Begrebet “frihed for frygt” anses af nogle for uløseligt knyttet ikke kun til den enkelte, men til hele samfundets udvikling – det skyldes skyggerne fra den omsiggribende organiserede kriminalitet på tværs af alle landegrænser, som truer økonomisk fremdrift og politisk stabilitet, især i svage lande.
NAIROBI, 24 September 2013 (IRIN): Heroin from Afghanistan, the world’s largest producer, is sent across the border to Tajikistan and then on to Russia, the world’s largest consumer. Methamphetamines (amfetamin) are sent from Benin via Egypt to Japan.
Containers of Andean cocaine are shipped from Brazil to West Africa, where Nigerian smugglers then re-export the drugs to Western Europe. Migrants from Ethiopia and Somalia are smuggled to Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
Organized crime groups, often working with the compliance of governments (vender det blinde øje til), present a growing threat to citizens in fragile states.
While casualties from armed conflict are reaching a historical low of approximately 50.000 a year according to research in 2012, little has been done to effectively combat the threat of organized crime groups around the world.
As the UN looks past the Millennium Development Goals’ (MDGs) 2015 deadline, many are calling for the inclusion of security and justice targets in the post-2015 agenda and a reframing of the current transnational crime discourse (debat /strid).
Human rights organizations argue that “freedom from fear” and the tackling of organized crime are not just a personal security issue, but a development problem as well.
What is freedom from fear?
Freedom from fear requires “a state that has monopoly of legitimate violence,” Stephen Ellis, senior researcher at the African Studies Centre, University of Leiden, told IRIN.
“It is a modern, liberal concept of what a good state really is,” noted he.
The 1994 Human Development Report broadly defined human security as “freedom from fear and freedom from want (trang /nød/ fornødenheder).”
Although the phrase has roots going back to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this report instigated serious debate about human security and its connections to human development.
In their input for the UN system task team on the post-2015 UN development agenda last year, the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) argued that “a new development paradigm (begreb) is called for, directed to securing freedom from fear and want for all, without discrimination”.
“Posing questions about what constitutes fear for whom and in what contexts is likely to sharpen our analytical understanding of the conflicts of interest that generate fear in the first place”, Adam Edwards, director of the Cardiff University Center for Crime, Law and Justice, told IRIN.
This can help to then draft policies to combat these fears.
But not everyone believes that the terminology is suited to meaningful action.
“It is impossible not to have fear,” Desmond Arias, associate professor at George Mason University, told IRIN, adding: “Even in a relatively safe society, you have fear. It is good to have a modest amount of fear.”
“I am not sure that it is a useful concept,” Vanda Felbab-Brown, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told IRIN. “Freedom from fear is completely unrealistic, but also very absolutist (enevældigt).”
Therefore, it is impossible to actually achieve. “The phrasing I would like to see is enhancing human security and strengthening the bond between citizens and governments,” she said.
Fear and development
Organized crime plays a massive role in any debate about human security or freedom from fear.
But James Cockayne, head of the United Nations University office in New York, also argues, “It is important to not lose sight of the freedom from want.”
He told IRIN, “Unpacking the relationship between organized crime, violence and development – the want part, is quite complex.”
“Many criminal groups will provide services to the community,” said Cockayne, meaning that understanding freedom from want and the link between crime and development is crucial.
Spending part of their funds from criminal activities to support development is a method crime groups use to gain acceptance in their towns and villages, according to Emmanuel Kwesi Aning, director of the Faculty of Academic Affairs and Research at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre.
In many parts of West Africa, “they perceive them not as criminals but as developmentalists,” he told IRIN. “It is not just an issue of crime. It is not just an issue of human security. It is an issue of development.”
Not everyone agrees, however, that drug dealers and criminal groups are funnelling the money back into the community.
“A significant amount of drug money is going into the political campaign funds of politicians. I cannot see any evidence that it is going into schools and roads,” said Ellis.
Mislabelling transnational organized crime
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http://www.irinnews.org/report/98821/freedom-from-fear-and-the-post-mdg-agenda
