Opening statement by Pino Arlacchi
Director General and Executive Director of the
Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention
to the
Seminar on Human Security and Science and Technology
Organized by the
Permanent Mission of Chile to the International Organizations in Vienna
Sponsored by the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Austria
United Nations Office at Vienna
United Nations Industrial Development Organization
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
Laxenburg
10 October 2001
Mr. Chairman, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a pleasure to be here in this serene setting, which lends itself well to the sharing of reflections on human security. I want to thank the Ambassador of Chile and all others who have helped organize this event.
The first panel today will address "Situations which Threaten Human Security". It is around this issue that I would like to concentrate my introductory remarks.
The concept of "human security" has gained a new urgency since the fateful events of September the Eleventh. The brutal acts in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania that cost thousands of lives have now triggered a military confrontation in Afghanistan that may in turn endanger the human security of thousands of people.
Such is the complex global interdependence in today's world that thousands were killed in the United States and tens of thousands are losing their jobs and financial security because a terrorist mastermind in a cave of Afghanistan hopes he can trigger a "jihad" for the liberation of holy sites in Saudi Arabia and Jerusalem by sending suicidal assassins across the Atlantic Ocean.
Armed only with low-tech box cutters and small knives the kamikaze hijackers have provoked a high-tech response to their attacks. The perpetrators were driven by fundamentalist, almost medieval religious fervor, while the response is based on the advanced technological products of modern science.
Until the enlightenment in the eighteenth century, mankind relied mainly on religion to cope with feelings of insecurity. Faced with plagues, wars, hunger and poverty, ultimate security could at that time only be found in paradise.
Since the industrial revolution, we have looked increasingly to science and technology for down-to-earth and pragmatic answers to our feelings of insecurity. The result has been an increase in the length of human lives and an improvement in the quality of many but not all these lives.
At the same time, science and technology have also brought us weapons of mass destruction. This threat has, paradoxically, probably increased rather than decreased since the end of the Cold War. We know that terrorists like Osama bin Laden have tried to acquire nuclear and chemical weapons. Aum Shinrikyo succeeded in Japan in producing a chemical weapon but failed in its attempt to create a biological weapon.
The proliferation of technology to produce weapons of mass destruction is a matter of grave concern, as it can affect human security on a massive scale. The products of science that have improved human security also endanger human security if they get into the wrong hands.
How could the catastrophe of 11 September happen? Several commentators have blamed an intelligence failure. In particular, they have pointed out that the reliance on "technical signal" intelligence has led to a neglect of human intelligence.
This may be symptomatic of a wider problem. I would like to suggest that there has been an imbalance in scientific development in the last century. Governments have funded the exact sciences profusely and have neglected the social and humanistic sciences. Yet what is the benefit in the present situation of being able to intercept electronic communications in Dari, Pashtu or other foreign languages if you have not enough people who can translate these messages into English? In addition, you also need to understand the cultural and religious framework of Islamic fundamentalists. That requires theologians, anthropologists and other social scientists.
In order to understand the mind of the terrorist, it is of little help to screen his brain with a magnetic resonance scanner. We need to understand what makes the terrorist tick.
Why do young men and, in some cases, women, join terrorist organizations?
Why do educated men, some with families of their own, decide to kill themselves and others in such a nihilistic manner?
Who are these "dangerous dreamers of the absolute", to use a phrase of Karl Marx?
How can we influence at least some of them to break with such destructive organizations?
The answers to such questions require sustained research efforts from the social sciences.
In Vienna we have the Terrorism Prevention Branch which is mandated to engage both in research and technical cooperation. We need both. As I said on an earlier occasion: "Success in combating terrorism requires both strategic insights from research and international cooperation on 'best practices' and 'lessons learned'."
IIASA is probably more than one hundred times as large as the Terrorism Prevention Branch. As an international multi-disciplinary research organization, IIASA would be in a very good position to engage in innovative research not only on terrorism but also on broader, but related, issues. What are our research desiderata? We need a better understanding of how underground movements function in organized crime and terrorism. We need a better understanding of illegal markets and how they finance terrorism.
