This Handbook will serve as a standard reference guide to the subject of human security, which has grown greatly in importance over the past 15 years, since the concept was first promoted by the UNDP in its 1993 and 1994 Human Development Reports. The volume fills a clear gap in the literature on human security and provides a broad overview of human security scholarship and thinking, reflecting the multi-disciplinary perspectives which have informed the development of the concept of and its policy use. It elaborates how human security has been theorised, and shows the variety of policy applications attached to it, as well as tackling some of the methodological issues which it raises. It draws on three broad aspects of human security thinking: Theoretical issues to do with defining human security as a specific discourse Human security from a policy and institutional perspective, and how it is operationalised in different policy and geographic contexts Case studies and empirical work Featuring some of the leading scholars in the field, the Routledge Handbook of Human Security will be essential reading for all students of human security, critical security, conflict and development, peace and conflict studies, and of great interest to students of international security and IR in general.