Beyond Compliance Symposium – Providing a Framework for NATO’s Human Security Approach

Editors’ note: This post forms part of the Beyond Compliance Symposium: How to Prevent Harm and Need in Conflict, featured across Articles of War and Armed Groups and International Law. You can find the introductory post here. The symposium invites reflection on the conceptualization of negative everyday lived experiences of armed conflict and legal and extra-legal strategies that can effectively address harm and need. 

In 2022, NATO adopted a new Strategic Concept in which the organization explained that Human Security is central to NATO’s approach to crisis prevention and management. NATO has since adopted a Human Security Approach and Guiding Principles and featured Human Security in both the Vilnius Summit Communique in 2023 and the Washington Summit Declaration in 2024.

This post explains why NATO sees Human Security as a useful tool and how the concept can be an enabler, improving NATO’s legitimacy and effectiveness. Noting Dan Stigall’s recent post in this symposium, we argue that NATO’s conceptual frameworks of Human Security, the Protection of Civilians (PoC) and Civilian Harm Mitigation (CHM) do not compete. We suggest that Human Security is a unique method of principled decision-making and can guide planning processes to improve outcomes on all of NATO’s cross-cutting topics (CCTs), including PoC and CHM. The post also highlights areas for future development in NATO’s current approach, arguing that NATO must establish its own evidence base for how to conceptualize and operationalize Human Security.

Where Does Human Security Fit in NATO Doctrine?

The 2022 Human Security Approach and Guiding Principles defines Human Security as an approach for “embedding considerations for the comprehensive safety and security of populations into all stages and levels of alliance operations, missions and activities.” It confirms that NATO’s Human Security approach focuses on the alliance’s five existing CCTs. These are: the Protection of Civilians (PoC); the protection of children in armed conflict (CAAC); Cultural Property Protection (CPP); preventing and responding to Conflict-Related Sexual Violence (CRSV); and Combating Trafficking in Human Beings (CTHB).

NATO describes the CCTs as “areas that could affect the mission in a number of ways, but which fall outside of the military’s primary responsibilities.” To the contrary, we suggest these areas present clear responsibilities and obligations for alliance member States under domestic and international law, in line with NATO’s common values of individual liberty, human rights, democracy, and the rule of law as well as the moral necessity of protecting the civilian population.

In our view, the CCTs represent types of violence, harm, coercion or deliberate deprivation to the population. They are: (i) specific crimes and rights violations, which may threaten combatants and civilians alike (such as CRSV in situations of detention); (ii) corruption and war economies that threaten the gains of military operations and fund specific harms to conflict-affected populations; (iii) harms that specifically affect civilians, or groups of civilians, civilian objects and services. These harms are either: (a) the unintended or unavoidable effects of military action; (b) perpetrated as a deliberate tactic of war; or (c) types of opportunistic violence.

NATO posits a Human Security approach as one that “allows us to develop a more comprehensive view of the human environment” that enables improved effectiveness in achieving the goals of the CCTs. However, NATO’s Approach and Guiding Principles give us little insight into how these considerations will be embedded and how Human Security is to be a unique method of implementing the CCTs.

Taking PoC as a key example, NATO’s approach to PoC is based on (a) civilian harm mitigation from NATO’s own actions and (b) the protection of civilians from others’ actions. In the Protection of Civilians Allied Command Operations Handbook, NATO states that CHM is NATO’s leading line of effort to protect civilians, and the only one that NATO forces are expected to lead. The handbook continues to advise that this line of effort requires restraint and precautions to avoid or in any case minimize harm in accordance with the law of armed conflict. It also requires the tracking of incidents of civilian casualties (CIVCAS) from its own actions, while also providing for remedial post-harm assistance when civilians are harmed as a result of its operations.

How then should a Human Security approach inform analytical frameworks for PoC, including CHM? The United Kingdom uses Human Security (HS) as:

a methodology that considers a broad range of security and protection challenges that individuals and groups of people face in situations of conflict, instability and insecurity. UK Defence describes these challenges as HS considerations. … In analysing HS considerations, it is useful to consider HS factors and cross cutting themes (CCT). UK Defence recognises ‘seven plus one’ HS factors; … They are interdependent and do not operate in isolation from each other. … These are economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community, and political. UK Defence have included an additional factor, ‘information’ to ensure planners include this and consider the wider impacts of dis/mis and malign information on human security and its intersection with military activity.

