Seguridad humana y salud pública

Abstract

Poverty, the spread of diseases, environmental destruction, lack of clean drinking water access, poor maternal health, and unemployment were not contextual-ized on the human security agenda, since the overriding threat was perceived as existing outside national borders and basically as a distant confrontation among the global superpowers. Concerned with this very narrow interpretation, the United Nations proposed modifying the concept of safety, from being one based on the excessive emphasis on weapons and territorial defense to a broader one incorporating equitable access to education, to work, and to health, as well as a respect for human rights, as essential components of safety. This paradigmatic shift, while not relieving governments of their obligation to guarantee national security to their respective citizenry, redirects the focus away from external threats and conflict toward the peaceful, cooperative, sustainable internal development of nations and their people. The new paradigm of human security, as part of a larger development process, recognizes the responsibility of governments to safeguard vital human freedoms. This includes protecting the population from risks and threats that can adversely affect their aspirations and quality of life, as well as creating systems that facilitate people's access to the basic rights of survival, dignity, and decent work. In this context, the gamut of human freedoms and their interrelationship become more transparent-freedom from hunger and other basic needs, freedom in the face of fear, and freedom to act in one's own name and on one's own behalf-within a framework that promotes the full realization of human potential. The evolution of these concepts has provided new opportunities to countries and communities everywhere to address the risks and threats to human development and to implement strategies that strengthen human security. Human development and human security are, in fact, inseparable: whereas human development seeks to increase peoples' options, opportunities , and access to public services and goods, and emphasizes what can be achieved, human security focuses on the risks, dangers, and threats to human development, evaluates the degree of confidence that people have in public services and goods, and emphasizes what can be lost when human potential is thwarted. Some may question the focus on human security in a post-Cold War global society. Yet few would deny the real threat that such phenomena as transnational organized crime-drug trafficking, human trafficking, weapons smuggling, money laundering, and interpersonal violence-pose for individuals and communities alike in achieving their fullest development potential. The Human Development Report 1994 (1) groups the threats to human security into seven principal categories: economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community, and political. It further notes that: • human security is a universal concern; • the components of human security are interdependent; and • human security is easier to ensure through prevention than later intervention. Within this framework, health security, in particular, is vulnerable on a number of fronts. Daily threats include disease pandemics, deficient water and sanitation systems, natural and man-made disasters, inadequate attention to maternal and child health, unemployment, violence, and unsafe roads and transportation systems.