The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Human security puts people at the centre: freedom from fear, freedom from want and freedom to live in dignity. Wellbeing asks how people themselves experience their lives. Both look beyond national averages and state security to the threats people face, from violence and hunger to disease and loss of livelihood. This page sets out how human security and wellbeing are understood and measured, and what evidence serves those who act on them.
GCRI · In development · service level R0
Human security is an approach centred on people's freedom from fear, freedom from want and freedom to live in dignity. With wellbeing, it looks beyond national averages to the connected threats people face, from violence to hunger, combining objective conditions with people's own sense of safety and life satisfaction.
For human security and wellbeing, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on population density, true-colour imagery and land cover with true colour from NASA GIBS, framed on Latin America and the Caribbean; every other NASA layer, live feed and forecast waits in the layer list.
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People and exposure, for this page
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NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth
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For human security and wellbeing, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on population density, true-colour imagery and land cover with true colour from NASA GIBS, framed on Latin America and the Caribbean; every other NASA layer, live feed and forecast waits in the layer list.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date; indicators, not assessments of any place; claim ceiling INTEGRATED.
Layers and dates
Safety, rights, health and livelihoods. The dossier below sets out how the risk develops, what is measured, where the data come from, how it is modelled and who decides.
Conflict, economic shocks, disease and environmental change reinforce each other in people's lives, so a narrow focus on one threat misses the others.
People's sense of safety and life satisfaction can diverge from economic indicators, and subjective measures capture what objective ones miss.
Human security combines protection by institutions with people's own capacity to act, so both are needed for lasting security.
Violence and deprivation in early life affect health, learning, earnings and trust in others for decades afterwards.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Subjective wellbeing | People's own evaluations of their lives and their emotional experiences. |
| Food Insecurity Experience Scale | An FAO survey measure of food insecurity based on people's reported experiences. |
| Freedom from want | Security from deprivation of basic needs such as food, health and livelihood. |
Each indicator carries its unit, its cadence, the kind of source behind it and the evidence label a value would carry. No values are shown: a programme supplies them under its own authority.
| Indicator | Unit | Cadence | Source type | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intentional homicide rate | per hundred thousand population | annual | UNODC homicide statistics | OFFICIAL |
| Prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity | percent of population | annual | FAO Food Insecurity Experience Scale | ESTIMATED |
| People feeling safe walking alone at night | percent | per survey | Population surveys | REPORTED |
| Life evaluation | score on a zero to ten scale | annual | Wellbeing surveys | REPORTED |
| Conflict-related deaths | count | annual | Conflict event datasets | ESTIMATED |
| Population with access to justice mechanisms | percent of those with disputes | per survey | Legal needs surveys | REPORTED |
The topic as a computational graph: named sources feed the methods, an evidence review gates the outputs, and the decisions stay with the authorities that hold them.
Fig. 02Nodes carry their type, two metric rows and a state; connectors show what feeds what; dashed frames name the owners; the timeline is the cadence. Design of the pipeline, not a record of a run.
Named public datasets and institutional records, each with its licence class. Sources by agreement are used only under their terms and never republished.
| Source | What it gives | Licence class |
|---|---|---|
| UNODC data portal | Homicide and crime statistics | Public, UNODC terms |
| FAO Food Insecurity Experience Scale data | Experience-based food insecurity | Open, CC BY 4.0 |
| UNDP Human Development Reports and special reports on human security | Concepts and analysis of human security | Public, UNDP terms |
| Uppsala Conflict Data Program | Organized violence and conflict events | Open, CC BY 4.0 |
| OECD How's Life and wellbeing data | Wellbeing indicators across countries | Public, OECD terms |
Society and Human Development prepares evidence. The decisions below are taken by the authorities named, under their own rules, and never by the platform.
| Who decides | The question | Evidence this page serves |
|---|---|---|
| National development planners | How to include human security and wellbeing in plans | Profiles; measurement guides |
| Justice and security ministries | Where to focus on violence prevention and access to justice | Homicide, safety and justice evidence |
| Humanitarian and development agencies | How to address connected threats in programmes | Threat analyses |
Threats to human security reinforce each other. Economic hardship can increase domestic violence and child labour; conflict disrupts health services, food supply and education; disasters can expose people to exploitation, trafficking and gender-based violence, particularly in displacement settings. Health is both an outcome and a driver: illness reduces earning capacity, and loss of income reduces access to care.
Mental health effects of disasters, conflict and economic insecurity are significant and often long-lasting, yet they are under-measured and under-served. Wellbeing depends on social relationships, meaning and agency as well as material conditions. Rights matter in practice: legal identity, land tenure and freedom of movement determine whether people can access protection and rebuild.
Measuring wellbeing raises questions of voice. Indicators chosen by outsiders can miss what people themselves value, such as dignity, belonging or the ability to practise their culture, so the field increasingly combines standard measures with locally defined ones and reports where the two diverge.
Surveys of health, nutrition, safety and subjective wellbeing; sensitive topics are under-reported.
Structured monitoring of rights violations and protection risks in crises, under strict data protection.
Listening to how people define and experience security; findings are rich but less generalizable.
Limits: violence, exploitation and mental illness are systematically under-reported, and collecting such data carries risks to respondents that must be managed.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.