Rethinking Security
Rethinking Security: What enables secure and sustainable living? was an event at Geneva Peace Week 2020, co-hosted by the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform and the Quaker United Nations Office, aimed at reimagining and reprioritising our societies around a holistic concept of human security.
Background
The concept of human security predates its coinage as a phrase. Despite the militarised understanding of security that often predominates, there are communities who have long lived by other, more people-centred understandings of security. The components of security are both multiple and indivisible, inviting the question of whether national and international security have been overemphasised at the cost of community and individual needs and rights. Global military spending is at a decade high, yet no weapon or army has been able to protect us from the bushfires, health crises, and other threats that strain our human and planetary survival.
Geneva Peace Week 2020
In late September 2020, GPP and QUNO launched a public Call for Creative Submissions on the topic: "Rethinking Security: What enables secure and sustainable living?" These submissions form the basis of the GPW20 discussion, held online from 17:00 to 18:15 on Monday 2 November. Please read the meeting report here.
This Geneva Peace Week session engages a broad array of voices to gather visions of a world free from fear, want and indignity. We are interested in harnessing the collective experiences of secure and sustainable living, whether individual or collective, to help shift the concept of security from its state-centred confines to a more inclusive, people and planet focused notion.
Submissions included:
- An essay by Denis Halliday on reforming the UN Security Council
- A poem by Solange Lyhuitekong on how we might repenser la paix.
- An essay by KOFF/swisspeace on a feminist vision of security
- An essay and photos by Prabal Barua on climate change and insecurity perspectives for climate displaced people in Bangladesh
- A video from Fundacion Abba Colombia on what rethinking security means in their community
- An essay by Roslyn Cook on putting humans first
- An essay by Dominic Ahrens about resilience
- An essay by Gordon Matthews on demilitarisation of security concepts
Join the conversation
You can join the conversation by making a creative submission, offering a resource or link that furthers the discussion, or by requesting to join us. You can join us by emailing Annika Erickson-Pearson at annika@gpplatform.ch.
*Contributions to the Geneva Peace Week 2020 session do not necessarily represent the views of the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform, its partners, or the partners of Geneva Peace Week.
