Human security from a Filipino perspective

Abstract

The Annual Conference on Alternative Security in the Asia‐Pacific puts on the front burner the real issues facing the people of this region—food and freedom, jobs and justice. From these issues flow the basic need to maintain not “national security” but “people's security” or human security. It is on this theme that I wish to expound briefly from the Philippine perspective. My main thesis: human security cannot be achieved as long as economic and political sovereignty are curtailed and undermined. Two obstacles stand mightily in the way of human security in the Philippines: the current economic crisis and the Visiting Forces Agreement.

Notes

Keynote speech at the Second Annual Conference on Alternative Security in the Asia‐Pacific, in Manila on 22 July 1998.