Provoking a New Agenda for Global Human Security

Jack C. Chow

The evolution of security from traditional defense-oriented issues toward human needs, both communal and individual, is approaching a time of turbulence and uncertainty in 2013. The driving factors that led to U.S. presidential initiatives on HIV/AIDS, malaria, and global health will face the backdrop of sustained turbulence in the political and financial realms. Amid Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s laudable call for a worldwide “AIDS-free generation”, the forces and factors needed to mount such a campaign confront the core necessities of political attention and tangible resources. As urgent and important as it is to sustain progress against diseases and disparities, to argue for money and political capital for global health and human security is to compete alongside mainstream demands of jobs, trade and the economy. Furthermore, the “hard power” issues of armed conflicts, superpower relations, and defense postures are consuming the attention of leaderships. In the U.S., domestic budget stresses, such as the “fiscal cliff” and Hurricane Sandy relief, further crowd the political ecology.