Confounding conventional wisdom, a major new report reveals that all forms of political violence, except international terrorism, have declined worldwide since the early 1990s. This is the main result of the "Human Security Report 2005" published by the Human Security Centre at the University of British Columbia.
In absence of official statistics on political violence or human rights abuses around the world, there is a clear need for a comprehensive annual report that tracks trends in these and other human security issues.
The Human Security Report is inspired by the UN’s Human Development Report with the obvious difference being that its focus is on security, not development, trends. Like the Human Development Report, the Human Security Report draws on the most recent scholarly research, focuses on people rather than states, and strives to be accessible to non-specialists.
There are of course other reports that deal with global security issues, many of them extremely valuable. But none attempts to cover the same ground as that covered in the Human Security Report; few are published annually and none adopts an explicitly human security perspective.
Unlike the reports of other security institutions—the International Institute of Strategic Studies’ Military Balance and the various Jane’s Defence publications, for example—the Human Security Report does not deal with nuclear arms control or strategy issues, counter-proliferation, missile defence, military balances, high-tech weaponry, or other issues that are associated primarily with interstate conflict and the national security paradigm. These are well covered elsewhere.
Finally, and in contrast to publications of organizations such as the International Crisis Group and Human Rights Watch, this report deals with global and regional security trends rather than developments in specific countries.
By providing a comprehensive annual assessment of the incidence, severity, and consequences of political violence around the world, the Human Security Report provides the trend data and analysis that is essential to evidence-based security policy (Source Human Security Centre).
For the press release, please see here http://www.humansecurityreport.info/press/Press_Release.pdf
For the report, please see here http://www.humansecurityreport.info/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=63
