Daily Times

Freedom from want and fear should set a democratic dispensation apart from the non-representative forms of government. Imran Khan struck the right cords by highlighting stunting and malnutrition in his maiden speech as prime minister. He told the nation: “Pakistan is among the five countries in which most children die before the age of five due to diseases caused by contaminated water.”

However, the hopes he raised seem to be dissipating as the PTI government appears to be more interested in a political tug of war with the opposition than the business of governance. The purpose of democracy is defeated if the public languishes in poverty, illiteracy and hunger, with freedom of speech and human dignity under a growing threat. The idea of Pakistan was not only about the creation of a separate territorial entity. It was meant for people to live in peace and prosperity with freedom from fear of political marginalisation, economic deprivation, religious persecution, gender discrimination, social injustice and state repression. Seen in this perspective, the promise of Pakistan remains unrealised.

Annals of human history are a testament to the fact that human security preceded the state security. The hunting and gathering society was primarily concerned about the most basic necessities of life: food and shelter. The life of the earliest humans revolved around hunting and gathering as a sustained source of food critical to survive and thrive. The traditional security is a later development in the unfolding drama of human civilisation. The concept of traditional security began to crystallise with the domestication of wild plants (wheat, rice, corn) and animals (dog, sheep, goat, oxen, pigs), leading to the dawn of agriculture some 12,0000 years ago. The adoption of agriculture gave birth to a settled human lifestyle and accumulation of material wealth necessitating security measures against theft and pillage.

The Global Human Development Report1994 by the UN heralded the revival ofhuman security approach. The seminal report laid the philosophical and institutional foundations of the concept loosely defined as “people’s freedom from fear and freedom from want.” The report encompasses the seven essential dimensions of human security: economic security, food security, health security, environmental protection, personal security, security of community and political freedom. The report seeks to broaden the “logic of security” beyond territorial defence, nuclear deterrence and national interests to include that people have “the right to live in freedom and dignity, free from poverty and despair.”

The institutionalisation of human security with the UN millennium development goals, now upgraded as the Sustainable Development Goals, have further sharpened the focus on the need for adoption and prioritisation of human security agenda by nation states.

Our myopic policy planners need to broaden the concept of security by revamping it to be inclusive and holistic so as to appreciate and address internal threats to the integrity of the state

Pakistan presents a pathetic picture in this regard. The country is ranked an embarrassing 150th among 189 countries surveyed in the UN’s 2018 Human Development Index measured by combining indicators of life expectancy, educational attainment and income. The following statistics are illustrative of the fact that the achievement of the UN SDGs remains an elusive dream for the country. Unfortunately, Pakistan is home to the third largest population (44 per cent) of stunted children under the age of five in the world. Almost half of women suffer from malnutrition thatcauses the country to sustain an annual loss of $7.6 billion, around three per cent of the GDP.

Worryingly, the country is one of the two countries in the world where polio continues to blight the future of children as 12 polio cases were reported in the country last year. In 2018, Pakistan featured at number nine in the unenviable list of top 10 countries with least access to safe water. Around 84 per cent of the population does not have access to safe drinking water with 70 per cent of households forced to drink bacteria-contaminated water. Annually, poor water and sanitation takes a heavy toll on children as 53,000 Pakistani children under five die from diarrhoea. Almost 25 million people practice open defecation due to lack of access to proper sanitation.

The Global Food Security Index ranks Pakistan 77th among 109 countries. Almost 60 per cent of the population is haunted by food insecurity caused by alack of adequate and diverse diet due to pervasive poverty. Pakistan Education Statistics 2016-17 show that 22.84 million (44 per cent) out of the total 51.53 million children are out of school. According to Alif Ailaan, “Around 65 per cent of government schools have no boundary walls, 55 per cent of them operate in dilapidated structures, 58 per cent have no toilets and 64 per cent have no running water. Further, there is just one teacher for 37 children in Pakistan.” The country needs to raise GDP expenditure on education to four per cent from 2.83 per cent.

According to the United Nations Population Fund, the youth constitute 63 per cent of Pakistan’s population, making the country the fifth largest “young country” in the world. The youth bulge can have a great economic dividend if educated, engaged and employed. The unemployment rate in Pakistan remains constant at 5.90 per cent due to sluggish economic growth that is supposed to be around 6-7 per cent if the economy is to absorb the millions of jobless. Given the ailing state of economy that is being projected to register below four per cent annual growth, the unemployment rate is bound to shoot up with serious socio-economic, political and internal security repercussions for the country as jobless youth spells disaster for internal stability and cohesion.

39 per cent of Pakistanis are condemned to languish in multidimensional poverty, with the highest poverty prevalence in Balochistan and the erstwhile FATA region. In its report for 2017-18, the World Justice Project placed the country at number 105 out of a total of 113 countries reviewed on the basis of rule of law, absence of corruption and security. The dysfunctional and lax state of justice system can be gauged from the huge backlog of litigation. Currently, there are 1.9 million pending cases. In a country with a population upward of 207 million, there is one judge for 48,838 people.

Disturbingly, a recent report shows that thestate is incapable of even protecting its most vulnerable section of society. Over 10 children suffered abuse every day with 3,832 cases of child abuse reported in 2018.

The above-mentioned statistics are illustrative of the sorry state of affairs on human security front because of our unsustainable prioritisation of traditional security. Undoubtedly, the country is located in a volatile region with genuine external threat to its territorial integrity. However, our myopic policy planners need to break out of the mental block and broaden the concept of security by revamping it to be inclusive and holistic so as to appreciate and address internal threats to the integrity of the state. There is a great need for extending the scope of security analysis and policy from territorial security to the security of Pakistani citizenry as human security approach complements rather than compromises the state security.

The rise of PTM, a smouldering turmoil in Balochistan and militancy in the tribal belt are the challenges engendered by the neglect of human dimension of security. It is important to note is that climate change caused agricultural and social disruption; growing population, galloping joblessness coupled with religious extremism are the active ingredients of the coming anarchy in the making due to decades of poor governance and apathy to demands of human security. Things tend to give the illusion of normalcy to the movers and shakers of the country when viewed from the cocoon of power corridors but the aggregate of the ground realities are pointing to a lull before the storm. The catastrophic constituents of the gathering storm are set to converge with unforeseen but destructive implications for internal stability.

The brewing general disgruntlement in the youth from Khyber to Karachi is fast gathering critical mass and potential to explode into a nationwide crisis of unprecedented proportions beyond the firefighting capabilities of our corrupt and inept ruling elite.

Guns, tanks, fighter jets and nuclear weapons may be useful instruments of war needed to deter any external aggression, but such war tools cannot save us from an implosion likely to be caused by the conspicuous absence of the sovereignty and socioeconomic security of the citizens.

The writer is an Islamabad-based TV analyst and a PhD scholar. He tweets at @MunawarMahar and can be reached at mahar.munawar2017@outlook.com