We believe the expansive range of factors and CCTs encompassed by this approach are particularly useful in targeting processes, when observing the rules of proportionality and several of the precautionary rules which require assessment of the expected incidental, collateral, or secondary damage arising from an attack.

Several States, including the United Kingdom, refer to “second order” or “foreseeable” effects of an attack in their military manuals. The factors assist staff in considering (based on ex ante information that is reasonably available to the staff) the reasonably foreseeable reverberating effects of an attack. These effects reverberate over space and time in interlinked urban ecosystems and impact Human Security factors (economic; food; health; environmental; personal; community; and political), through a complex causal chain, causing indirect but causally linked civilian harm and death.

The UK’s approach to Human Security specifically tasks UK Defence to “consider how Defence activity, and that of military partners we support, may impact upon individuals and communities in harmful ways and identify means to mitigate this.” In this regard, Human Security is used as an analytical tool to guide decision-making. We suggest that similarly in the NATO context, Human Security is not merely an umbrella term for NATO’s well-established CCTs, within which CHM is organized in a hierarchy of concepts. In and of itself, it is a distinct way of achieving the CCTs.

Presenting these concepts as belonging in a hierarchically organized holarchy, which reduces the span of factors that should be considered, belies the utility of Human Security as a unique analytical framework. Instead, Human Security gives analytical insights into how to achieve PoC and CHM by improving our understanding of the human environment, accounting for a range of threats that undermine the security of the population, and giving us strategies for pursuing the CCTs in a holistic manner.

The (Flawed) Reliance on the UN as an Evidence Base for Human Security

The broader challenge is how to enable principled and coordinated implementation of all the CCTs through a Human Security approach. It is here that we uncover a critical flaw in NATO’s approach. Readers of NATO’s Approach and Guiding Principles are told “NATO’s human security approach is drawn from that of the United Nations.” But the UN has not developed guidelines or policies on Human Security, nor is Human Security a term used by the Security Council or within operations authorised by the Security Council, such as its peacekeeping operations.

The UN Development Programme coined the term Human Security in 1994 with the publication of its 1994 Human Development Report, which includes the previously mentioned and non-exhaustive list of seven dimensions of Human Security. Then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan commissioned the Commission on Human Security, which published its Human Security Now Report in 2003. The Commission identified that Human Security has a distinctive focus on humanitarian crises as opposed to underdevelopment, which is largely addressed by human development.

The UN Trust Fund for Human Security (UNTFHS) was established in 1999 and has focused on the delivery of development orientated initiatives. In 2004, the UNTFHS was transferred to work under the auspices of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and a Human Security Unit (HSU) was created to manage the fund. The HSU’s purpose is to mainstream Human Security in all the UN’s activities whilst reviewing applications for UNTFHS funding.

The 2005 UN World Summit commissioned work on finding a definition of Human Security. In 2012, the General Assembly, in resolution 66/290, defined Human Security as:

“The right of people to live in freedom and dignity, free from poverty and despair. All individuals, in particular vulnerable people, are entitled to freedom from fear and freedom from want, with an equal opportunity to enjoy all their rights and fully develop their human potential” (para. 3(a)).

However, this is where the story of the UN’s development of Human Security ends. Following resolution 66/290 we see very little mention of Human Security by the UN beyond the UNTFHS. Human Security is not a concept used by the UN Security Council, General Assembly, or Secretariat when discussing, for example, threats to international peace and security, reporting on UN peacekeeping missions, and other humanitarian work of the organization. Instead, these UN organs routinely rely on the legitimacy of the language of international law and key doctrines that have developed more thoroughly such as PoC, Women, Peace and Security, and Children and Armed Conflict. Consequently, the UN does not have a tangible, accessible set of guidelines or principles of Human Security, let alone guidelines that would be applicable to military operations.

That said, research has shown that the UN does still operationalize some aspects of Human Security. A study of UN peacekeeping found that the UN does seek to embed approaches aligned with the Commission on Human Security and UN General Assembly’s definitions of Human Security albeit not using Human Security terminology. Tom Buitelaar similarly found that the UN peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) used several Human Security principles in its approach to accountability, namely: enhancing the role for victims; consulting with the local population; and using resources to rebuild the Central African Republic’s judicial system.

