Author: Daniel Bugan
Prof Yoichi Mine, Executive Director of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Ogata Sadako Research Institute for Peace and Development, on 29 February 2024 delivered the second JICA Chair lecture at Stellenbosch University (SU). His lecture, entitled “Journeys for Human Security: Dynamics of Migration in Africa”, was hosted by SU’s Japan Centre (SUJC).
SUJC aims to be the leading hub for academic, research and cultural exchange between South Africa and Japan. The JICA Chair is a programme aimed at sharing Japan’s experience in modernisation and development with other countries.
In his lecture, Prof Mine introduced JICA’s past collaborative research projects on human security. He also elaborated on the organisation’s new research project on human security and migration in Africa.
Human security and refugees
According to Prof Mine, human security is a global ideal for the 21st century originally promoted by the United Nations and strongly supported by several national governments, including the Japanese government.
“Human security can be described as a physical or psychological state in which you have no worries. A government which is oppressive and corrupt may not be in a position to mobilise people. The state itself may even be a major threat to the survival of its own citizens. The fact is that the majority of violent conflicts take place within the state structure. Poverty, inequality, pandemics and natural disasters also cause massive insecurity for individuals. So human security is not the security of the state but the security of individuals.”
Refugees are defined as extremely vulnerable people who cross national borders seeking survival. However, in emergency situations, there are people who are also uprooted from their original villages or towns, who are equally in distress, but do not cross borders. These are known as internally displaced persons or IDPs.
Madame Ogata Sadako
As a former president of JICA (2003 to 2012) and instrumental in the establishment of the JICA Research Institute (as it was formerly known) during her tenure, Madame Sadako Ogata devoted herself to the practice of human security.
Madame Ogata trained as a political scientist and is most famous as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, a position she held from 1991 to 2000.
“At the end of the Cold War violent conflicts erupted in many corners of the world, notably in Africa in places such as Somalia, Liberia and Sierra Leone,” said Prof Mine. “Throughout her tenure, Madame Ogata travelled all over the world to protect vulnerable people. She believed that the international community should provide assistance not only to refugees but also to IDPs and tried to mobilise UN agencies and governments to that end.”
He added: “Madame Ogata brought the concept of human security from the UN to JICA and changed the course of my academic life. I began to read up on related literature on human security because of Madame Ogata.”
Past JICA projects
Around the time when Prof Mine began working with JICA in the field of research activities, Madame Ogata left the UN and became president of JICA in 2003.
“I was invited to collaborate on a research project on conflict prevention in Africa, and the research outcome entitled Preventing Violent Conflicts in Africa was published by Palgrave in 2013. Madame Ogata made it clear to us that we should always start off from the urgency felt in a place where people live and not in the study room. According to her, although the theory is important, the most critical thing is to recognise that there are urgent issues that need solutions.”
After the study of conflict in Africa, Prof Mine and his team worked on a two-phase research project that centred on the practical issues of human security in East Asia. “As the research outcomes, two books were published by Palgrave in 2018 (Human Security Norms in East Asia and Human Security and Cross-border Cooperation in East Asia). These studies found that human security and national security can be compatible with each other as long as the government is capable and willing to protect people. It also found that even if we do not use the term human security, there are practices in many Asian countries that could in effect be called human security.”
Based on this project, the JICA research team decided to embark on another study entitled Human security and Empowerment in Asia. The book was published by Routledge in 2023. The Commission on Human Security, chaired by Madame Ogata and Amartya Sen, introduced the twin notion of top-down protection and bottom-up empowerment as an essential component of human security practice. The book investigated mechanisms of empowerment in development cooperation against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The debate over human security has made significant progress over the last few years,” Prof Mine said. “One (milestone) is a report, Human Security Today, which our institute launched in 2022, and which discusses the concept of human security and its practice from various perspectives, with the aim of communicating the significance of human security in today’s rapidly changing world. The first issue of the report tried to redefine the concept of human security, and the second issue features the compounded, complex crises triggered by Covid-19 and the Ukraine war. This second issue will be released in March 2024.”
New research project
Prof Mine said they are now preparing for a new research project on migration and human security in Africa.
“The World Bank publishes annual world development reports and the theme for the latest 2023 report is migration, refugees and society. This is a powerful illustration that migration, both voluntary and forced, has become a focus issue in the development community in recent years. This is particularly relevant for Africa as the continent is often portrayed as a continent on the move. About 30 million refugees, IDPs and asylum seekers live on the African continent, representing almost one third of the refugee population in the world. The hotspots of refugees and IDPs are the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Nigeria. Displacements are triggered by environmental conditions, human rights violations and the crisis in livelihoods.
“There is also the issue of outward migration from Africa to Europe which can be a major security concern. However, the truth is that although outward migration from Africa is indeed increasing, the substantial majority of migration still takes place within Africa.
“At the same time there is Africa’s own initiative, the African Continental Free Trade Area, which is taking shape. There is some kind of market integration and also investment from traditional and emerging donors which lead to major infrastructure development. These all accelerate the migration of Africans for economic benefit.
“We want to capture this dynamic – what is happening in Africa from a human security point of view – in this new research. This is our basic intention. We aim to investigate the never-ending journeys of Africans in search of human security.”