Working Paper Centre for Global Political Economy

Globalization and the New Inequalities:

Threats and Prospects for Human Security
Sandra J MacLean
Department of Political Science
Simon Fraser University

CGPE Working Paper 04-02

January 2004

Centre for Global Political Economy

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 Human security is closely related to questions of social equity. To the extent that society is
not just, there is less likely to be peace, adequate care for the environment, poverty
eradication, labour protection, unencumbered development of identity and knowledge, or
social cohesion. Conversely, to the extent that people feel insecure, they are less likely to
relinquish any unfair social advantages that they might have (Scholte, 2001: 234).

Intensified inequalities, social dislocations and human insecurity have coincided with a
redefinition of the political in the emerging world order (Gill, 2002: 47)

Inequalities have always existed in the world, but there is a sense that they have
increased in recent years as a result of globalization. Much of the interest in this issue is
focused on inequalities of income, which according to many analysts, are widening as the
result of the Western-inspired and -supported neoliberal policies and philosophies that are
associated with the extension and deepening of global capitalism. Scholars on the left of
the political spectrum decry the injustice of the trend and the apparent inability or
unwillingness of states and/or powerful international organizations to intervene on behalf
of the poorest members of society who are being hit the hardest. Liberal scholars and
policy-makers who support the ideals of liberal capitalism argue that leftist doomsayers
are misguided. First, liberals are not so concerned with inequality as they deem it to be an
inevitable condition of society and, second, they believe that poverty will decline in the
world anyway, as the result both of the current increases in world trade and the spate of
recent transitions to democracy.

However, as I argue in this paper, so far poverty is not abating as neoliberal

claims suggest it should, but rather, many of the poor are getting poorer. Moreover, the
new inequalities extend well beyond increasing income gaps. New inequalities in power
are emerging as well; these are becoming obvious in the entrenchment of old and
production of new social hierarchies. Indeed, globalization is much more than an
economic project; it also has sweeping and far-reaching implications for political
economy, ecology and identity. Therefore, the new inequalities, which affect groups of
people, institutions, sectors, countries and regions may be seen as a feature of profound
contemporary changes in political and social, as well as economic relations.

One of the important implications of the widening income and power gaps
between the worlds most advantaged people and its most disadvantaged is that the
increased disparities seem to be contributing to increased levels of human insecurity and
increased perceptions of insecurity throughout the world. This relationship to insecurity is
perhaps the most important aspect of the new inequalities, as it suggests fundamental
rearrangements in social relations that challenge our traditional conceptions of
governance. There are two, related dimensions to this point, both of which are embodied
in the recent ascension of the human security agenda. First, rearrangements of power
relations in society and pressures on existing governance structures contribute to the new
inequalities that lead to heightened levels and new forms of insecurity. Second, enhanced
security in a globalizing world requires creative rethinking about and retooling of the
forms of governance that will adequately address the problems that the world currently
faces. The new human security agenda emerged from the growing awareness that humans
were not adequately protected by traditional security arrangements locked into a state-
based system. Moreover, under the aegis of human security, scholars and policy-makers
seek novel approaches to dealing with conflict and other forms of insecurity; human
security, in practice, implies the emergence of new governance arrangements.

This paper begins by examining the current state of inequality and exploring its
connections to new forms, levels and perceptions of security. It proceeds to an
exploration of the prospects and difficulties other inequalities and insecurity pose for
governance at the beginning of the new millennium. In particular, it questions what has
been gained in viewing inequality as a problem of human security. Previously,
inequalities and related inequities were treated primarily as human rights issues.
However, because they are often now conceived as threats to human security, they may
also be treated as functional issues of domestic and foreign policy, based on concerns, for
example, that people whose basic needs are not met are less likely to be productive
economically and/or they are more likely to become militantly aggressive in protesting
their condition.

Globalization and the New Inequalities

Globalization has stimulated a vast amount of research and debate in the social
sciences in the past decade, yet few scholars, would claim to have a clear understanding
of the many, profound implications of the processes that have generated the phenomenal
level of interest. Neither has a singular, clear definition of globalization emerged; indeed,
discussions are framed around several very distinct conceptualizations. Views on
globalization have been categorized by the normative forecasts of the scholars debating
the issues (Held et al., 1999), on the basis of the ideological assumptions that support or
critique neoliberalism as the propellant for the many forces of and reactions to
globalization (Germain, 2000; Mittelman, 1997; Smith & Baylis, 2001), as well as by
definitions of globalization that view it as one component of its myriad parts as
increased interdependence or intensified internationalization, for example (see Scholte,
2001).

