This book critically assesses the human security challenges faced by states, focusing on how and to what extent the state is influenced by global structures and operations. Having grown rapidly since the 1990s, the field of human security has spawned a wide variety of academic research. This research has helped to reconceptualize the notion of security, both broadening and deepening it, and it has created a space where unconventional and multidimensional forms of security inform international policy practices. However, while various issues and cases of human security have received growing academic attention and policy interest, many of the existing books on human security focus primarily on non-state actors. This leaves a key question unanswered: why do sovereign states take on leadership roles in promoting human security? To answer the question of why and how national governments influence international human security policy, this volume examines the domestic political factors and structures that mediate the range of policy choices. Important domestic variables include the ‘cultural match’ (e.g., ‘Does the country often favor multilateralism and promote a rule-bound international society?’), the nature of the political interests and realities that are present (e.g., ‘Does the country see the promotion of human security as a strategic choice?’), and the occurrence of important historical events such as wars, revolutions, or natural disasters (e.g., ‘Does the country, during the crisis, help to foster a new way of managing enduring security threats?’). Using this line of analysis, the book illuminates the role of the state in handling critical human security issues and its rationale for doing so. This book will be of much interest to students of human security, peace studies, global governance, development studies and IR in general.

This volume examines the EU’s Global Strategy in relation to human security approaches to conflict. Contemporary conflicts are best understood as a social condition in which armed groups mobilise sectarian and fundamentalist sentiments and construct a predatory economy through which they enrich themselves at the expense of ordinary citizens. This volume provides a timely contribution to debates over the role of the EU on the global stage and its contribution to peace and security, at a time when these discussions are reinvigorated by the adoption of the EU Global Strategy. It discusses the significance of the Strategic Review and the Global Strategy for the re-articulation of EU conflict prevention, crisis management, peacebuilding, and development policies in the next few years. It also addresses the key issues facing EU security in the 21st century, including the conflicts in Ukraine, Libya and Syria, border security, cyber-security and the role of the private security sector. The book concludes by proposing that the EU adopts a second-generation human security approach to conflicts, as an alternative to geopolitics or the ‘War on Terror’, taking forward the principles of human security and adapting them to 21st-century realities. This book will be of interest to students of human security, European foreign and security policy, peace and conflict studies, global governance and IR in general.

The Routledge Handbook of Europe–Korea Relations provides a comprehensive overview of the changing dynamics in relations between Europe and Korea, provided by leading experts in the field. Informed by high-quality academic research and key trilateral data and statistics, this book brings scope, balance, and depth, with wide-ranging coverage examining the history of Europe-Korea relations, the Cold War, contemporary Europe-Korea and Europe-North Korea relations, Europe and inter-Korea relations within the regional context, and relations between European countries and the Korea. Through this approach, it increases awareness of the extent and intensity of the multi-faceted and multi-layered connections between the Europe and Korea. Finally, it proposes a way forward for a future relationship between Europe and the Koreas. As a key reference point, for advanced-level students, researchers, policy-makers and journalists producing, and consuming, new material in the area and beyond, it provides an essential understanding of both the historical backdrop to, and the current crisis in, this troubled peninsula. This Handbook will be an essential reference for scholars, students, researchers and practitioners interested and working in the fields of Asian Politics/ Studies, EU Politics/Studies, European Politics/Studies, Korean Politics/Studies and International Relations. The Routledge Handbook of Europe–Korea Relations is part of the mini-series Europe in the World Handbooks examining EU-regional relations.

This book reveals how the idea of human security, combined with other human-centric norms, has been embraced, criticized, modified and diffused in East Asia (ASEAN Plus Three). Once we zoom in to the regional space of East Asia, we can see a kaleidoscopic diversity of human security stakeholders and their values. Asian stakeholders are willing to engage in the cultural interpretation and contextualization of human security, underlining the importance of human dignity in addition to freedom from fear and from want. This dignity element, together with national ownership, may be the most important values added in the Asian version of human security.

