After hearing how well the photovoice methods used by our Alternative Security Review research partners at Coventry University worked, Rethinking security’s Outreach Coordinator ran a similar project called Visualising Security with our supporters and friends. The results are now on our website. Here, Joanna Frew provides a personal reflection on the project and its findings. … Continue reading Reinterpreting Security through Images and Stories
The State of Human Security in the UK
Rethinking Security hosted a series of roundtable discussions with civil society groups throughout 2022. We shared some reflections on the blog during the discussions and we are now publishing the full report. It is available to download and here Joanna Frew share a summary of the discussions.
The Urgent Need to Reclaim Security – Join the discussion next week
As Rethinking Security enters the final stages of the Alternative Security Review and we look towards the publication of our Human Security Strategy for the UK, we begin a webinar series on Weds 8th Nov to explore why this is necessary and what human security looks like globally, for communities and for individuals. Read on … Continue reading The Urgent Need to Reclaim Security – Join the discussion next week
Embodying Peace after War: Yazidi women’s perspectives from Iraq
Four Yazidi women in northern Iraq spent 2022 using photography to give voice to their everyday experiences of embodying peace, (in)security and struggle as their community rebuilt itself after years of war and displacement. Here we present their images and words.
Fair Deal Security: Centring people and planet in Lib Dem strategy
Rethinking Security presented its case for a Human Security Strategy at the Lib Dems conference in Bournemouth in September. Richard Reeve here advances five evidenced arguments that should inform Lib Dem policy before the next general election.
The Worries Box: What really makes people feel insecure?
A group of activists in Bath spent the winter collecting the ‘worries’ of their fellow citizens about the future. Their indicative findings suggest a country deeply concerned about the viability of its planet, the misdeeds of its politicians, and a failing and divisive economic system.
Reclaiming peace from patriarchal frameworks of security
Can talking about 'peace and security' be a tool of oppression? What if peace were taken to be a process that begins and ends in the body? Sofya Shahab and Chloe Skinner report on their work with women researchers in Palestine and Iraq to disentangle 'peace' from patriarchal framings of security and relocate it in bodily sensation.
Solidarity and Self-Definition: Can research processes build peace and security?
Understanding the lived experience of marginalised people in situations of violence and insecurity is vital for peace and conflict policy-makers and practitioners, but can being involved in participatory research also contribute to the well-being of conflict-affected people? Four Yezidi women from northern Iraq here reflect on their research into their own experience of and response to insecurity.
Visualising Security: Reflecting on the symbols and emotions that define security
Last week we held a launch event for our Visualising Security project. The aim of the project is, over the next 4 months, to build a collection of images and stories that challenge the conventional narrative of ‘security’ and provide evidence for our Alternative Security Review. Joanna Frew shares some reflections on the event
No Security Without Climate Security
Because they are driven by narrow concepts of security, national security strategies typically end up looking for answers to new threats in the same old places. But Germany still has a chance to do it differently. In a special article for 49Security, Joanna Frew argues for the centrality of a sustainable climate in any security strategy.
Reframing Security: Reflections on assessing local security concerns
We are constantly being told about threats to our national security but what is it that makes ordinary people in the UK feel most insecure? Judith Eversley reports on the findings of her local group’s efforts to gauge perceptions of human security in Bath and North East Somerset.
Britannia Unglued: Elitism, inequality and abandonment in UK security policy
After another three roundtable discussions with civil society for the Alternative Security Review, some common themes emerged. Discussions on themes as diverse as poverty, democracy and foreign policy revealed an establishment insulated from much of the day-to-day insecurity and structures of exclusion that marginalise, if not abandon, millions of people in the UK.