Comprehensive Security

Comprehensive security

Comprehensive security is an approach that goes beyond the traditional realist state-centric and military approach and includes human, economic and environmental dimensions as well as a subjective feeling of security or insecurity of individuals. The term was coined during the 1980s because of the need for an approach which was broader and deeper than the realist notion of security. Such an approach seeks to find answers at three levels: First, for whom is security intended to be provided for – an individual, a group, a community, an ideology or a state; second, from what kind of threat they need to be secured from; and, finally, by what means the security is to be obtained.