The cybersecurity discourse from the perspective of the state has been largely traditional-based. The traditional conception of security by the state views the state as the referent object of security under threat. That the state is vulnerable to insecurity in the cyberspace and thus the cyberspace must be protected at all costs. This view has largely shaped cybersecurity laws and policy making in many countries in Africa generally.
On one hand, this traditional-centric notion makes sense considering the multiplicity of threats that are targeted at cyber infrastructures by nation states, adversaries and other malevolent actors. For instance, threats related to hacking, distributed denial of service attacks, network infiltration, cyber-espionage and malicious attacks on critical network infrastructures have placed serious security strains on the network systems hence invoking government reactions to address these cyber insecurities.
However, this analysis misses a fundamental point. Since the end of cold war politics, the security of many nation states has not only revolved around state or regime security or otherwise, its territorial integrity. It has rather widened and broadened in scope. Fewer nation states have witnessed acts of external aggression by other nation states on their territories. Moreover, even state sponsored cyber-attacks on other nation states have not fundamentally threatened the survival of those states or regimes. Reversely, we have seen increased surge of insecurities to the lives of individuals and communities. Threats related to lack of food and acute hunger, diseases and epidemics, droughts, floods, and other forms of environmental degradation and disasters have killed far more people than war, genocide and terrorism combined.
Therefore, there is need to refocus the state-based conception of security to consider the internal security and well being of individuals and communities as referent objects of security. But also more importantly, the technicalities of the cyberspace should be discussed both in relation to the negative threats and positive enablement that technologies offer to individuals and communities. Conversely, the focus unfortunately has always centered on the negative threats to technology, ignoring how critical technology can serve to enable individuals and communities not only to survive but thrive (positive enablement).
The notion of Human Security for which ‘Human-Centric’ draws its imperatives from, was first popularized in the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Human Development Report of 1994 based on achieving ‘freedom from fear’ and ‘freedom from want’. Human Security proposes a bottom-up approach to understanding the well-being as security centered on individuals and their communities as sites from fear, want, indignity and vulnerability. The human centric approach considers threats to individuals and communities including their survival but also to promote security as a means of enabling individuals and their communities to survive and thrive.
K. Hossain (1998) on ‘human security in the cyberspace’ argues that people’s security needs are shaped, among others by components of human security concerns such as basic needs in ensuring services related to for instance, health, shelter, energy, supply of water and education. Thus, what is critical to the cyberspace is the normal functioning of the critical infrastructures without any interruption. After all, most of these essential services are today digitally connected and thus individual utility arising from use of those services online is more than critical.
Therefore, a human-centric cybersecurity policy making should focus on addressing threats and risks at various levels by engaging multiple actors including individuals and communities as referent objects. Indeed, the Human Security Report of 2005 was audacious enough to emphasize the importance of human security; arguing that it lies in the fact that unlike, traditional security threats, human security threats arising out of environment, health, and food etc. “kill far more people than war, genocide and terrorism combined”.
Article by
Moses Owiny
