Introduction

According to a report by the Commission on Global Governance, ‘Governance is the sum of the many ways individuals and institutions, public and private, manage their common affairs’ (1995: 2). It is an ongoing and evolutionary process which looks to reconcile conflicting interests in order to protect the weak from unjust exploitation through the rule of law, and introduce security for all. Governance is also a process through which collective goods are generated so that all are better off than they would be acting individually. Thus governance implies a concern by those who govern with both the human security and development of those who are governed. In many cases, East Asian countries have prioritized economic development over social or political development. While this econophoria (whereby the solution of all society's ills is sought through economic development) has contributed to remarkable patterns of economic growth, it has also seen the rise in importance of challenges to human security in both absolute and relative terms (Buzan & Segal 1998: 107).

In 2008 controversies over national and international responses to the devastating cyclone in Burma/Myanmar and Chinese rule in Tibet, as well as severe civil unrest in Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia, gave an immediacy and urgency to the debate on the clash between state prerogatives, human rights and the duties of the international community. The year 2009 saw an ongoing focus on transnational human security issues in the region, with criticism of Chinese repatriation of North Korean refugees and Thai repatriation of ethnic Hmong from Laos. Many victims of the cyclone in Myanmar and also the earthquake which devastated parts of China's Sichuan Province in the same month, found themselves victimized a second time by the insufficient responses of regimes that seemed unable or unwilling to provide for them (BBC 2009a). The year 2010 saw a resurgent spectre of famine in North Korea, and the spillover of human insecurity in that country into the international arena. Meanwhile, members of the international community are increasingly asserting a right to intervene to protect the human security of individuals against the prerogatives of states.