Human Security and Disaster: Lessons from the Great East Japan Earthquake

This chapter analyses whether human security has turned into a norm in international relations. It examines human security from the perspective of a states' national security. The framework derived from this investigation can be used to understand the broader relationship between geostrategic and biostrategic forms of security and how they produce new approaches to human security. The framework is unique in its combination of existing examinations of human security with a continuum of national security outcomes. By examining whether notions of traditional national security have continued, assimilated, evolved or transformed in this period, the framework provides an opportunity to examine how human security has either been rejected, co-opted, adapted or adopted by states in their national security. A simple binary distinction between securitised and desecuritised is insufficient in determining the level of acceptance or rejection of human security. The chapter concludes by examining Australia's engagement in Afghanistan.