Political Science

The start of the twenty-first century was marked by renewed global concern with a concept of human security that has challenged the very core of the traditional security paradigm. The renewed security agenda endeavors to approach security more inclusively in a way that encompasses not only the State, but the region, society and the individual. Within this paradigm, the individual or the society has become the nexus of its concern, and the lens through which policy is formulated and implemented.
The security of any nation around the world is a direct function of the security of its own citizens. If a nation can succeed to offer security and protection to her people, then the nation will be secure.
Policy has for a long time failed to deal with armed conflicts in West Africa and civil wars have found an incubator to brood (Goldmann, 2005).
The Narrow Approach to Human Security
The main contention in this theoretical debate centers upon whether (and, if so, how) to narrow the concept of human security into a workable definition. For the most part, this debate has coalesced around two rival definitions. First, there are those who define human security broadly as freedom from want, understanding the concept as more than safety from violent threats  such as poverty, disease and environmental disasters (Owen, 2004, p. 375). And second, there are those who define human security more narrowly as freedom from fear, whereby human security is understood as freedom from violent threats only (Owen, 2004, p. 375).
Lloyd Axworthy is a popular proponent of the wide conception of human security, who in his former role as Canadian foreign minister (1995-2000) was an instrumental figure in bringing about Canadas Human Security Program (Floyd, 2007). Axworthy (2004, p. 348)
Although conflict, particularly civil war, continues to harm, the impact of environmental disasters, communicable disease, and poverty are often far greater. The urgency of these many threats, coupled with a policy vacuum, creates a critical need for the development of human security science and governance solutions.
Krauses view is fairly representative of the narrow approach to human security.
Krause (2004, p. 367-368)
Human security ought to be about freedom from fear not about freedom from want  for two reasons. The first is a negative one the broad vision of human security is ultimately nothing more than a shopping list it involves slapping the label human security on a wide range of issues tha thave no necessary link. At a certain point, human security becomes a loose synonym for bad things that can happen, and it then loses all utility to policymakersand incidentally to analysts. Second and more important, it is not clear that anything is gained by linking human security to issues such as education, fair trade practices and public health.
MacFarlane and Weiss (1994, p. 278)
If security means most simply an absence of threat to fundamental values, obviously it includes threats not merely to life, but also to property and livelihood, as well as to fundamental human rights.
Thus, proponents of a more comprehensive vision argue that in addition to politico-military security, there are three other fundamental rights (MacFarlane and Weiss, 1994)
Economic securitythe right to benefit from the fruits of economic growth
Environmental securitythe right to a productive and sustainable ecosystem
Legal securitythe rights of individuals to legal protection and to participation in democratic processes.
Floyd (2007, p. 40)
Generally speaking human security is the idea that the individual is at the receiving end of all security concerns, whereby security is understood as freedom from want andor freedom from fear.
Arms Control in West Africa
Arms control efforts in West Africa has nothing to do with nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction or to heavy conventional weapons. For West Africa, the gravest security threat lies at the crossroads of the threat posed by the proliferation, availability and indiscriminate use of small arms. Broadly speaking, small includes self-loading pistols, rifles and carbines, sub-machine-guns, assault rifles, light machine-guns, manportable firearms and their ammunition, light artillery guns and rockets, and guided missiles for use against armored vehicles, aircraft, or fortifications.
The threat posed by these weapons goes beyond its traditional focus on external military threats to territorial and political integrity of States. At least for the region, these weapons have fueled a number of intrastate and local conflicts -- killing, injuring, and displacing millions of people, primarily women and children in Sierra Leone and facilitating State collapse.
To what extent has the Narrow Approach promoted Human Security in Sierra Leone
Some continue to resist such an expanded definition of security. But analyses of the origins of conflict clearly indicate that economic privation and assaults on basic political and civil rights frequently cause or contribute to war and violent civil strife. At a minimum, approaches to the resolution of political and military confiicts, if their effects are to be lasting, must take into consideration these broader economic, environmental and social issues.
Smith (2005) sees the concept of human security has been important in linking the study of conflict and security to economic development.  Connection between economic under-eveloment and security.
The durable resolution of conflict, consequently, goes well beyond peacekeeping and political settlement (MacFarlane and Weiss, 1994). As in the case of Sierra Leone, it has to include restructuring political institutions as well as resettlement and demilitarisation. Beyond this, given the frequent connection between security problems and the economic and social condition of war-affected populations, conflict resolution that fails to address structural economic issues is unlikely to endure (MacFarlane and Weiss, 1994).

How effective are the instruments and methods being used Is there a shift from national security to human security
the practice of security changed. Thus, whereas during the Cold War the state was more or less universally accepted as the referent object of security, in the decade following the end of the Cold War the role of the state had become increasingly challenged by the recently emerged New World Order of the 1990s (Floyd, 2007).