A compilation of the various viewpoints does not add up to a complete picture of

the globalization phenomenon. Yet, each of these various conceptualizations captures one
or more aspects of a complex and novel set of contemporary developments. As such, they
paint a picture of globalization as a process of fundamental transformation in social,
political and economic orders, rather than merely as an intensification or acceleration of
processes that have traditionally operated. As Scholte (2001) points out, globalization can
be seen as a new phenomenon only if it represents a qualitative change in social
processes. He argues that increased deterritorialization is one important development that
constitutes such a shift. Following such arguments of Scholte and others who believe we
have reached a new moment in world order, globalization can be defined as processes of
transformation affecting the entire world that involve the transnationalization of
production and finance, the increasing structural relevance of technology, realignments of
power over several levels of formal and informal systems of governance, and the
deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation of social relations.

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 There are strong indications that inequality is increasing in the world as a result of
these globalization processes. In particular, there is compelling empirical evidence to
show that, globally, income gaps have been widening over the past two decades. Various
groups of workers around the world have been laid off or have had their incomes reduced
as a result of economic processes that are determined as much, or more, by changes in the
global political economy than by policy choices at national, sectoral or company levels
(Alderson & Nielsen, 2002; Gamble, 2001, Kelly, 2001). From the experience of one
country, for instance, [t]here is overwhelming evidence that since the mid-1980s,
Mexico has faced increasing income inequality, with greater trade flexibility occurring
largely as the result of trade liberalization (Cortez, 2001: 1905 & 1922). And, in South
Africa, with unemployment hovering around 30% and rising in the important export
sectors of mining and manufacturing, labour has reacted with several strikes since 2001
to the governments hyper-liberal Growth, Employment and Reconstrution (GEAR)
policy (Carmody, 2002; Dickinson, 2002). In Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and
other countries in the Southeast Asia region, workers suffered severe blows first from the
1997 Asian crisis, and then from the aftermath policies designed to reduce the structural
irregularities which were assumed to have caused the crisis (Shari, 2000). In developing
countries around the world, many workers have been retrenched to meet conditionality
requirements of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) structural
adjustment programs (SAPs). In industrialized countries, as well, even if the effects on
workers have not been quite as harsh, inequality has been more pronounced in recent
years, due to regressive changes in tax systems, public services and income transfers
(Lee, 2002: 2).

These examples from various regions of the world suggest a global downward
pressure on incomes of workers, especially at the lower ends of the wage scales, and
numerous statistics have been published over the past decade that show the trend has
exacerbated levels of income inequality which were already staggering. One of the
organizations to have taken a lead on this issue is the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP). The 1996 Human Development Report (p.13), for instance, states
that [t]oday, the net worth of the worlds 358 richest people is equal to the combined
income of the poorest 45 per cent of the worlds population2.3 billion people. The
1999 Report (pp. 36-39) informs that in 1960 the top 20% of the worlds wage earners
received 30 times the income of the poorest 20%. Those with the top incomes were
earning 32 times more by 1970, 45 times more by 1980, 59 times by 1989, and by 1997,
the top 20% were earning 74 times the income that the bottom 20% received. Other
researchers have reported similar trends. For example, Lee (2002) describes a project
sponsored by the World Bank (Branko, 1999) that investigated global income distribution
between 1988 and 1993. The investigation showed a significant shift occurring. By the
end of the period studied the top earners received proportionately more and the poorest
proportionately less than they had five years previously. Furthermore, the overall
distribution was profoundly unequal: the top 10% earned just over half of the worlds
income and the bottom 10% earned just 0.8%. The richest 1% received as much income
as the bottom 57%.