This book employs the concept of human security to show what the term means from the perspective of women in Afghanistan. It engages with a well-established debate in academic and policy-making contexts regarding the utility of human security as a framework for understanding and redressing conflict. The book argues that this concept allows the possibility of articulating the substantive experiences of violence and marginalisation experienced by people in local settings as well as their own struggles towards a secure and happy life. In this regard, it goes a long way to making sense of the complex dynamics of conflict which have confounded Western policy-makers in their ongoing state-building mission in Afghanistan. However, despite this inherent potential, the idea of human security still needs refinement. Crucially, it has benefitted from critical feminist and critical social theories which provide the conceptual and methodological depth necessary to apprehend what a progressive ethical program of security looks like and how it can be furthered. Using this framework, the work provides a critical reconstruction of the effect of the US-led Western Intervention on women’s experiences of (in)security in the three provincial contexts of Nangarhar, Bamiyan and Kabul. This reconstruction is drawn from a wealth of historical and contemporary sociological research alongside original fieldwork undertaken in Delhi, India, during 2011 with women and men from the country’s different communities. This book will be of much interest to students of human security, state-building, gender politics, war and conflict studies and IR in general.

This wide-ranging book analyses EU-Asia security relations in a systematic, substantive and comparative manner. The contributions assess similarities and differences between the EU and its Asian partners with respect to levels of threat perception, policy response and security cooperation in the context of historical, institutional and external factors – such as the influence of the United States. The book presents original empirical research organised in four parts: a number of contributions providing discussions of the global context in which EU-Asia security relations develop; a series of chapters covering the range of dimensions of EU-Asian security, including both traditional and non-military aspects of security; chapters addressing the specific issues touching on bilateral relations between the EU and its partners in the Asia-Pacific region; and a final part presenting the overall findings across the various contributions together with the future outlook for EU-Asia security relations.

In light of the growing number of African summits and a new awareness of international interdependence during the COVID-19 pandemic, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of the current state of Africa’s international relations (IR). Leading IR scholars from Africa and around the world examine international cooperation with African countries in areas such as health care, education, and peacekeeping and explore how Africa’s role in the system of international relations has changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The book is divided into four parts, the first of which explores analyzes the various actors that constitute African agency in the post-pandemic world, while the second focuses on the summits of the major powers regarding cooperation with Africa. The third part covers public health cooperation and regional initiatives in Africa, including issues such as vaccine diplomacy, while the fourth and final part discusses conflicts & political process despite COVID Pandemics.

The aim of this book is to analyse why and how states respond to human security, both at home and abroad. Although states still define security as "the defense of territory" from military attack, increasingly security pertains to the protection of human beings from violence. This violence can emerge from rebels, drug traffickers, terrorism, and even environmental and demographic changes. While previous literature in this field has provided rich empirical detail about human security crises, it is generally quiet about how states respond to these crises. State Responses to Human Security fills this lacuna by bringing in concepts from international security studies and focusing on states’ perceptions of power and the changing nature of human security. Instead of debating whether or not human security exists, the authors in this volume agree that human security has been redefined to include policies associated with violence toward individuals and groups, and draw on recent events in the Middle East, China and Mexico to understand how and when human security issues prompt state responses and affect international relations. The case studies analysed in this book suggest that states respond to human security threats differently, but in both the domestic context and abroad, power and perceptions matter greatly in shaping states’ reactions to human security concerns. This book will be of much interest to students of human security, foreign policy, international relations and security studies in general.

This book takes up a wide variety of human security challenges beyond the dimension of human conflict, and looks at both natural and human disasters that the East Asian region faces or is attempting to resolve. While discussing various human security issues, the case studies offer practical lessons to address serious human security challenges in the framework of the ASEAN Plus Three and beyond. Against the backdrop of multifaceted globalization and parochial reactions thereto, this book is a powerful contribution to universal human security.

Once the world's largest ODA provider, contemporary Japan seems much less visible in international development. However, this book demonstrates that Japan, with its own aid philosophy, experiences, and models of aid, has ample lessons to offer to the international community as the latter seeks new paradigms of development cooperation.