Is it appropriate to consider HIV/Aids as a global security issue?

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Is it appropriate  to consider HIV/Aids  as a global security issue?

  1. Introduction

In its first session, the United Security Council declared a health issue such as HIV-AIDS, a threat to international peace and security.  The UN and its associated agencies have been among the most important players globally in increasing AIDS awareness. The intervention of the Security Council in 2000 was a critical move in securitizing HIV/AIDS, constructing the disease as something extraordinary which demanded international attention and action.

Moreover, the claims made by the Security Council set the agenda for the subsequent debate on HIV/AIDS as a security issue. Its intervention provided not merely the legitimization necessary for HIV/AIDS to be considered a security issue, but the arguments for the development of an advocacy consensus. (James, 2000)

This essay touches upon two different conceptions of security: human security and international security.

HIV/AIDS has important direct implications for human security because it is a lethal illness claiming the lives of millions on an annual basis, and because it also has a host of more indirect but no less debilitating social consequences that adversely affect human security.

HIV/AIDS even has implications for international security because international peacekeeping operations are also affected by the issue of HIV/AIDS. Awareness of these security implications is crucial for recognizing the seriousness of the challenge posed by the global AIDS pandemic, and because the security sector can make a modest but important contribution to international efforts to reduce the transmission of HIV/AIDS.

  1. HIV Aids and Human Security

Many scholars argue that, one way in which HIV/AIDS is already having important security ramifications, and will continue to do so for many years to come, is within the broader framework of ‘human security’.

The UN Development  Program in its 1994 Human Development Report, seeks to redress the perceived imbalance in security thinking that has predominated over past decades, and wishes to refocus its attention on the needs and welfare of individuals, rather than just that of states and territories.(Thomas, 2000) Within its sphere of legitimate security concerns human security includes a variety of non-military threats to the survival and welfare of individuals and societies, including disease.

So, if the human security approach is very concerned with securing not only the survival of the state, but also the survival of individual human beings, then HIV/AIDS clearly amounts to a paramount security issue within this framework. According to UNAIDS in quantitative terms, HIV/AIDS is already amongst the five most frequent causes of death worldwide.

In Africa for example the illness even vies posing the greatest human security threat ever. There, HIV/AIDS is not only the leading cause of death; it is also estimated to cause more than ten times as many deaths as armed conflict. AIDS thus already poses a numerically greater risk to the survival of many Africans than armed conflict. Moreover, HIV/AIDS also directly and indirectly affects most of the components of human security, identified by the UNDP.

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Essentially, HIV/AIDS is a lethal illness that threatens the life of those who develop AIDS and who do not enjoy access to life-saving medicines. As a result, the average life expectancy in some African countries is likely to drop by as much as 20 to 30 years over the next decades. On the future years the life expectancy in many countries could even be lower than at the beginning of the twentieth century, to no small extent due to the impact of HIV/AIDS.

Beyond these, HIV/AIDS also has a excess of direct and indirect human security access to those families ...

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