For example, the latest UN Human Development Report agrees that the number of conflicts has declined in the last decade, but claims that the wars of the past 15 years have exterminated a larger number of human lives. The Human Security Report argues that there is no evidence to support such a contention. The Report claims that the average number of battle-related deaths per conflict has declined from some 38,000 in 1950 to just 600 in 2002. There are no accurate data on the (much larger) number of people who die from war–exacerbated disease and malnutrition, but the Report argues that there are good reasons for believing that these have declined as well.
Due to the constraints of finding current information, the 2005 Human Security Report is only based on data collected up to 2003; therefore, the Report's statistics do not include all the deaths from the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, or the crisis in Darfur. New data collated by the Human Security Centre will be used to argue that there has been no reversal in the decline in the number or deadliness of armed conflicts to the end of 2005. While there has been a dramatic increase in killings in Iraq since 2003 (Iraq Body Count), this has been offset by marked declines in death rates in other conflicts.
Some critics have argued that there is too much focus on battle-related 'direct' deaths in the Report, however an entire section discusses the large number of 'indirect' deaths caused by war-exacerbated malnutrition and disease. In some cases the Report says, the ratio of indirect to direct deaths is higher than 10:1. Indirect deaths––the hidden cost of war-- will be one of the two main themes of the 2006/07 Report.
The Report argues that conflict-driven disease and malnutrition are far greater threats to human security than bombs and bullets. But it also argues that indirect deaths have likely declined over the past 15 years along with battle-related deaths. However, there is no way of knowing for sure.
Indirect deaths are driven by the intensity and scope of political violence and by the numbers of persons displaced. The report argues that since both direct deaths and the numbers displacement have declined, while humanitarian assistance has increased on a per capita basis, it is highly likely that indirect deaths from war-exacerbated disease and malnutrition have also declined.
