Research Article
Dejo Olowu
Abstract
Every time we hear the expression ‘peace in our world’, it naturally conjures the absence of warfare and internal disorder, and the end of military or other hostilities. Throughout history, innumerable human beings have suffered from the scourge of conflict. Quite naturally they tried, often at significant costs, to protect themselves with assorted resources against all major threats to their (human) security. The human security concept continues to loom large in global policy and peace discourse notwithstanding growing doubts about the ‘effectiveness’ of its promise in a highly vulnerable modern society overloaded with weapons of mass-destruction amid other threats to peace. The bottom-line is the imperative of replacing the dominant thoughts about securing peace. This paper accentuates the theory of peace and its relationship to the concept of human security. It takes its point of departure from the theoretical framework of critical security studies (CSS) and argues that there is a specific sense in which CSS needs to comprehend peace, and that this understanding is closely affiliated with human security. The paper is arguably a theoretical exploration of the concepts of peace and security. It is not, therefore, an empirical examination of where or when there is peace or how to obtain it. It is important to emphasize that this is not a paper that answers the question ‘what is peace?’ Although a proposal of how CSS theorists should contemplate peace is made, the main aim is the theoretical relationship between peace and human security and the theoretical and possible practical gains achieved by a clarification of this relationship.