F. New Challenges to Peace and Security

Finally, new challenges to peace and security surfaced after the end of the Cold War. Sometimes referred to as non-military or non-conventional threats to security or soft security issues, they now compete with other issues in the national and international political agenda for the priority attention of states. Among them are international terrorism,13 environmental degradation,14 the international movement of peoples,15 highly infectious and life-threatening diseases like AIDS,16 and drug trafficking.17 These affect peace and security in all its dimensions and at all levels. They are only beginning to be recognized as real threats to the security of peoples and their various associations, including the nation state and the international community. A few examples are the only ones cited here for illustrative purposes.

International terrorism is the closest thing to the military-related dimension of security. It is a menace to peace and security and it strikes in a stealthy and vicious manner. Its victims are targeted neither as combatants nor as policy makers. They are overwhelmingly innocent of the causes of the terrorists' anger and have no means of effective defence.

Environmental degradation also threatens human lives in the form of the flash flooding of population and production centres, silting of rivers, erosion of the soil, depletion of natural resources and the ozone layer and impairment of the sustainability of development in general and in all its dimensions, including ecological, economic, social and cultural.18 This is a global problem whose effective solution requires no less than international action and cooperation.

The international movements of peoples also affect the security of both the parent and host states of either labour migrants or political refugees.19 For example, in the case of labour migrants, if the parent state relies on their earnings for its foreign exchange needs, a drastic change in the labour market could undermine foreign labour remittances as a source of foreign currency that is used for economic development and consumption purposes. Migration also undermines the social and psychological well-being of the family, especially the children who are left with only one or no parent to care for them. Labour migration has also resulted in many broken homes and the collateral damage to children this phenomenon brings. Threats to the physical and emotional well-being of migrant workers, especially women, are well-documented in the continuing saga of the labour diaspora experienced by developing countries. Moreover, the threat of "cultural pollution" has also been raised by host countries, and host country dependence on foreign labour could undermine their own economic development in the event of a sudden repatriation of imported labour. Finally, friction from problems engendered by labour migration can also undermine the bilateral relations of parent and host states as in the diplomatic rift between the Philippines and Singapore over the celebrated Flor Contemplacion case in 1995.

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 844