Charlotte Bunch

A feminist human rights lens

June 2003 marked the tenth anniversary of the UN World Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna, which was such an optimistic time for advancing women’s rights as human rights. This conference also achieved a breakthrough in approaching human rights in a more integrated way, looking at economic and social rights along side civil and political rights, and taking up the right to development as a critical human rights question. In 1993 there was still hope for a peace dividend from the end of the Cold War. Few certainly ever imagined we would be in the critical moment where we find ourselves today—with the U.S. openly asserting empire and a pre-emptive strike doctrine, with ever widening economic inequities around the world, and with some governments questioning whether violence against women is really a human rights abuse. In addressing the role the U.S. government plays in the world today, we must change the national discourse on security. We need to ask: can security in a globalized world be found with duct tape, bigger bombs, and closed gates, or does it require addressing people’s needs and rights? Human Security Now, the recently released report of the Commission on Human Security, can help us widen the discussion of what we mean by security. Whose security are we talking about and at what cost? Who has felt secure in the U.S.? And who hasn’t—considering differences in terms of gender, class, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation? What are the policies that would actually make the world safer for all? Changes in government policy can be achieved only if we challenge the national discourse about security and address the manipulation of fear that is practiced by many governments, and certainly by the Bush administration. We cannot ignore the aftershock of 9/11 in the U.S., which has been turned into “shock and awe” around the world. We must address a nation in shock at discovering its vulnerability, even if the reaction is naı̈ve or self-centered, because this insecurity has become the justification for aggression and war—any war— and for the suspension of many aspects of human rights domestically and internationally. The obsessive focus on anti-terrorism and national security in the U.S. has also provided cover for the Bush agenda of dismantling years of progress on various domestic rights issues. It distracts people from other threats to human security in everyday life. The Human Security Commission report could not have come at a better time to help frame these issues. A growing number of people in the U.S. have begun to move away from watching the orange and red codes to asking what are the real threats to security in the world and how should the government respond. In addition to questions about what the U.S. is doing in Iraq, the time is right for examining the fundamental threats to security inherent in poverty and in the

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