Community Safety or Community Security (CS) is, according to the
United Nations Development Program
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)french: Programme des Nations unies pour le développement, PNUD is a United Nations agency tasked with helping countries eliminate poverty and achieve sustainable economic growth and human dev ...
(UNDP), a concept that seeks to operationalize human security, human development and state-building paradigms at the local level. The contemporary concept of community security, narrowly defined, includes both group and personal security. The approach focuses on ensuring that communities and their members are "free from fear". Yet, a broader contemporary definition also includes action on a wider range of social issues to ensure "freedom from want". Like community safety and citizen security, it promotes a multi-stakeholder approach that is driven by an analysis of local needs.
[UNDP Community safety and social cohesio]
/ref> By emphasizing the "community" aspect the concept seeks to embrace both cultures and contexts that are "individual-oriented", including many in Latin America, and cultures and contexts that are "group oriented", as are many in Africa and South Asia.
The customization of CS programs depends on the specific context, but a core characteristic of the approach is a bottom-up focus on security creation and stabilization. As an approach, CS is not dealing with security creation on a national level, for instance through top-down legislation or peace agreements on a government level. Instead it focuses on short- and long term solutions to security problems in specific communities.
"Community" does not just refer to individual community members, but refers to all actors, groups and institutions within the specific geographic space. It therefore also includes civil society organizations, the police and the local authorities that are responsible for delivering security and other services in that area.
Examples of agencies working with a Community Safety approach are Saferworld
Saferworld is an international non-governmental organisation with conflict prevention and peacebuilding programmes in over 20 countries and territories in the Horn of Africa, the African Great Lakes region, Asia, the Middle East, Central Asia an ...
, Danish Demining Group
Danish Demining Group (DDG) is the Human Security Unit under the Danish Refugee Council (DRC), specialised in clearing landmines and unexploded ordnance and reducing armed violence.
DDG’s mission is to recreate a safe environment where people ...
and the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces
DCAF - ; Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance ( French: ''Centre pour la gouvernance du secteur de la sécurité, Genève,'' German: ''Das Genfer Zentrum für die Gouvernanz des Sicherheitssektors'') is an intergovernmental foundation-b ...
(DCAF).
References
{{Reflist
External links
United Nations Development Program
Danish Demining Group
Saferworld
DCAF
Community
Safety
Security