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ABSTRACT
South Asia hosts almost a quarter of the world's population. Despite achieving consistent economic growth, the region is marked by dense poverty and human deprivation. In this article, I discuss the issue of human security and argue that governments of the region need to focus on burgeoning nontraditional security threats to promote well-being of the people and improve the quality of their lives by investing resources in human development and implementing the constitutional provisions needed to protect fundamental human rights and dignity. In order to address political-economic-social-cultural disparities and achieve prosperity, the onus is far more on the countries themselves to prioritize the human security agenda through mutual collaboration. Key Words:
Introduction
South Asia is among the most populous regions of the world comprising almost a quarter of the world's total population (Mahbub ul Haq Human Development Centre, 2015). Despite achieving consistent impressive economic growth over the last several years and possessing huge potential for regional development and prosperity, the region is marked by severe political, economic, social, and cultural inequalities. Countries in the region are categorized as low or low-middle income countries that produce almost three percent of the global gross domestic product (Chand, 2014; Dutt & Bansal, 2012; Karim, 2014). The general perception is that political and economic policies of the governments in the region continue to draw largely on the traditional state-centric security paradigm to channel the bulk of their resources for state security while paying minimal attention to human development; a policy that contributes to the prevalence of dense poverty and deprivation in the region.
In this article, I discuss the issue of security by focusing on countries in South Asia, many of which, at their inception, actually had constitutions that were closer to or modeled on the principles of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)-unlike the constitutions of many established Western democracies. With provisions of fundamental human rights in their constitutions, it becomes particularly important to examine how the countries in the region are dealing with the question of security. Following up on the human rights provisions, I look at the question of security by examining two main security paradigms: state security and human security. I am particularly interested in what kind of resources are...