World: How to safeguard human security amid changing NATO priorities

Country: World Source: PAX Please refer to the attached files. In the 2022 Strategic Concept, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) committed to mainstreaming human security – an approach that widens the traditional focus of ‘security’ from states to individuals and adopts a population-centric approach to conflicts – across its core tasks, from collective defence to crisis management to partnerships. Four years later, however, human security appears to be in decline within the Alliance, hampered by low visibility, limited resources, and a lack of concrete, practical guidance for militaries. This threatens the progress made in understanding and mitigating civilian harm in conflict just as NATO is preparing for a collective defence scenario that would put its own populations, governments and territories at a major risk of harm. The retrenchment is also affecting partnerships, including the NATO Mission Iraq (NMI), which had supported work leading to the adoption of Iraq’s National Protection of Civilians (PoC) Policy. The current international landscape – from the United States (US) dismantling the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda and civilian harm mitigation (CHM) approaches to NATO’s focus on collective defence and national resilience – is a significant contributor to the decline of human security, but it is not the whole story. This briefing suggests that a lack of specific military guidance, inadequate levels of expertise, a lack of understanding from commanders, and changes in personnel tasks have all had a negative influence on NATO’s ability to translate the political commitment to human security into actions that would carry practical benefits for civilian populations.

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