Impact of 'may' floods on state of human security in the Republic of Serbia

Abstract

Upon recognizing new forms of security threats and foreseeing the events following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the researchers of the United Nations Development Program suggested, in 1994, an alternative approach to the concept of security and named it human security. Shifting the focus in their analysis of the security from the state security to the universal security problems of the entire world population, the authors of the concept previously mentioned have defined seven features relevant to the determination of the security level or the lack of it in some areas. Those features are as follows: economic security; food security; health security; environmental security; personal security; security of the community and political security. The situation with the flooding in the Republic of Serbia in May 2014 provided an opportunity to use an analytical approach within the concept of human security in order to determine the flaws of the system which contributed to the severity in terms of lives lost and damage in property in flood struck areas. It is also possible to analyze the impact of the flooding upon the security of the people residing in the flood struck areas by using the seven-feature model. The flood has without a doubt challenged the security of the people in a multitude of ways, and due to the limited space the authors have focused on the aspects of human security which proved to have borne the most negative effects of the flooding.

Uočavajući nove oblike ugrožavanja bezbednosti i anticipirajući razvoj događaja nakon pada Berlinskog zida, istraživači Programa za razvoj Ujedinjenih nacija su, sada već davne 1994. godine, predložili alternativni koncept bezbednosti pod nazivom ljudska bezbednost. Pomerajući fokus pri analizi stanja bezbednosti sa države na univerzalne probleme svih građana sveta, autori pomenutog koncepta su identifikovali sedam dimenzija relevantnih za određenje stanja bezbednosti, odnosno nebezbednosti na određenom prostoru. Te dimenzije su: ekonomska bezbednost; bezbednost hrane; bezbednost zdravlja; ekološka bezbednost; lična bezbednost; bezbednost zajednice i politička bezbednost. Slučaj prošlogodišnjih majskih poplava u Republici Srbiji daje priliku da se putem analitičkog okvira datog u konceptu ljudske bezbednosti utvrde sistemski nedostaci koji su uticali na obim stradanja i visinu šteta na pogođenim prostorima. Takođe, moguće je putem sedmodimenzionalnog modela izvršiti analizu uticaja poplava na bezbednost građana koji žive na prostorima koje su u maju 2014. godine pogodile poplave. Poplavni talas je nesumnjivo višestruko ugrozio bezbednost građana, a zbog ograničenog prostora autori su akcentirali one aspekte ljudske bezbednosti u okviru kojih su negativni efekti poplava najindikativniji.