Consideration also needs to be given to what interventions to implement a security-related target might look like and whether these would always be developmental in their impact. An imperative to reduce insecurity, for instance, may incentivize governments to crack down on civil unrest or militia groups operating in the country in a way that actually undermines developmental outcomes or personal freedoms. It is therefore important to ensure that well-intentioned efforts to improve development by addressing insecurity do not create perverse incentives given the complicated and highly political nature of security.
As a result, with many other contending themes for inclusion in the post-2015 framework, security may simply be cast aside on the basis of the political challenges involved in gaining agreement. As the Millennium Project notes, ‘any targets around security are likely to be controversial’ (2005: 2).
Would a global goal add value?
Finally, it should also be considered whether a global level goal on a security-related theme would add value in a way that national level efforts and current advocacy efforts could not? It has already been shown that fragile states have gone ahead and included security-related themes in their PRSPs, for instance, rather than waiting for the MDGs to decree a global goal. Given the challenge already raised about understandings of security being meaningful across very different contexts, what can a global goal offer that would be more effective than allowing states to develop their own, unique, security goals? Indeed, as the World Bank’s 2011 World Development Report notes, the MDGs ‘move slowly, so they do not provide national reformers or their international partners with rapid feedback loops that can demonstrate areas of progress and identify new of remaining risks’ (World Bank 2011: 21). Instead, the World Bank suggests that citizen polling data can be used at the country level to measure ‘citizen and human security’ (World Bank 2011: 21). A substantial literature and advocacy movement has also built up around armed violence reduction (AVR) strategies (see for instance, OECD 2009; and Krause et al 2011), but interestingly these advocates have not explicitly sought inclusion of a global AVR goal or target in the post-MDG framework.