Juan Somavia’s ‘People’s Security’: Redefining International Relations

For most of modern history, the word “security” has been tied to armies, borders, and the power of states to defend themselves. But in the closing years of the twentieth century, a Chilean diplomat named Juan Somavía offered a different starting point. He asked a simple question: secure for whom? His answer placed ordinary people, not states, at the centre of the security debate. Through his concept of ‘people’s security’, Somavía helped reshape how scholars, governments, and international institutions think about safety, conflict, and well-being.

Who was Juan Somavía? 🔗

Juan Somavía is a Chilean diplomat and policy-maker who spent decades working on questions of development, social justice, and global security. He served as Chile’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations and later became Director-General of the International Labour Organization from 1999 to 2012. He was also one of the figures who helped develop the human security concept itself.

One of his most significant contributions came in 1995, when he proposed and chaired the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen. Attended by more than 120 heads of state and government, it was a first major attempt by the international community to bring a “people’s agenda” of employment, poverty reduction, and social integration into global decision-making. This summit later helped open the path toward the Millennium Development Goals.

What is ‘people’s security’? 🔗

Somavía’s idea of ‘people’s security’ begins with a shift in focus. Traditional security thinking measures safety in terms of territory protected and weapons stockpiled. Somavía argued that this approach misses the point. The real test of security is how it affects the daily lives of individuals and communities. His book, People’s Security: Globalising Social Progress (1999), brought together speeches and arguments built around this single idea: examine every issue, whether it is disarmament, unemployment, or conflict, in terms of how it relates to the lives of people.

This was not a rejection of the state. Rather, it was a reordering of priorities. For Somavía, the security of the human being is as important as the security of the state. A country can have strong armed forces and secure borders while large sections of its population remain hungry, jobless, and afraid. By that measure, such a society is not truly secure.

From military security to human security 🔗

Somavía’s analysis of security concepts produced a set of common principles that challenged conventional thinking. The most important of these is that security cannot be based on the insecurity of others. When one nation builds its safety by making rivals feel threatened, it triggers a cycle of suspicion. Somavía noted that the build-up of arms does not produce confidence; it produces distrust, which in turn produces more arms.

This insight connects directly to the broader human security framework that the United Nations Development Programme set out in its 1994 Human Development Report. That report equated security with people rather than territories, and with development rather than arms. Somavía’s people’s security shares this DNA. Both argue that security is not primarily a strategic or military question, and both insist that genuine safety must cover economic, social, cultural, and environmental dimensions of life.

The interconnected dimensions of security 🔗

A central feature of Somavía’s thinking is interconnectedness. He rejected the idea that security can be split into neat, separate boxes. Economic hardship feeds social tension. Social tension can spill into political instability. Political instability damages the environment and the economy further. These threads are woven together, and pulling on one affects all the others.

This view aligns with how the broader human security paradigm understands threats. The 1994 report identified several interlinked areas, including economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community, and political security. The underlying logic is the same one Somavía emphasised: you cannot protect people from one type of threat while ignoring the others, because insecurity in one area quickly becomes insecurity in another.

The two freedoms 🔗

Somavía’s work fits comfortably within the famous twin pillars of human security: freedom from fear and freedom from want. Freedom from fear addresses threats of violence, conflict, and repression. Freedom from want addresses hunger, disease, poverty, and economic deprivation. Somavía’s emphasis on poverty and economic uncertainty falls squarely on the “freedom from want” side, while his critique of arms races and distrust speaks to “freedom from fear.” His contribution was to show how the two are tied together in the lived experience of real people.

The roots of insecurity 🔗

Somavía insisted that the objective of any security policy should be to reduce insecurity. This sounds obvious, but it carries a sharp implication. If the goal is to reduce insecurity, then policy must deal with the origins of insecurity rather than only its symptoms. Spending vast sums on weapons while ignoring why people feel unsafe in the first place is, in his view, a failure of strategy.

He identified three main sources from which insecurity flows.

Poverty 🔗

Somavía placed poverty first among the origins of insecurity. When people lack the basic means to survive and provide for their families, they live in a permanent state of vulnerability. Poverty is not just an economic statistic; it is a daily experience of fear about food, shelter, and the future. The World Bank and other institutions have long documented how poverty and instability reinforce one another, particularly where large numbers of young people enter the workforce but cannot find jobs.

