Nor do I wish to downplay the importance of traditional security concerns, which remain crucial to the well-being of the nation. But today I would like to focus on a subject that I feel is equally critical but that has been more or less ignored within the debate on security as a whole.

This is the subject of human security and what we can do to counter threats to human security in Bangladesh.

The concept of human security was developed as a means to try to broaden the conventional security agenda. Before the concept of human security gained currency, traditional security concerns addressed military threats to the state -- security threats envisaged efforts to destabilise or overthrow a government or political system.

Gradually the idea gained acceptance that a state can face many kinds of threats to its security that are not military. The acknowledgement of non-traditional security thus expanded the scope of security concerns to encompass concepts such as food security or energy security or environmental security -- the idea being that insecurity in any of these arenas could be as much of a threat to a nation's security as a traditional military threat. But the focus -- or referent -- of such security threats remained the state.

The concept of human security was developed alongside a recognition of the fact that it is the security of the individual more than that of the state that should be of pre-eminent concern to policy-makers and the administration.

The policy focus is now more on the security and safety of the individual and not on either traditional or non-traditional security threats to the state -- and it is in this light that I believe Bangladesh's security concerns must be addressed. It is important to keep in mind that shifting the emphasis from the state to the individual in no way diminishes the importance of traditional concepts of security -- traditional security threats to the state also count as threats to human security as ultimately it is the individual who suffers the most.

So what do we mean by human security? There have been many definitions coined over the years -- some more expansive than others -- but most have concentrated on freedom from fear and freedom from want. There has often been some tension between the West -- which has focused more on freedom from fear -- and Asia -- which has focused more on freedom from want -- but it seems to me that human security must encompass both these freedoms, and that for many human security threats it is neither possible nor helpful to deconstruct them into either one or the other.

Human security is perhaps best defined as freedom from violence (either man-made or natural), a state that does not oppress its own people, and conditions within which the means of livelihood can be earned. This is what we mean when we speak of human security and these are the indexes according to which we need to measure human security in Bangladesh.

Human insecurity is indivisible. It is not possible to be secure in one of the three ways outlined above if you are not safe in the other two ways. If a person is not safe from threats of violence then this diminishes or negates his or her ability to earn a living. Freedom from violence and state oppression is meaningless in the absence of means of livelihood, and if one's security is threatened by the state then one's freedom from violence or freedom to earn a living cannot be secured with any certainty.

Human security threats can also evolve into threats to the state due to their suddenness, scale, or severity. A good example of this is HIV/Aids in sub-Saharan Africa, which began as a public health problem, but has reached such a scale that it constitutes a legitimate security threat to the entire region. The destitution and parentlessness caused by the disease have decimated local populations, and apart from the massive strain put on health-care resources and facilities, the shrinking of the work-force and near collapse of institutions and law and order have threatened the continued functioning of the affected states.

One human security threat can also evolve into another due to linkages between the two, which can eventually threaten the state as a whole. Environmental threats such as floods are a good example of this. Floods can cause massive hardship for people in flood-hit communities or countries -- as happened recently in Bangladesh -- and this can lead to large scale migration that in turn creates a whole host of difficulties in the area to which the flood-affected people converge.

Human security threats cannot typically be localised or contained and this is why, left unchecked, they almost always metastasize into threats to national security. Who among us would argue that floods do not have the potential to threaten national security every bit as much as bombs and grenades do?

The question is, of course, who bears responsibility for securing us from these threats to human security and what we, as individuals, can do to secure ourselves.

Bangladesh is a relatively young country that is still developing both economically and politically. Many if not most of our democratic institutions have not been fully developed and concepts such as citizenship or civil society are still in their infancy. It is for these reasons that I believe the lion's share of responsibility for human security must fall to the state.

When we shift the focus from traditional security to human security, we are shifting the answer to the question "whose security?" but not to the question "whose responsibility?" The focus may now be on the security of the individual, but the responsibility must remain the state's.

If Bangladesh were more developed -- economically and politically -- and if we had a better developed sense of civil society -- then perhaps the state could take a back-seat role and leave it to the people to safeguard their own security. But this is not the case in Bangladesh. In addition, when the state -- through its action and inaction -- is either directly or indirectly the cause of much of the human insecurity in the country, then it stands to reason that no human security solution which does not contemplate a leading role for the state will be effective.

This is not to say that civil society has no role or that civil society in Bangladesh has not been astonishingly productive when it comes to safeguarding our human security and performing functions which should be the state's responsibility.

It is civil society which must hold the state accountable for its failures, it is civil society which must organise, mobilise, and educate the public, and influence, pressure, and educate policy-makers. It is civil society that must expend its energies to reform the state because left to itself the state will never do so.

But ultimately the responsibility for safeguarding human security must lie with the state, and in Bangladesh, this responsibility remains unfulfilled.

Zafar Sobhan is an Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.