What is Human Security?

Human security focuses on the protection of individuals, rather than defending the physical and political integrity of states from external military threats - the traditional goal of national security.

Ideally, national security and human security should be mutually reinforcing, but in the last 100 years far more people have died as a direct or indirect consequence of the actions of their own governments or rebel forces in civil wars than have been killed by invading foreign armies. Acting in the name of national security, governments can pose profound threats to human security.

The Human Security Gateway focuses attention on threats stemming from violence to individuals and to societies at risk. This approach is complementary to the broad concept of human security originally articulated by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in its 1994 Human Development Report.

To learn more about human security visit:

• The Human Security Report Project

About the Human Security Gateway

The Human Security Gateway is a rapidly expanding searchable online database of human security-related resources including reports, journal articles, news items and fact sheets. It is designed to make human security-related research more accessible to the policy and research communities, the media, educators and the interested public.