There are multiple threats to human security, and our very clear vulnerability to the growth of the underworld should be reason enough to engage in a sustained effort to look at problems of political and criminal violence. The prevention and control of crime and terrorism cannot be the tasks of criminologists alone. There are too few of them, to begin with, and they require input from other social science disciplines as well.
We all know that science is compartmentalized. Already in the 1950s, C.P. Snow, in a famous essay, identified two cultures - the one of the exact natural sciences and the other of the softer social sciences. Yet even within each of these two scientific cultures there is compartmentalization and therefore a need for bridging the gap between disciplines. Those who study crime and those who study conflict often deal with the same phenomena - human violence - but they rarely talk to each other. IIASA is ideally placed to bring scientists from different disciplines together to engage in a joint interdisciplinary research effort.
The topic that we discuss today - human security - lies at the heart of the concerns of ODCCP. We have global programmes in the field of organized crime, money-laundering, trafficking in human beings and corruption. And we have the small, but active, Terrorism Prevention Branch, which also focuses on the relationship between organized crime and terrorism.
For some years now, at the United Nations in Vienna, uncivil elements of society have become objects of special concern. We use the term "uncivil society" to refer to negative and harmful manifestations in society. We try to deal with them, often with insufficient means. A major goal of our Global Programmes is to restore human security in countries recovering from years of civil war or decades of non-democratic rule.
Working to promote human security against the threat of violence within states has become part of ODCCP's new agenda. In the first half century of its existence, the United Nations concentrated on strengthening collective security in order to reduce the likelihood of war between states. It is my conviction that in this new century the United Nations should strive to be the key international organization in developing and implementing new strategies to strengthen human security and the Rule of Law.
There are many interpretations of just what constitutes 'human security'. As far as ODCCP is concerned, human security involves preserving or restoring the personal physical security of the individual, in the face of insecurity caused by criminal or political violence. In our understanding, the concept of human security also encompasses the deterioration of the quality of health as a result of the impact of illicit drugs. Furthermore, when people do not enjoy physical security on the streets because of the impact of drugs, organized crime and terrorist violence, they cannot develop their true human potential.
The protection of human security requires a multi-pronged approach. A moment ago, I called for greater utilization of the social sciences to give us the tools to prevent crime and terrorism. There is, however, also a task for the exact sciences. We need new technologies to prevent crime, to protect people, to deal with crisis situations and to mitigate the effects of crime.
When it comes to crime prevention and to the prevention of terrorism, it is often the mix of social and environmental adaptations on the one hand and technical solutions on the other, that produce the best results. [1] Sometimes a technological approach is more called for - in preventing cyber-crimes, for instance. In other cases, the main emphasis is in the behavioral field. To induce misguided people to leave a criminal or terrorist group, softer social-psychological and legal approaches are called for. In Italy, the "pentiti" programmes met with great success by showing alienated political activists and members of organized crime a way out from their groups.
To conclude, Mr. Chairman, today organized crime and political terrorism have reached such proportions that criminologists and analysts of terrorism cannot deal with them alone. A broader effort involving scientists from more disciplines is needed to cope with multiple interrelated threats to human security.
An institution like IIASA could play a prominent role in addressing the problem of human insecurity in a systematic and programmatic way. In the past, IIASA has done groundbreaking work in studying threats to our natural environment. By studying the sources of human insecurity and by proposing new approaches for empowering potential and actual victims of crime and terrorism, IIASA could again place itself at the cutting edge of science - a science which has come out of the ivory tower and addresses one of the most vital human concern, namely the desire of not becoming a victim.
I hope that today's seminar opens the way for a more ambitious effort to address the issue of human security on a sustained basis. I understand that efforts are under way to bring IIASA and the UN closer together. A joint programme on human security would be worthy cornerstone of such a relationship. The UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention is ready to take part in such a joint effort.
Thank you for your attention.
Notes
[Note 1] National Crime Prevention Institute. Understanding Crime Prevention. 2nd edition. Boston, Butterworth Heinemann, 2001.