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 Increasing income gaps intersect with other dimensions of the new inequalities
that arise from the new arrangements and relations of production. The negative impacts
of globalization are often felt most keenly by groups that are weaker politically and/or
socially: for example, women and certain ethnic and racial groups (Kelly, 2001; Klausen
& Maier, 2001; Saskia, 2000). This is true for all countries, rich as well as poor, but the
situation tends to be much worse in developing countries. For example, the exploitation
of female workers from poor countries in various new global production networks that
employ only or predominately women are well documented. Disturbing stories abound
about the plights of women who are workers in areas such as transnational prostitution,
the migrant/immigrant nanny-trade, and just-in-time production industries in export-
processing zones. Saskia Sassen (2000) argues that these global circuits are contributing
to the feminization of survival; that is, the situation whereby poor women accept
insecure, sometimes dangerous employment abroad in order to survive and often to
provide for families back home. These global employment networks are a feature of the
globalization of markets and the transnationalization of production, advanced
communication technology, and of the growth in people movements. In some cases, such
networks provide employment to previously unemployed or underemployed women.
Also, home governments benefit by the convertible currency women send home through
remittances. Yet, such forms of employment often come at a very high price for the
women involved; as Sassen (ibid.: 503) points out, [these new globalized forms of
employment] are revenue-making circuits developed on the backs of the truly
disadvantaged.

The development of transnational employment circuits depends upon a global

pool of surplus female labour; in other words, the new global division of labour feeds on
gender-based vulnerabilities as well as long-standing North-South inequalities. Similarly,
this combination of geographic and social inequalities fuels other emerging global
networks, the most sinister of which are transnational networks of crime and/or of
violence. These networks are emerging in an arcane nexus of local and global, national
and international relations among formal and informal, state and non-state actors. They
often involve trade in weapons, drugs, natural resources, especially minerals, and they
frequently are associated with civil and regional wars, such as recent ones in West and
Central Africa.

Frequently, the locus of such a network is a post-colonial state although,

especially in the case of the new network wars, control of the state may be secondary to
the objective to control resources and trade routes. However, the domestic and
international inequalities of power and wealth that characterize the post-colonial state are
important factors in explaining the new network wars and relations. Post-colonial states
emerged as creations of unequal international relations, and the domestic systems of
governance they inherited or cobbled together at independence tended to reinforce and
often exacerbate indigenous social gaps. In situations where civil societies were non-
existent, weak or politically distant elites in many countries were able and quite willing to
use the state offices as vehicles for facilitating rent extraction. Rent-seeking behaviour
was rewarded in the Cold War period as superpowers, competing for geopolitical control
of the newly independent countries, offered financial and military support to

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unscrupulous leaders of various ruthless regimes. When the Cold War ended and the
financial support from the superpowers dried up, many of these elites turned to the
extraction of minerals and other natural resources and/or trade in contraband for purposes
of regime maintenance as well as personal gain. The numbers of competitors for control
of these resources and the development of extensive networks involving people from
various levels of society (and operating with varying degrees of legitimacy and legality)
have escalated largely because of economic globalization and the exacerbation of
inequalities among certain groups and regions. For example, as Africa has become
increasingly marginalized in the international economic order, more and more people
have slipped from formal employment into the gray and black economies, the latter
frequently associated with the new networks of crime and/or violence. As Robert Cox
(1999:23) observes, [t]he covert world, in the form of organized crime, drug cartels, and
political corruption, is rife in these countries which have had a decline in both state
authority and effectiveness in regulating the market.

The point of the above examples is to show that the negative effects of
globalization are felt more acutely by those who are at the bottom end of an inequality
gap, whether of income or of power. Secondly, those who benefit from new globalization
processes frequently do so by exploiting already existing social inequalities of gender,
social position, geopolitical location, etc. Finally, these long-standing inequalities (North-
South, strong state-weak state, elite-poor, male-female, etc.) determine who is in the front
row and who is pushed further back to the outer margins when the benefits of
globalization are distributed. The digital divide is a good illustrative case; studies have
shown that white, middle- and upper-class males in Western industrialized societies enjoy
the greatest access to modern communications technology; the rural poor, and especially
female in poor, developing countries often have little or no access. Differential access to
new technologies has obvious serious implications for widening the knowledge gap and
thus for income prospects. It also has cultural implications. For instance, the recent
developments in communication technology have enhanced enormously the value of
technical knowledge and, at the same time, effectively reduced the perceived worth of
various forms of indigenous knowledge (Harding, 2002).

