Transnational organised crime and terrorism: Nexus needing a human security framework

This paper proposes that application of the human security framework enables us to see a negative impact of globalisation on the transnational organised crime and terrorism nexus. The main argument is that state-building and globalisation create conditions allowing for international organised crime and terrorism to cooperate in international and failed-state spheres. Namely, while state-building and traditional security measures suppress terrorist means to operate in strong states, globalisation offers international organised crime lucrative opportunities to escape strong states and instead operate in the non-state sphere (international and failed state). This process makes state-centric traditional methods of combating terrorism and crime, such as the war on terror, largely ignorant of how international organised crime and terrorism operate in non-state sphere. To address security challenges posed by transnational terrorism and crime in the non-state sphere, a human security framework offers an enhanced understanding of the problem.