National Security must guarantee human comfort

By Raphael Tuju

The recent revelation that Kenya could be headed for yet another round of electoral chaos is very chilling indeed. It is revolting to imagine that the ICC process and all other local interventions designed to avert ethnic crises do not seem to be leaving an abiding mark in our peoples’ minds. Yet, the problem of insecurity has acquired very worrying dimensions indeed.

It is so worrying that it now ranks right up there with the specters of poverty, ignorance and disease that the Founding Fathers identified as this nation’s most pressing national problems five decades ago.

As a nation, we face serious challenges to our security – personal, neighbourhood, rural, urban, national and regional, complete with global spillovers.

And these threats emanate from a variety of daunting quarters, some of the most deadly of which the Founding Fathers lived and died long and useful lives without so much as imagining.

Added to the security threats posed by muggers, burglars, rapists, carjackers, bank robbers and thugs and political militias, Kenya is nowadays also beset by the interrelated menaces of transnational terrorism, human trafficking, prostitution, drug dealing, gunrunning and money laundering.

The practitioners of transnational crimes have taken to the world of information communications technologies (ICTs) like ducks to water and pose challenges that leave our traditional law enforcement agencies several crucial steps behind.

Underpinning all these categories of crime and insecurity is the growing availability and ease of access to illicit small arms and light weapons (SALW).  The threat to our security from SALW is dire indeed. 

Crucial concept

Some of the Bills currently before Parliament ought to strengthen the ability of our security forces to intercept and interdict the suppliers of these arms which are used exclusively to increase insecurity.  These Bills should be given priority. 

We are also facing the challenge of a growing drug and substance abuse problem. While education and awareness creation are the true long-term solutions, in the long-term we are all dead.

The next Government should massively support re-training our security agents to improve their ability to stem the flow of drugs into this country and from one part of the country to another.

But we are in danger of being overrun by criminality, if we do not, both as a people and as a system, re-define our notions of security and act accordingly. Under my Government, the notion of national security, for instance, will be redefined to include the crucial concept of Human Security.

Human Security is already a working definition, concept and paradigm in United Nations systems and programmes with The United Nations Development Programme introducing the term “Human Security” for the first time 20 years ago in the wake of the Cold War.

According to the Human Security Initiative, whose motto is ‘Alleviate Human Suffering and Assure Security’, “The issues Human Security addresses include, but are not limited to, the following: Organised Crime and Criminal Violence, Human Rights and Good Governance, Armed Conflict and Intervention, Genocide and Mass Crimes, Health and Development and Resources and Environment.

Human Security focuses primarily on protecting people while promoting peace and assuring sustainable continuous development. It emphasizes aiding individuals by using a people-centred approach for resolving inequalities that affect security”. 

Kenyans must never forget that inequality and injustice create their own security threats that are not necessarily comprehensively mediated by the policing paradigm, the law-and-order principle. A hungry man in the midst of plenty and of exclusion is an angry man.

Just as we have graduates who have become hawkers, we have both graduates and non-graduates who never imagined that they would one day descend into criminality. 

I believe that, through the New Constitution Kenya will create the conditions for good, people-centred governance and Kenyans will feel secure to undertake development activities with the confidence that less and less of them will fall through the safety nets that protect the majority of the population from descending into criminality.

In the meantime, Kenyans must do everything to ensure that they help each other in the relentless war on crime.

Situational awareness

And when the Kenya Police Force graduates into the Kenya Police Service any time now, redefining forever the relationship between policing and the general population, let us hope and pray that the first dividend will be a nationwide drop in the crime statistics. 

As we reform the security sector, let us all remember that security begins at home and the first defence is what experts call “situational awareness”.

This is simply being aware of one’s surroundings and identifying potential threats and dangerous situations. This is defined as more of a mindset than a hard skill. And all it takes is people looking out for themselves and their neighbours.

The writer is Party of Action Presidential Candidate.