Knowledge accumulation and production, then, are yet another site where the new
inequalities are becoming more evident. International trade in these areas has become a
contested area between have and have not regions of the world indicating the extent to
which these divisions impact on peoples everyday lives and security. Trade issues and
disputes around World Trade Organization (WTO) rules on patents are a case in point
(Sharma, 1997), and the controversies, particularly around pharmaceuticals, have
highlighted the differential access to treatments of certain diseases in developing and
industrialized countries (Sreenivasan & Grinspun, 2002). This issue received widespread
international attention after several multinational pharmaceutical companies initiated
court action in 1998 to prevent South Africa from buying cheaper, generic anti-retroviral
drugs rather than the more expensive patent-protected versions produced by the
companies. In the face of widespread criticism, the companies finally withdrew their
petitions and new arrangements were agreed at a WHO Ministerial Conference in Doha

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in November 2001 to allow developing countries to take measures to protect public
health without suffering trade penalties (Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network).

Arguably, health issues such as this one involving HIV/AIDS have heightened
interest in global inequalities more than any other single issue. For example, few
international trade issues have received more coverage in daily newspapers than South
Africas purchase of generic retro-viral drugs. People around the world watch with
interest reports about the spread in poor countries of virulent communicable diseases such
as Ebola, or the development of the recent outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory
Syndrome (SARS) in China. Yet, although there is increasing awareness that poverty and
inequality are factors in the increase in such diseases, the interest seems not to have been
generated by concern to alleviate the conditions of poverty in which such diseases
originate and rapidly spread. Indeed, although it has been well established in medical
literature for several years that social standing is one of (and probably the) most
important determinants of health (Black, et al., 1982; Marmot, 1986), there has been a
dearth of media interest, little analytical attention in the social sciences, almost none until
recently in the International Relations field and, most importantly, a movement away
from implementing policies designed to reduce inequalities (Leon, et al., 2001, MacLean,
2003). The increased concern, rather, is the threat that these diseases pose to others
beyond those in the pockets of poverty in which the diseases are originally centred.

Conditions of poverty, over-crowded housing, lack of sanitation systems, poor

water quality, and inadequate food intake create fertile reservoirs for the development of
disease. Long-standing inequalities have fostered the development of these living
conditions in segments of the populations throughout the world. Globalization has not
only exacerbated these and other inequalities, as discussed above, but it has brought
problems of inequality, such as virulent infectious diseases to the advantaged areas of the
world and wealthy sectors of society (Brower & Chalk, 2003). Given that, it appears that
new interest in inequalities is developing mainly because of the perceived impact of
inequality on the human security of the more advantaged members of society.

Inequality and Human Security

Robert Wade (2001: 72) states: [n]ew evidence suggests that global inequality is
worsening rapidly. There are good reasons to worry about that trend, quite apart from
what it implies about the extent of world poverty (Wade, 2001: 72, cited in Pieterse,
2002: 1027). The worry to which Wade refers is the hypothesized relationship between
inequality and insecurity. Health is only one area in which the links between poverty and
are being evaluated; certainly environmental issues are relevant in this regard, but also
there is also new awareness about a possible connection between violence and inequality.
The rising numbers of terrorist organizations and especially the 11 September 2001
attacks on New York and Washington have caused many in the North to question
whether neglect in addressing long-standing political and economic disparities between
the rich and poor regions of the world has produced a groundswell of Southern rage that
is now being unleashed in various acts of terrorism and other forms of violence. Also,

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certainly, there is concern that inequalities are a component of the political economy of
conflict; that competition for minerals are fueling wars in poor countries of the world
(Keen, 1998) and/or that resource wars (over scarce water supplies, for instances) are
likely, even imminent (Klare, 2001). To quote one author:

The empirical evidence that has been produced, while largely limited to analyses
of developing countries, tends to support the hypothesis advanced here, namely,
that a lack of legitimacy following from globalization-induced reductions in
quality and quantity of welfare measures has led to an upsurge in social
mobilization, unrest and even civil wars (Mueller, 2001: 252).

