The National Security Implications of HIV/AIDS (original) (raw)
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'HIV, AIDS and Security: where are we now?'
The links between health and security are not new, but the latest iteration of this relationship is barely a decade old and concerns the manner in which a range of health issues create national security concerns. This relationship remains contested, but also has curious silences. This keynote will address one of the 3 central health issues in this new relationship: HIV and AIDS. It will argue in January 2000 the UN Security Council not only raised the profile of HIV as a security issue but established the beginnings of an orthodoxy as to why this was so. Since then however there have been 4 major developments: that the consensus on HIV as a security issue has disappeared; that the relationship is more complex and poorly understood than first imagined; that the benefits of ‘securitising’ HIV have been questioned; and although there have been some positive developments and policy changes, securitising HIV has not led to dramatic improvements.
The Hiv/Aids Epidemic – What’s Security Got to Do with It?
PERCEPTIONS: Journal of International Affairs, 2006
This article's main topic is the securitization of HIV/AIDS. The first part of the article deals with the concepts of human security and securitization. Hereby the UN's 1994 Human Development Report's new concept of human security will be dealt with, as this concept changed the view to HIV/AIDS immensely. The article will then show the theoretical background of securitization and its implications for HIV/AIDS. Then the UN Security Council meeting on 10 January 2000, in which the Security Council for the first time ever discussed a health issue and the UN Resolution 1308 from 17 July 2000 on "HIV/AIDS and international peacekeeping operations", will be dealt with. The article will then show the advantages and disadvantages of the securitization of HIV/AIDS. It aims to show that HIV/AIDS-due to its immense ramifications-is not "only" a health problem, but an international relations problem that the world has to face together. HIV/AIDS should be considered as a threat against human security and not a national or global security threat. It has to be dealt with globally in order to fight not the people living with HIV/AIDS, but the virus itself. As health cannot be regarded as standing alone, as poverty and health are interconnected, all circumstances and the social environment have to be taken into account-poverty, inequalities, injustices must be dealt with. Only then will the HIV/AIDS epidemic be reduced.
Biosecurity and the international response to HIV/AIDS: governmentality, globalisation and security
Area, 2009
A growing critical literature examines the rise of biosecurity. HIV/AIDS has been mentioned in this literature as a biosecurity issue, but despite its importance as a major global health problem, the ways in which HIV/AIDS might be considered a matter of biosecurity have not been explored in depth. This article addresses this issue, particularly in relation to the international response to HIV/AIDS, through the conceptual prism of governmentality and in relation to concerns about globalisation and security. Following a discussion of the relevance of governmentality to research on the intersections between globalisation and security, the article considers biosecurity and the international response to HIV/AIDS in terms of modes of problematisation and institutionalisation. In terms of problematisation, it argues that while some biosecurity issues and HIV/AIDS have been addressed as emergencies, the characteristics of anticipation, preparedness, emergence and pre-emption, which are central to the dominant formation of biosecurity, are less relevant to HIV/AIDS. As the article shows, the two fields have also been institutionalised in rather distinct ways. It therefore cautions against regarding the international response to HIV/AIDS as a biosecurity intervention. In conclusion, the article identifies three broad avenues for further research: unpacking the politics of global health and security during recession; engaging with theoretical debates around governmentality; and engaging with problems of space.
This article critically engages with recent efforts to frame the global AIDS pandemic as an international security issue. The securitization of HIV/AIDS is significant, the article argues, not just because it is a novel way of conceptualizing the global AIDS pandemic, but also because it marks an important contemporary site for the global dissemination of a biopolitical economy of power revolving around the government of 'life'. This biopolitical dimension to the securitization of AIDS brings into play a set of potentially racist and normalizing social practices, which, the article argues, international political actors should seek to avoid in their attempts to find appropriate and effective responses to the global AIDS pandemic. Ways of minimizing these dangers are explored in the conclusion of the article.
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The HIV/AIDS epidemic has often been regarded as a global threat to security, to the extent that the United Nations Security Council declared in 2000 that the epidemic (considered then a pandemic) represented a threat to peace and security, the first time that the council had given such consideration to a health issue. (Chen, 2004:5). Does human security emerge as a possible bridge between notions of security and risk, and the defence of a human rights approach to health, including the HIV and AIDs epidemic, and development? Proponents of this notion, while still focusing on security, emphasise the needs and welfare of individuals and communities, rather than just that of states and territories. They consider a variety of military and non-military threats and vulnerabilities to the survival and welfare of individuals and societies, which include disease (Wilson, 2003; Elbe, 2006; Tadjbakhsh and Chenoy, 2007). This bridge has been evoked by authors who see human security as an approach that, focusing on the person, can identify new strategies for meeting the goals of global health and security (Store, Welch, Chen, 2003; Narasimhan, 2003).
HIV and State Failure: is HIV a Security Risk?
2008
There is a growing recognition that infectious diseases can easily spill across national borders and threaten global peace and stability. This has resulted in a change in focus from reduction in HIV/AIDS being a component of development to also being an important consideration ...
The Health-Security Nexus and the Impact of Epidemics on Global Security
Rome, IAI, November 2024, 15 p. (IAI Papers ; 24|27), ISBN 978-88-9368-346-3, 2024
The aim of this paper is to illustrate the nexus between health and security, dealing, in particular, with the impact of epidemics and pandemics on global security. Firstly, it sheds light on the various shapes that the bidirectional link between health and security can assume. Secondly, it describes the threats posed to global security by three major virus epidemics-HIV/AIDS, Ebola and Covid-19-with a focus on the European security environment.