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ABSTRACT
This paper is set within the context of the inter-dependent nature of our globalised world and examines transnational security threats and challenges and their impact on the Region. Some security threats arise from non-state actors while other security issues are generated from non-human sources. Each nation-state now faces issues relating to human security, health and bio-security, cyber security, as well as piracy and terrorism while other security challenges relate to the effects of failed or failing states, extremist ideologies and actions by non-state actors.
This paper addresses the broadened notion of security from states to societies and the issue of transnational security challenges and their impact on the Region.
Keywords: Non-traditional security, transnational security, threats, hazards, securitization, human security, non-state actors.
INTRODUCTION
In the past the world has faced threats to security as a result of politics, failed diplomacy and military action. Today, the world faces a new class of threat which includes those generated by non-state actors and some hazards arising from non human sources. These are often referred to in the literature as non traditional security issues [1], or sometimes as transnational security threats [2]. Many, if not most, are both nontraditional and transnational in nature.
An underlying premise of this paper is that the realist definition of security is too limited to provide an adequate conceptual framework to analyse or assess transnational security issues because, in considering such issues, the nation-state is not the sole referent. Nonetheless, territorial integrity is a valid and relevant referent, as noted by Newman, 'Traditional conceptions of state security are a necessary but not sufficient condition of human welfare' [3]. The realist equation of security with territorial integrity, ignores the interconnected globalised world of the twenty-first century in which the notion of sovereignty is 'far more elastic that it once was' [4]. As noted by Dupont, 'realism is incapable of capturing the determining changes in the international and East Asian security environments and of grasping the requirements of an extended security praxis' [4]. Consequently, the referent objects of security today, which include societies and human collectives, require an expanded theoretical construct. While non-traditional security issues and those of a transnational nature have risen in prominence in policy circles there has been a lack of...