
Why rethink security?
Security matters to everyone, but much that governments do in its name is making us all less safe, at home and around the world. It’s time for a rethink – here’s why.
Security matters to everyone, but much that governments do in its name is making us all less safe, at home and around the world. It’s time for a rethink – here’s why.
The Alternative Security Review is a civil society-led review of the UK’s security strategy. By asking people in the UK what they feel really matters to them for their security, the Alternative Security Review will create a human security strategy to provide an alternative to failing government policy.
Who pays the price for the UK’s approach to national security? Our three short films show its impact on people’s lives.
This 90-page paper provides an evidence-based critique of the UK’s national security strategy. It analyses the features of an outmoded narrative, and suggests the principal reasons for this failure to adapt.
The UK has a vast amount to do to secure its energy supplies, cut energy usage and prices and transform its electricity production to all-clean sources. Instead of reviving fossil fuels and nuclear power, community energy entrepreneur Tony McNally argues that the government must support local solutions, including community solar and wind power schemes.
Designing weapons is a lucrative career choice for many engineers, but comes with deadly and destabilising consequences. Roger Orpwood argues for an ethical approach to engineering and explores some options for dis-incentivising the development of new weapons technologies.
For decades, calls for greater attention to local, everyday experiences in peacebuilding have been growing. Yvette Selim and Roger Mac Ginty discuss Everyday Peace Indicators’ bottom-up participatory approach to understanding and tracking changes in difficult-to-measure concepts like peace, reconciliation and governance in conflict-affected communities.
Diana Francis and Andrew Rigby see the appalling tragedy unfolding in Ukraine. Acknowledging the right of Ukrainians to resist the invasion of their country by any means, they make the case for a cessation of military struggle, in favour of civilian-based resistance which might avert the ‘desertification’ of their land, its institutions, its infrastructure and its social fabric.
Francesca Kilpatrick reflects on the usefulness and risks of casting climate change as a security issue, looking at the changes to climate policy under the Obama administration as an example.
Russian use of aerial, artillery and missile barrages against Ukrainian cities recalls the criminal devastation of Aleppo and other Syrian cities. Ian Davis assesses the possibilities and urgent moral imperative to protect civilians by banning the use of explosive weapons in populated areas (EWIPA).
Unthinking Immigration Detention
A decade on from the launch of its Hostile Environment agenda, the UK government is stepping up its campaign against asylum seekers, with indefinite imprisonment of migrants a central component. Fred Ashmore argues that immigration detention is expensive, ineffective and demeans us as a nation. It requires an urgent rethinking beyond the politics of fear.