Citation

Gama C. J. Hum. Secur. 2009; 5(1): [9]-31.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, Librello Publishing)

DOI

10.3316/JHS0501009

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In this paper, the United Nations (UN) is represented as a reflective international organisation whose major organisational activities fall into the area of peace operations (PO), an endeavour in which the UN has been engaged since the mid-1950s, even though there is no provision for peace operations in its Charter. Enter Human Security (HS): a socio-political innovation that brings with it consequences for the praxis of international organisations such as the UN, and for academic debates on security in general. HS may prove hard to define in clear-cut fashion - it is an ambiguous concept aimed at ambiguous practices. But HS's ambiguity matches the UN's own ambiguity - an organisation born out of a fragile compromise between security and development issues. Indeed, over a short time, HS has become an instrument for institutional integration.