Fighting Poverty to Fight Terrorism: Security in DfID's Development Policy During the War on Terror

Abstract

This article builds on existing research on the securitisation of development aid following 9/11. Investigating arguments that the UK's concern is with security at home and not the security of developing states, the policy discourse of the UK's Department for International Development (DfID) is examined through its 4 major policy documents and 2 major security documents for the period from the late 1990s to the late 2000s. Two levels of analysis are used; a content analysis and a discourse analysis. This article argues that DfID has given increasing space to conflict and security and, after initial restrictions placed on DfID's involvement in security in the late 1990s, security has become a key development concern during the War on Terror. In the process the goal of Human Security – to place development issues as security concerns – has been reversed and, instead, DfID has included security as a development problem.

Keywords:

• security–development nexus
• failed states
• War on Terror
• Human Security
• radicalism
• security
• development

Notes on contributor

Eamonn McConnon is a PhD Candidate at the Institute for International Conflict Resolution and Reconstruction at the School of Law and Government, Dublin City University.

Notes

¹When the term ‘security’ is mentioned in this article it refers to traditional or hard security. Softer definitions of security such as Security Sector Reform (SSR) or Human Security will be mentioned specifically.

²The White Papers chosen for analysis are Eliminating World Poverty: A Challenge for the 21^st Century published in 1997, Eliminating World Poverty: Making Globalisation Work for the Poor published in 2000, Eliminating World Poverty: Making Governance Work for the Poor published in 2006, Eliminating World Poverty: Building Our Common Future published in 2009.

³The policy document from 2011 is entitled UK Aid: Changing Lives, Delivering Results.

⁴The security documents chosen for analysis are the 1999 policy statement titled Poverty and the Security Sector and the 2005 strategy paper on security titled Fighting Poverty to Build a Safer World: A Strategy for Security and Development.

⁵The concept is split between those who favour a narrow approach focusing on immediate threats to safety and a broad approach that includes more systemic long term threats to security.