In light of recent efforts by the UN to more firmly embed SSC and TrC in all its institutions, this paper examines the challenges that lie ahead by first tracing the emergence of the terms SSC and TrC on a discursive level in the UN system. Second, it reflects theoretically on the concepts of solidarity and development to show that voices from the Global South are suggesting alternative understandings that may do more justice to the poor and disadvantaged. Third, it explores what can be learned from various interlinked health crises and the recent COVID-19 pandemic regarding the flaws of SSC and TrC. Fourth, it sketches a way forward by looking at ways in  which a more human rights based democratization of global health can be achieved.

Post-war reconstruction in Sri Lanka, which is aided by many countries, is aimed at consolidating the unitary state structure as part of a geo-strategic security complex in the Indian Ocean Region. In this process, discourses of democratization and human rights have been reconfigured to contain or totally remove any threat to the unitary state emerging from the Tamils in the North and East whose claim to self-determination is seen as a major challenge to the geo-strategic complex in South Asia. In such a context, the bio-politics of the development-security nexus and neo-liberal governmentality operates by strengthening the hegemony of the Sinhala state against the Tamils and weakening or destroying the essential foundations of Tamil nationhood. Without recognizing these local and global dynamics every peacebuilding attempt will fail.

The concept of human security gained prominence in Southeast Asia in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998. In a rapidly changing ASEAN, the list of human insecurities covers issues of both development and security, and fall within the ambit of both freedom from want and freedom from fear. But while human security has gained traction 20 years since the 1994 UNDP Human Development Report, more needs to be done to translate discourse into action. This article argues that in order to advance human security ASEAN states must be imbued with the political will to act decisively in addressing human insecurities and to work with other actors in promoting protection and empowerment of people and communities.

This research note outlines a series of questions about conducting research on state violence and human rights in Thailand. Taking as a central problem the recurrence of state violence across regimes both dictatorial and democratic in the 80 years since the end of the absolute monarchy, I argue that the failure to secure accountability for state violence can productively be placed at the center of researching and writing about modern Thai history. Unevenness is common both to the attempts to secure state accountability for state violence and to the available archival and other sources for writing histories of such violence. This research note examines the particular methodological and analytical difficulties and productive possibilities presented by the partial attempts and failures to secure state accountability and the equally partial available documentation of state violence.