Translating human security and gender security in contemporary development policy and practice

This dissertation refocuses the security debate by researching human security as a concept located within development. Despite reference to the liberation and well-being of the individual/community, emerging research on the concept of human security continues to focus on peace-building in conflict situation, in essence, reverting attention back to security's traditional association with militarism. The approach to contextualizing the concept within a development framework was to identify indicators for human security analysis which were located within the capitalist world economy, and a practical means to collect empirical data on these indicators. The study identified the latest neoliberal blueprint for the development of the South, the Poverty Reduction Strategy Initiative (PRS), as a programme based on the social welfare/developmentalist approach to human security. A theory-based qualitative evaluation of Ghana's Poverty Reduction Strategy experience 2000-2006 provided the opportunity to determine whether the PRS Initiative was indeed equipped to supply human and gender security. The main criterion for evaluation was the extent to which the PRS Initiative transcended the limitations of two emancipatory discourses in development theory—participation and gender mainstreaming. Both conceptual strategies are central to the definition and actualization of human security, and the success of the PRS programme. As part of this analysis, the dissertation defined and delineated 'gender security,' a central terminology and configuration in the human security paradigm which is generally glossed over and under-theorised, but which condition is also necessary to achieve human security. The study draws attention to continuing processes through which gender security is undermined and human security contracted under the enhanced participatory development programme. By examining how these development tools operate in practice to achieve and/or obstruct human security under the PRS Initiative, this study brings the evidence of empirical research to lend policy and analytical support to the definitional debates on human security. The study makes arguments for timely re-visitation of development practices to augment the success of the human security paradigm even as its epistemological pegs are nailed in development theory and simultaneously translated into social development policies for men and women in the South.