The Alternative Security Review was undertaken to create public dialogue in the UK on human and ecological security. It aims to show that there are other ways of creating security strategies, centring human and ecological security in policymaking.

Disclaimer: The Alternative Security Review (2021-2025) is not connected to the Alternative Defence Review (2025).

Read more on the different components of the project below:

Research findings

The ASR project has been conducted in partnership with research professionals from a number of academic centres and non-governmental organisations. The findings of our mixed methods research are published here and comprise an important element of the project.

Our main partnership has been with the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations (CTPSR) at Coventry University. Academics from CTPSR conducted research into perceptions of security across the UK utilising a range of methodologies, including literature review, quantitative surveys, interviews, focus groups, a public call for evidence, arts-based methods (photovoice) and citizen social science.

We have also incorporated research findings from a project conducted in northern Iraq (Nineveh Plain) and Occupied Palestine (Jerusalem) by our partners at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in 2022-2023. This used mixed methods of auto-ethnography to study the experience of women of peace and struggle in chronically conflict-affected situations.

Two of our member organisations have further collaborated with us on joint research projects as part of the ASR. United Nations Association UK (UNA-UK) worked with us on a study of the external consultation processes utilised by the government in its Integrated Review (2020-21) and previous security and defence reviews. Peace Direct was our partner in 2023 in our international consultations on perceptions of British foreign and security policy, utilising its Platform for Dialogue online consultation tool.

Rethinking Security has also conducted its own independent research into how security reviews are conducted (roundtables, interviews, FoI requests), how they prioritise issues and threats, and how the attitudes of the public towards security policy are measured through opinion polling. We also gained important findings from our outreach work with civil society organisations on human security and with the public using the photovoice methodology (Visualising Security).

Public engagement

Public engagement has been an important part of the Alternative Security Review. As well as the formal research activities that sought the opinions of ordinary people, such as the surveys and photovoice research, we ran several informal projects as part of the ASR.

In the early stages of the project, we convened a series of Roundtable Discussions with Civil Society to explore the state of human security issues in the UK. What do groups working on or experiencing insecurity think about the government’s attitude towards and policy on human security? Where are the links with militarised ‘national security’? Does ‘national security’ harm the human security of certain groups within the UK? And what about climate breakdown?

As the research team’s work progressed, we adapted the photovoice project to launch Visualising Security, a series of online discussions based around images that people brought to the sessions, and which represented security or insecurity to them.

We released a podcast series and hosted a series of webinars exploring human security issues. The guests and speakers in both cover a wide range of issues both in the UK and globally, such as food security, militarism, common security alternatives, peacebuilding, immigration, Prevent and much more.

Throughout this time, a local group in Bath were collecting ordinary people’s thought in their ‘Worries Box’, a chance for people to write down their worries about the future. They also conducted a survey in their local area.

Political engagement

The Alternative Security Review has sought throughout to engage with politicians and advisors from all UK parties, as well as non-partisan civil servants, on the shortcomings of current national security policy and policy-making and the importance of taking a broad human security approach. We believe that the findings of the project will be of great interest to politicians and policy-makers both in terms of how they understand security and conduct people-centred reviews in future and, accordingly, what is prioritised in future security policy.

Political engagement activities have included parliamentary briefings, helping to organise an early day motion and Westminster Hall debates on human security, presentations to APPG meetings, inputs and evidence submissions to party, parliamentary and policy reviews, roundtables with policy-makers, an open letter to the prime minister, meetings with elected officials, and presence at the Green, Labour and Liberal Democrat party conferences in autumn 2023.

A Human Security Strategy for the UK

The main written output from the Alternative Security Review will be the Human Security Strategy for the UK, which will bring together our research findings on what people in the UK and overseas value and prioritise in security policy with practical recommendations for how the UK can contribute to the sustainable security of its people as well as the international and planetary systems.

Full list of publications and articles

Reports and Briefings


Zsófia Hacsek, et al, Visualising Security: Bottom-Up Understandings of Security Using the Photovoice Method, September 2024.

Sariya Cheruvallil-Contrator, et al, How do the British People Understand their Security? Responses from a new approach to public opinion surveying, June 2024.


Dr David Curran (CTPSR), Research Briefing: An Analysis of Responses to an Open Call for Evidence on Security in the UK, Jan 2024

Joanna Frew (ed), ASR Roundtables with Civil Society, Nov 2023

Lillah Fearnley, Thinking Inside the Box: How opinion polls shape security debates and policy in the UK, May 2023.

Zsófia Hacsek, Towards More Inclusive Understandings of Security in the UK, Literature Review, May 2022.

Ben Donaldson and Richard Reeve, Open Society, Closed Conversations: External Consultation and the Integrated Review, Dec 2021.

Articles

Joanna Frew, Reinterpreting Security Through Images and Stories, Nov 2023.

Ikraam Rasheed Hassan, Lilian Fadhil Hayder, Awaz Saaed Kichan, Afrah Khedher Murad, Embodying Peace after War: Yazidi women’s perspectives from Iraq, Oct 2023.

Larry Attree, Ready for the Storm? Labour’s foreign and security thinking, Sept 2023.

Richard Reeve, Fair Deal Security: Centring people and planet in Lib Dem strategy, Oct 2023.

Lillah Fearnely, Thinking inside the box: How opinion polls shape security debates and policy in the UK, Executive Summary, May 2023.

Sofya Shahab and Chloe Skinner, Reclaiming peace from patriarchal frameworks of security, April 2023.

Richard Reeve, Stick and Twist: The UK bets big on existential competition, April 2023.

Joanna Frew, Human Security and Climate Change, Dec 2022.

Joanna Frew, Britannia Unglued: Elitism, inequality and abandonment in UK security policy, Aug 2022.

Christopher Burns, Care Kindness and Economic Security in the UK, Jul 2022.

Joanna Frew, Searching for human alternatives to the ‘whole society’ approach to security, June 2022.

Richard Reeve, Briefing: Human Security and the Integrated Review, April 2021.

Richard Reeve, The Case for a Human Security Strategy, March 2021.