Political instability 🔗

The second source is political instability. Where governments are weak, unaccountable, or unable to provide basic services, people lose confidence in the institutions meant to protect them. Instability erodes the social contract and creates space for conflict. As research published by the International Monetary Fund has shown, political instability is also associated with weaker economic growth, which then deepens the very poverty that fuels further instability.

Economic uncertainty 🔗

The third source is economic uncertainty. Even people who are not poor can feel insecure when their livelihoods are fragile. Job loss, unstable wages, and unpredictable markets generate anxiety that ripples through households and communities. This concern reflects Somavía’s life-long interest in decent work, which guided his later leadership at the International Labour Organization. He believed that the quality of a society is, in many ways, defined by the quality of work available to its people.

Humanising politics and the economy 🔗

If poverty, instability, and economic uncertainty are the roots of insecurity, then the solution, for Somavía, lies in addressing those roots directly. He called for humanising politics and the economy. This means designing political systems and economic policies that put human welfare, dignity, and well-being at their centre rather than treating people as an afterthought to growth figures or strategic calculations.

Humanising the economy means measuring success not only by output and profit, but by whether people have decent work, fair wages, and protection from shocks. Humanising politics means building institutions that are responsive, inclusive, and accountable to citizens. When politics and economics serve people, social tensions ease and stability follows naturally. This is why Somavía saw social progress and security as two sides of the same coin.

This logic was echoed years later in the United Nations report In Larger Freedom (2005), which argued that security cannot be achieved without development, development cannot be achieved without security, and neither is possible without respect for human rights. Somavía’s people’s security anticipated this interdependence by treating economic and social progress as essential ingredients of a secure world.

Why Somavía’s ideas matter for international relations 🔗

Somavía’s people’s security helped push international relations beyond a purely state-centred view of the world. During the Cold War, security debates were dominated by the rivalry of superpowers and the threat of nuclear conflict. The end of that era opened space for a different conversation, one that asked whether the everyday safety of individuals deserved as much attention as the survival of states. Somavía was among the voices that gave this conversation intellectual weight.

His approach also reframed how we think about conflict prevention. If insecurity grows from poverty, instability, and economic anxiety, then the most effective way to prevent conflict is to reduce these conditions long before they erupt into violence. Investing in jobs, social protection, and inclusive institutions becomes a security strategy, not merely a development goal. This blurring of the line between development and security is one of the most lasting effects of human security thinking.

A more hopeful vision of security 🔗

Perhaps the most striking feature of Somavía’s framework is its optimism. Traditional security thinking often assumes a zero-sum world, where one nation’s gain is another’s loss. People’s security suggests the opposite. When one country reduces poverty and strengthens its institutions, it becomes a more stable neighbour and a more reliable partner. Security, in this view, can be a shared and growing resource rather than a fixed pie that nations fight over.

This does not mean the concept is without critics. Some scholars argue that human security is too broad and vague to guide concrete policy, and that stretching “security” to cover everything risks making it mean nothing. These are fair challenges. Yet even critics acknowledge that Somavía and others succeeded in placing human beings firmly at the centre of security debates, and that this shift has shaped how governments and international bodies set their priorities.

The lasting influence of people’s security 🔗

Somavía’s ideas did not stay confined to academic discussion. Through the Copenhagen Summit, his leadership at the International Labour Organization, and his contributions to the human security concept, his thinking helped influence global development agendas. The emphasis on decent work, social protection, and poverty reduction that runs through much of today’s international policy carries the imprint of the people-centred vision he championed.

For students of political science and international relations, Somavía’s people’s security offers a valuable lens. It reminds us that behind every security policy, every defence budget, and every treaty, there are real people whose safety and dignity are ultimately what security is supposed to protect. By asking “secure for whom?”, Somavía helped ensure that this question can no longer be ignored.

What do you think? If reducing poverty and economic uncertainty is genuinely a path to greater security, should governments treat social spending as a form of national defence? And in a world still organised around states and their militaries, can the vision of “people’s security” ever fully replace traditional, state-centred security thinking?

References

1. https://www.ilo.org/resource/juan-somavia
2. https://www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/world-summit-for-social-development-1995.html
3. https://hdr.undp.org/content/human-development-report-1994
4. https://www.undp.org/speeches/25th-anniversary-human-security-concept
5. https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview
6. https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2011/wp1112.pdf
7. https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/generalassembly/docs/globalcompact/A_59_2005.pdf