These concerns and the conditions that have generated them are closely related to
the new human security agenda, which as the phrase suggests, is about the conditions and
qualities of safety and well-being that people enjoy. Human security may be defined as
freedom from various threats such as fear, danger, or harm. In its broadest definition,
then, it also suggests freedom from want. Freedoms from fear and want are frequently
defined as dual aspects of the human security concept. As Ramesh Thakur (1997: 53-4, in
Brower & Chalk, 2003:5) observes:

Negatively, it [human security] refers to freedom from: want, hunger, attack,

torture, imprisonment without a free and fair trial, discrimination on spurious
grounds, and so on. Positively, it means freedom to: the capacity and
opportunity that allows each human being to enjoy life to the fullest without
putting constraints upon others engaged in the same pursuit. Putting the two
together, human security refers to the quality of life of the people of a society or
polity. Anything that degrades their quality of life - demographic pressures,
diminished access to or stock of resources, and so on - is a security threat.
Conversely, anything which can upgrade their quality of life - economic growth,
improved access to resources, social and political empowerment, and so on, is
an enhancement of human security.

The attributes of human security are strongly reminiscent of the human rights
objectives that have been set out in various international covenants. They are consistent
also with the core development objectives of international development and donor
agencies. In other words, within policy realms, the concept of human security brings
security squarely into juxtaposition with development. The conceptual connection
between security and development is fairly recent in mainstream theory and policy,
especially in international relations/foreign policy where the concept of security has until
recently been confined to concerns for the protection of national interests and integrity.
Globalization processes are largely responsible for this significant departure. In the words
of Lloyd Axworthy (2001: 12), who, as the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs and
International Trade (DFAIT) from 1996 to 2000, played a key role in championing the
paradigmatic shift from national to human security: [t]he human security agenda is an
attempt to respond to a new global reality. The reality is that many states seem unable to
meet welfare responsibilities to their citizens; there are new dimensions of insecurity
(such as those discussed as features of the new inequalities in the previous section); many
of the current security issues are local or global rather than national or even international
so that existing instruments and governance structures are inadequate to treat them

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effectively; and finally, and relatedly, states and state sovereignty are often part of the
security problem rather than the solution (McRae, 2001: 17-20).

Governance for Human Security

The new causes and dimensions of (in)security that have given rise to the human
security agenda raise important questions about governance. In particular, the inability of
weaker states and/or the unwillingness of their leaders to protect vulnerable members of
society problematizes the principle of sovereignty, no less than does a growing
acceptance for humanitarian intervention. If security is for people rather than for states,
we begin to question why the norm of sovereignty has been reified as a global value,
especially if it prevents actions against the very agents who are hiding behind, and in
some cases actively using the principle to ignore or even deliberately undermine the
safety of their citizens. However, while it seems obvious that sovereign states cannot be
relied upon to be the final or only answer to security problems in a globalizing world, old
notions and entrenched power structures endure and ideas that involve giving up or
sharing any degree of state sovereignty are highly controversial. Moreover, even if there
were more willingness to question the limitations of statehood, no clear blueprint of a
more appropriate framework for new, improved governance structures has yet emerged.

To date, the benchmark for constructing governance structures for human security
has been the observance of established international human rights standards. On the
positive side, globalization processes and effects described above have given renewed
vigour to the human rights movement globally and, as well, has been responsible, at least
in part, for the recent normative turn in international relations theory (eg. Brown, 1992;
Falk, 2000; Wapner & Ruiz, 2000). Yet, notwithstanding new interest and a recent surge
in human rights activism, and despite that since the end of the Cold War, human rights
discourses have become extraordinarily powerful across a range of disciplines (Hughes,
2002: 91), it would be difficult to claim that the observation of human rights has
improved overall. While new legal and institutional instruments are being established,
children in war-torn African countries are suffering rape, limb amputations and
enslavement at the hands of soldiers, people are arbitrarily arrested, beaten, tortured and
killed by agents of government, child labourers are denied educations and are forced to
work in inhumane conditions for subsistence wages, and huge numbers of refugees
fleeing conflict in areas around the world confront ever-tightening immigration laws.
Overall, the growing moral gap of global inequalities (Doyle, 2000) became
increasingly evident. Clearly, formal expressions of intent to uphold human rights are
weak vehicles upon which to build actual protective practices.