But we suggest the lasting impact of Human Security at the UN is one that lacks a comprehensive or detailed approach that can be picked up and utilized by NATO in its military operations. The contexts in which UN bodies have used Human Security are not ones that NATO would traditionally take a leading role on, such as development and humanitarian crises. Instead, these are contexts in which NATO may be an actor of last resort. It is in this vacuum that the authors have undertaken work on detailing a principled approach to Human Security that is practical and useful in the NATO context at the tactical level.

A Way Forward to Maximise the Impact of Human Security in NATO Operations

The 2022 Human Security Approach and Guiding Principles and 2024 Washington Summit report describe how NATO’s human security approach is based on seven guiding principles. The authors have developed those guiding principles further to provide a more in-depth framework of Human Security for NATO operations at the tactical level. Our framework comprises,

Adherence to and Application of Obligations under International Law

Human Security acts as an integrating bridge or nexus between different bodies of law that share complementary norms and rules, in order to enhance the protection of civilians and human dignity. This principle informs the means by which international law, and the rights at stake in a crisis, are used as a lens to assess a situation, determine threats to the affected population, and coordinate the operationalization of the CCTs alongside member States’ existing legal obligations to protect individuals. There is a significant evidence base for this principle with several authors explaining that international law “must be at the heart of human security.”

A Focus on Engaging with Civilians Facing Insecurity to Identify Needs in a Bottom-Up Manner

This principle enshrines NATO’s people-centred approach, one that actively integrates gender perspectives, and addresses the differentiated impacts of conflict and crisis for all people, especially individuals in situations of vulnerability or marginalization. Human Security prioritizes inclusive and participatory (“bottom-up”) engagement, where possible, to identify what impacted populations hold to be the “vital core” of life —certain minimal or fundamental functions related to survival, livelihood and dignity—and to identify the most critical and pervasive threats as perceived by the population.

Protection needs and priority threats should not be identified in a top-down paternalistic manner. People-centred, “bottom-up” civilian protection requires meaningful civil-military interaction with affected populations during all phases of a mission in a way that is sensitive to age, gender and diversity.

A Concern for Vulnerability and Building Resilience

Human Security recognizes that certain groups of people can be particularly vulnerable. The Commission on Human Security identified that particular groups can be disproportionately affected by security threats including people on the move, women, children, the elderly, the disabled, the indigenous, and the missing. When the UN General Assembly defined Human Security in 2012, vulnerable people were singled out as being of particular concern. However, Human Security demands more than merely identifying where a group could be at exceptional risk of vulnerability.

The partial antidote to vulnerability is resilience. Resilience implies an ability to understand the context of the crisis, its complexity, and the dynamic forces that drive compound, multi-dimensional and multi-scalar threats to people (including through integrating gender perspectives). NATO must identify the exposure of the affected population to a given vulnerability, understand the population’s capacity to resist the impact of the vulnerability and the threat, and contribute to building resilience to the vulnerability to support the capacity of the population to cope with or adapt to the threat. The aim should be to restore degraded systems or even increase the capability and capacity of those systems in relation to the threat.

Pursuing Preventative Protection Methods Where Possible

Preventative protection is advanced to ensure people are shielded from severe and widespread threats. Protection may need to be offered to combat a range of threats, not only physical harm, and protection responses should be preventative where possible. Human Security has a concern for more than threats of violence and as such protection must go further than ensuring only physical integrity in accordance with the NATO CCTs. The military contribution to tasks that fall outside the mission and mandate must be on request of the host nation, respect humanitarian principles, be within available capacity and combat power, and as a last resort (as a third responder).

The Empowerment of People to Act on Their Own Behalf and Implement Solutions to Security Threats

The empowerment principle promotes the moral right of affected populations to influence civilian protection. It also recognizes the responsibility of NATO and other protection actors to support the agency and empowerment of affected persons for their own self-protection. Human Security supports a more legitimate, accountable and inclusive approach to civilian protection compared to existing security practices. Where people are adequately protected, they can be empowered to “make better choices, and actively prevent and mitigate the impact of insecurities.”

