Three principles of human security

Three principles of human security to guide social development: Ref: United Nation International Year of the Family 1994, Occasional Papers Series, Families: Agents and Beneficiaries of Socio-economic Development, No 16, 1995

        Three intersecting concepts of justice: intergenerational equity, gender equity and social equity are used in the present paper to develop a framework concerned with the key principles underlying human security.

Intergenerational equity

        The concept of intergenerational equity highlights the cross-generational flows of material, emotional and cultural resources generated by families and by their work of care and nurture in all its dimensions; for children, young people and other family members made vulnerable by age, disability or severe illness. This contribution, in the so-called private domain, is of such magnitude that it demands not only reciprocal public responses in recognition of it, but also a fundamental reconceptualization of family policies not as social expenditure but social investment. Such policies would include family payments, health and welfare services for women and children, recognition in the workplace of the family responsibilities of employees and the expansion of adequately remunerated employment for both men and women. The consequences of such a reframing would see good family policy not as a drain on national budgets, but as social investment and a key element of economic and social development. As such, the three false and misleading dichotomies of : (a) the public and private spheres of life and their social contribution; (b) independent labour force activity and the dependency of family- based carers; and (c) economic policy and family/social policy must be abandoned and replaced by the recognition that family-centred policies are central to social and economic development.

        It is the very recognition of the material and symbolic value of the intergenerational work of families, and their production of public goods that calls forth and legitimates a public policy response in both national and international programmes of action and social development.

Gender equity

        In recent decades, theories and practices of economic development have been challenged for failing to serve women, especially poor women, and in so doing, missing vital opportunities to invest fully and equitably in social development and the well-being of all members of the population, particularly children.

        The principle of gender equity is therefore intrinsic to the rationale of placing families at the heart of social development. Women are the major producers of the family-based services of care and nurture as well as the contributors to all aspects of the formal and informal sectors of the economy. Ignoring the role of families is to obscure the work largely carried out by women in their kinship and local networks and therefore to miss a fundamental human investment opportunity.

Social equity

        The third of the intersecting concepts is social equity, which calls for the redistribution of income and resources to those families whose experience of inequality is greatest, and carries with it the most damaging consequences for the life chances and opportunities of their children. These include families who are unemployed, who have low incomes, who are headed by women, who are migrants and refugees, who have been displaced by war and civil strife, or those families, particularly indigenous families, who experience the deeply entrenched disadvantages of discrimination.

        At a systemic level, social equity calls for measures that empower families as full participants in the processes of economic and social life. Fundamental to such empowerment are forms of social protection that would entrench the right to employment and the right to an adequate income during periods of unemployment, under-employment or withdrawal from the work force to fulfil family caring responsibilities. The other major foundation of social protection for families is access to secure and affordable housing. Paying proper attention to social equity would also prompt action regarding economic policy to stimulate job creation and growth, to establish measures to ensure that low-income families do not bear the costs of industrial restructuring, to support women seeking to participate in employment if that is their choice, and to address gender-related wage differentials.

        A more socially just distribution of resources to families, and in particular to families who are disadvantaged by social and economic processes, will only occur if strong and sustained investment is made in the provision of employment, education and training; affordable housing; redistributive family income support; good and sufficient health and welfare services for families, women and children; and services for care of the disabled and the elderly. When such investment is made as the key input to social, economic and family development, families and their individual members are enabled to be full participants in the life of employment, community, politics and civil society.

        The exclusion of families from traditional economic development paradigms reveals the limitations of ignoring a whole sphere of production. If there is no recognition, or insufficient recognition of the contribution made by families to social and economic development, then there are no institutional responses that might begin to redress those inequalities in the course of life (differing levels of economic welfare at different stages of the family life cycle), and vertical inequalities ( inequalities of income and wealth between families). The interactive nature of the principles of intergenerational equity, gender equity and social equity thus dissolves the distinction, indeed the dichotomy of private and public spheres of activity and responsibility, signaling that the two are intrinsically interdependent.