Traditionally, the focus has been on the ability of sovereign states to guarantee their internal and external physical security. The theoretical justification for this focusand for the primacy of the state as a subject of international lawis that the state aggregates, protects and promotes the interests of its individual citizens. As such, the security of the state is the security of the human beings comprising it.
Surely the individual himself is in no position to provide for his own security, for how should an individual claimlegitimize his own right to survival Thus, logically, the provision of human security can only be guaranteed by a larger entity such as society, the state, or some global institution, with as the Copenhagen School puts it security action  usually taken on behalf of, and with reference to, a collectivity (Buzan et al., 1998, p. 36). Consequently, Buzan (2004, p. 370) states
If the referent object of human security is collectives, then the job it is trying to do is better done by societal or identity security.  Reductionism in security thinking eliminates the distinctiveness of international security being about interaction among social collectivities. While a moral case for making individuals the ultimate referent object can be constructed, the cost to be paid is loss of analytical purchase on collective actors both as the main agents of security provision and as possessors of a claim to survival in their own right.
However, there is a substantial body of empirical evidence to suggest that in many instances, the state employs its monopoly of force and power to deny the rights of its citizens and to appropriate their resources in order to preserve itself (Floyd, 2007). Arms proliferation to Sierra Leone risked the lives of the very people the State was supposed to protect. UN reports show how weapons are illicitly exported, transported with the connivance of government officials in many countries and smuggled into war zones (ref).
In the quest for security, states can degrade the security of their own populations.
Moreover, the multiplication of the types of actors on the world stage (states, global corporations, intergovernmental and nongovernmental organisations, transnational and sub-state political and social movements) is being combined with deepening economic, cultural, and environmental interdependence.
the referent object has shifted to the sub-State level. According to Human Rights Watch, over 50,000 people were killed in the Sierra Leonean conflict, with over one million people being displaced. The very nature of the conflict - intra-state -made the civilian population deliberate targets in these conflicts. A significant proportion of the civilian population were exploited and controlled in order to sustain the conflict (ref). The conflict in Sierra Leone was characterized by the systematic and widespread perpetration of all classes of gross human rights abuses against the civilian population.
Humanitarian intervention by independent trans-national actors, supra national and sub-national identities challenged the State autonomy and sovereignty. International civil society and trans-national actors responded to the demand factors of small arms control including community development, youth programming and peace building. The regional body, ECOWAS, made a conscious decision to respond to the humanitarian crises by sending in a peace-keeping force to restore order in the society.
While the State autonomy was compromised, the national boundaries hardly disintegrated despite the social disintegration. Sierra Leone and its boundaries were still intact and State boundaries were recognised by ECOWAS member States, the African Union and United Nations. Nevertheless, what is seen to be existentially threatened and that have a legitimate claim to survival was the individual and societal well being. The above factors have challenged the State as the dominant referent existentially threatened so far as arms control is concerned in Sierra Leone.
How or by what means is security provided
Some of the approaches that have taken there such as demobilization, disarmament and reintegration into society of former child soldiers are analyzed with a view to evaluate their success rate.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) approved a three-year moratorium on the production, procurement, and sale of small arms and light weapons for the sub-region. Nevertheless, rebels and the government continues to obtain weapons illegally via countries such as Liberia and Burkina Faso, while the government of Sierra Leone received substantial weaponry from the United Kingdom (ref).
Jolly and Ray (2007, p. 457)
policy as well as academic discussions in the post-ColdWar era continued to prescribe numerous permutations of the same cocktail ofmilitary force and financial aid to address questions of national security. Experiences of Iraq, Israel and Sri Lanka and much of Sub-Saharan Africa suggest that security needs to be conceived as a much broader issue than merely a matter of defence and the use of armed forces to enforce peace.
Discussion and Conclusion
The State is the dominant form of political organization. Internally, it defines and protects the life, liberty, and property of individuals and groups through the creation of political and socio-economic order. Externally, it protects the rights of its citizens from the harmful actions of other States and non-State entities (Khong and MacFarlane, xxx).
By virtue of the social contract between the State and its citizens, the individual still remains the nexus of concern to national security. Key issues have fallen through the cracks as traditional security failed at its primary objective to protect the individual.
According to McRae (2001)
security is a single continuum, and is protected and enhanced by a series of interlocking instruments and policies.the old instruments are neither discarded nor superseded-they become integral to a new, more comprehensive approach centred on the protective welfare of civilians.
Proliferation and misuse of small arms in Sierra Leone has reaffirmed collective individuals or society as the nexus of its concern, and the lens through which policy is formulated and implemented.
The logic of security involves high levels of interdependence among the actors trying to make themselves secure. All the sectors have distinctive patterns and roles, but will remained inseparable parts of complex wholes. When it comes to arms control in West Africa the individual (Society) remains the dominant referent object existentially threatened. In this case practice has preceded theory.
Jolly and Ray (2007) conclude that broader definitions of human security are operational for both analysis and policy making. Limits to define a core of high-priority concerns with human security can be set after exploring the concerns of people in specific situations rather than before.