Ben Zala
is the Manager of the Sustainable Security Programme
at ORG. He is also a PhD candidate in International Relations and Graduate Teaching Assistant at the University of Birmingham. He has previously worked at Chatham House (Royal Institute of International Affairs) in the Energy, Envir...
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Sustainable security in Latin America and the Caribbean
Ben Zala
, 13 October 2010
Currently Latin America and the Caribbean is a region that finds itself somewhat out of the global spotlight. Yet poverty, militarism and environmental limits are coalescing in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the region is becoming a testing ground for responding to security challenges that are increasingly global in nature.
To address these issues, security experts, academics, journalists and civil society leaders from across Latin America and the Caribbean were brought together by Oxford Research Group and the Norwegian Peacebuilding Centre (Noref) in January 2010 to explore the implications of a ‘sustainable security’ framework for the region.
The meeting identified the regional drivers of insecurity as:
- State practices and insecurity
- Militarisation
- Urban-rural divides and socio-economic divisions
- Environmental and energy insecurity
The blockages to achieving change in the region were identified as:
- Conceptions of security
- Historical legacies and economic models
- Regional institutions and identity
The report includes an integrated analysis of these issues, together with recommendations for policy-makers which include:
- Addressing political fragmentation in order to provide the capacity for an effective response to the security challenges of climate change, militarisation and increasingly marginalised populations;
- Initiatives such as the South American Defence Council should be given top priority in foreign and defence policies and their institutionalisation should be adequately funded and supported by all member states;
- New policy options are needed in the short-medium term to combat increasing environmental stresses and resource depletion;
- States across the region need to regain public confidence in relation to their ability to meet the security needs of their populations without resorting to military force;
Over the next 5-10 years, a radical shift towards sustainable approaches to security will be hugely important. If there is no change in thinking, security policies will continue to be based on the assumption that an elite minority can maintain its position, environmental problems can be marginalised, and the lid can be kept on dissent and insecurity.
Report also available on the website of the Oxford Research group.