Human rights are a highly idealized concept - too idealized, some would argue, to
be a practical basis for formulating policy in the grubby real world of politics. Given,
then, that the concept of human security makes an explicit connection between
development and security, it would seem that a paradigm shift towards human security
might be construed as good news for those who decry the state of persistent inequality
and inequity in the world. Under traditional policy frameworks, specific and formulaic

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strategies had been developed to protect national security and considerable resources had
been devoted in most countries of the world to this cause. It might logically be expected
that a clearly established connection between security and development would bring the
latter more squarely into the more practically grounded, and much better financed,
security realm. Despite having had scores of practical projects and experiments
implemented in its name over the years, development (like human rights, some might
say) has become increasingly indistinct conceptually and more and more subject to
theoretical contestation. It is reasonable, therefore, to assume that having clear indications
of the direct, explicit security implications of underdevelopment would spur action and
the redirection of resources toward alleviating conditions of poverty and inequality.

There are some indications that policies are moving in that direction. Mark
Duffield (2001) observes that the liberal development assistance enterprise is now firmly
resituated, conceptually, around the notion that development and security are integrally
related. Development is the key to conflict prevention. Unfortunately, however, this does
not mean that the new human security agenda is being sufficiently developed in practice
to make a difference to global inequality. Indeed, the human security agenda has been
juxtaposed with tenacious remnants of traditional views on security producing
arrangements that may actually be counterproductive to human security and equality
objectives. As Duffield (2001) argues, the problem is that the recent merging of
development and security by liberal international organizations is less concerned with
addressing the structural causes of underdevelopment (and hence Southern insecurity)
than with preventing the spread of insecurity from the South to the North. While self-
interest is a strong motivating drive that might be harnessed to propel actions that would
benefit both the North and the South, the effect of combining security and development
in development strategies has been to reassert the relevance and dominance of liberal
agencies in the emerging world order and therefore to reinforce global inequalities and
North-South disparities.

A somewhat different problem for the human security agenda is its broad scope.
The concept of human security is derived from the understanding that, in a globalizing
world, the types and causes of insecurity are multiple, complex and interrelated.
However, in a policy environment constrained by limited resources and
compartmentalized responsibilities, it is virtually impossible to mount comprehensive and
integrated programs that will simultaneously address the various linked issues. This
difficulty has caused many proponents of the human security agenda to advocate
concentrating on freedom from fear rather than freedom from want. This means that the
policy emphasis is on reducing the negative impact on humans in situations of violence
and conflict and on promoting practical solutions through early warning measures
and/or peace-making/keeping/building projects. The connections between freedom from
fear and freedom from want are not discounted; but it is acknowledged that issues of
want are not currently solvable, so the pragmatic solution is to do what is possible.

Yet, what is possible in the current world order seems not to be what is necessary
for enhancing security for a globalizing world. Certainly, as Andrew Linklater (2002:
303) asserts, [t]he violent acts of September 11 and the war against al-Qaeda and the

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Taliban are unique in raising profound questions about how modern society should deal
with many diverse forms of human suffering. There is a heightened sense of urgency
about the need to find solutions to the new integrated forms of insecurity - from SARS to
terrorism - that originate in and/or exacerbate inequalities.

The responses to date to deal with these global insecurity crises have not been
reassuring. For instance, while the initial outbreak of SARS was contained rather quickly
with established public health measures, it is questionable whether the disease could be
curtailed should it spread to areas that lack modern public health infrastructures. If SARS
should reemerge in rural areas of developing countries that do not have sufficiently-
endowed public health infrastructures, the disease could spread rapidly and quickly
become a global threat to health.

Also, there are few new ideas on dealing with the problem of terrorism. In the
immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, there was some discussion of reducing
conditions of poverty that served as incubators for terrorism. However, as the more recent
actions in the wars on terrorism and on Iraq have clearly shown, discourses of (US)
national security and militarism have resurged to dominate international relations. In a
recent article entitled The Continuity of International Politics Kenneth Waltz (2002:
348-9) asserts that [n]ew challenges have not changed old habits. In other words,
traditional thinking and practices continue to dominate in security matters. That Waltz
would make this claim is not, in itself, noteworthy. He is, after all, preeminent among
neorealist scholars, and he has been an unrelentingly defender of the approach against
recent challenges from various post-structuralist, feminist and constructivist theorists.
However, the credibility of Waltzs claim that the world is still a realist one has been
strengthened by recent events.