By ensuring that it engages from the bottom-up to inform decision-making and also empowers the population to be partners in realizing security, NATO will take into account local customs and social norms in the communities coming into contact with NATO in alliance operations, missions and activities, while respecting the common values and principles of the alliance. The prioritization of empowerment will also support CHM activity by ensuring a continuous focus on civilian self-protection strategies, and the necessity of not undermining the capacity of the affected population to withstand the impact of a threat, or to cope with or adapt to threats or hazard stressors.

Respect and Provide Space for the Work of Humanitarian Actors

Humanitarian space is not an abstract concept. It is tangible: a hospital; a camp; or a water network. It is also normative, rooted in the law of armed conflict and mandates a licence for humanitarian actors to carry out impartial humanitarian activity, and places a duty on parties to armed conflicts to provide rapid and unimpeded access to people in need. By coming to the aid of civilian populations in need, and thereby helping stabilize countries in conflict, humanitarian action also contributes to the security of the alliance. For this reason, allied governments and NATO must do all they can to push back against the shrinking of humanitarian space by supporting the missions of aid workers, strengthening their security and working to remove any obstacles they face.

Pursue Multilateral Engagement on Human Security Related Issues

While multilateral engagement with the UN, the European Union, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is particularly relevant at operational and strategic echelons, at the tactical level, it is necessary to develop a constructive civil-military relationship to protect humanitarian space and to protect and evacuate civilians, while deconflicting movement across a congested and contested battlespace.

A Human Security approach to civil-military relations and the “nexus” approach requires the recognition of affected communities not merely as recipients, but as key leaders and actors with agency for their own self-protection. It is important to take existing community response strategies as a starting point to understand risks, threats and protection needs. It is also important to identify civil society organisations (CSOs) in conflict-affected communities, which rarely operate within humanitarian aid, peacebuilding, and development coordination structures. CSOs will assist with the identification and mitigation of protection gaps that may emerge due to the narrow mandate restrictions of humanitarian and development actors, and the low security thresholds among other actors in humanitarian and development settings.

Conclusion

As NATO seeks to integrate Human Security into its planning and decision-making processes, a principled framework of Human Security, with a clear evidence base, can make a positive contribution to NATO operations and would add important depth and clarity to NATO’s existing Approach and Guiding Principles. The framework outlined here can have transformative potential because Human Security “[i]s an idea that seeks to reopen analysis of the world’s priorities, to produce new integrated methodologies in analysing the most complex and pressing problems, and to give greater voice to individuals and communities in searching for solutions.”

For NATO overall, embedding a principled approach to Human Security recognizes that the effects of conflict are experienced differently by affected population groups. It also provides a deeper understanding of the human environment and guides the planning of operations to prevent unintended consequences caused by NATO military operations and to minimize avoidable harm.

For a tactical level NATO headquarters, Human Security is an enabler. It enhances operational effectiveness and the capacity of the corps to support the host nation in its primary duty to protect its population by contributing to a safe and secure environment and mitigating adversarial harm to the population. In our work at the tactical level, we have integrated the PMESII-ASCOPE analytical framework with a principled approach to Human Security to improve the integration of civil factors and include Human Security concerns in planning processes and ultimately shape battle rhythm events. These adaptations aim to improve the common operational picture of the battlefield, increase awareness of the effects of operations on affected populations, civilian objects and services to avoid or mitigate harm, and enhance freedom of movement and action in the land domain.

Human Security presents an opportunity for NATO to advance cohesion and solidarity across allies and other like-minded nations. By demonstrating its commitment to the implementation of Human Security as a reflection of its core values and the security of civilians, NATO differentiates itself from adversaries who deliberately target civilians.

***

Alexander Gilder is Associate Professor of International Law and Security at the University of Reading, UK. He is also an Academic Consultant at the NATO HQ Allied Rapid Reaction Corps. All views are his own and do not represent the views of NATO or the UK Ministry of Defence.

Daniel Linsdell is the Human Security Advisor at the NATO HQ Allied Rapid Reaction Corps. He is a UK Ministry of Defence Civil Servant and a Visiting Fellow at the School of Law, University of Reading, UK. All views are his own and do not represent the views of NATO or the UK Ministry of Defence.

Photo credit: UK Ministry of Defence, Cpl Sam Jenkins