The conclusion can only be that there is frail hope in the immediate future for
institutionalizing a new security order based on the normative principles of human
security and the objective to address the new inequalities. Yet, important insights on the
new global order continue to emerge from the work of scholars who seek understanding
through the lens of human security. One such is Jan Pieterse. In his words (Pieterse,
2002: 1023):

The belief that the risks that global inequality poses can be contained in the
global margins is contradicted by the cross-border effects of environmental
degradation, migration, transnational crime and terrorism. In explaining global
inequality, economic accounts ignore inequal relations of power. The combined
policies of developmental discipline, global integration, and marginalization and
containment may be viewed as part of a single process of hierarchical
integration, which has turbulence built in.

In accord with such insights, it is also encouraging that some innovative, often informal
or semi-formalized arrangements for governing certain aspects of security are emerging.
For instance, prospects for human security are improved by some new regional security
complexes, especially those that bring in civil society actors and concerns. Human
security is also advanced through the development of what Axworthy (2001: 12) refers to
as innovative global partnerships of like-minded countries, institutions, and NGOs; in

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short, through the establishment of new governance arrangements that involve novel
(re)combinations of governments, civil society organizations and businesses. These have
become evident in various areas, such as the development of mixed-actor coalitions
around such issues as anti-personnel mines and small arms. Examples in the health sector
are the anti-tobacco campaign and the coalition on malaria (MacLean & Shaw, 2001).

Conclusions

Various new inequalities are a disturbing feature of globalization. Global

inequalities in income increased in the 20th century by orders of magnitude out of
proportion to anything experienced before (UNDP, HDR 2000: 6). Global inequalities in
income are closely related to inequalities of power - in social relations between genders,
different racial and ethnic groups, in political relations between strong and weak states
and between prominent elites and marginalized citizens, and in governance relations
between those who have the ability to set or influence political and economic decisions
and those who must comply and adjust to the directions established. Although there have
been examples of movement in the hierarchies, the tendency is for those already in
positions of advantage to be much better positioned to compete for entry and place in the
competitive transnational capitalist order. Those people who were on the economic,
social, political or geographic peripheries within the old international divisions of labour
and power tend to have been further marginalized by globalization.

Inequalities in the world have increased despite the development efforts of the
liberal economic order from modernization policies of the 1950s and 60s, through basic
human needs projects of the 1970s, structural adjustment and good governance programs
of the 1980s and 1990s to the merging of security and development at the beginning of
the new millennium. If inequalities in the world have increased despite the efforts of
neoliberals, they have also been exacerbated by the dominance of realism in setting the
worlds foreign policies. Strong states have used the primacy of national interest as the
justification for securing greater strength vis--vis- poor countries; corrupt leaders of
weak states have used it as a protective shield behind which to amass fortunes and deny
services to poor citizens of their countries. As Wilkins (2002: 635) argues, both
neoliberals and neo-realists alike share a similar ontology and epistemology of global
politics which has been successfully combined in a mutually reinforcing security-
development discourse. The neoliberal/neo-realist collaboration is a powerful force in the
world for the establishment of a neoliberal global governance, which implies governance
steeped in the orthodoxy of market capitalism and liberal democratic institutions.
Ultimately, as Wilkins argues, the new orthodoxy amounts to a policy of containment
and quarantine; it is designed to prevent the effects of poverty from spreading to areas
that have managed until now to remain unaffected.

Just as it is becoming more and more difficult to prevent various forms of

insecurity from crossing borders, it is also becoming more and more difficult to dismiss
the connections between insecurity and inequality. Inequality is fungible; those who are
the most disadvantaged economically also suffer the highest levels of insecurity.

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However, insecurity is also fungible; as various forms of inequality increase in the world,
new global forms of insecurity that have the potential to affect everyone are emerging.
Theory construction for the new global order needs to acknowledge the emergence of
new forms and levels of re-/deterritorialized connections among various types of actors.
Relatedly, there is a need to question the ethical foundations of sovereignty and to
explore how sovereignty can be reestablished as a device for the protection of real people
rather than the abstracted state. The recent move to situate human security at the core of
social relations marks a significant step toward grounding theory and practice for
protecting the needs and security of people.

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