Security begins with justice

When leaders gather at the Munich Security Conference this week, they do so in a world that no longer pretends to be orderly. Rules are applied selectively, power is exercised more bluntly, and the idea of a stable, rules-based international system is under visible strain. From Ukraine to Gaza, from the Sahel to the Red Sea, insecurity feels less like an exception and more like the defining condition of our time. Much of the conversation in Munich will understandably focus on geopolitics: military deterrence, alliances, supply chains, technological rivalry, and great-power competition. These matter. But if security is understood only through these lenses, the conference risks missing the deeper drivers of instability, those that begin not in capitals or battlefields, but in the daily lives of ordinary people. For millions, insecurity is not experienced as geopolitics. It is experienced as injustice. In parts of the Sahel, violent extremism has expanded not only because of ideology or foreign interference, but because land disputes, local grievances, and abusive security responses have gone unresolved for years. In North Africa, youth frustration fueled by unemployment, corruption, and inaccessible justice has repeatedly translated into protest, repression, and political volatility. Across the Middle East, the absence of credible legal remedies has left citizens trapped between insulated authority and informal power brokers, eroding trust in the state itself. Europe is not immune to these dynamics. Prolonged delays in asylum and migration adjudication have created humanitarian backlogs that undermine both human dignity and public confidence. In parts of Eastern and Southern Europe, perceptions of unequal justice and corruption have weakened trust in institutions, feeding polarization and political extremism. Even in advanced democracies, when people believe the system works for some but not for others, stability frays from within. These are not marginal governance problems. They are security risks. Instability is often attributed to reckless or authoritarian leaders and sometimes rightly so. But just as often, it emerges from unresolved justice needs: land disputes that cannot be settled, elections whose outcomes are not trusted, violence that is never credibly investigated or sanctioned, contracts that cannot be enforced. When people lack peaceful, credible ways to resolve conflict, disorder becomes a rational alternative. This reality is increasingly acknowledged in global economic and political debates. At Davos earlier this year, leaders spoke candidly about a world in which trust is eroding and old assumptions no longer hold. The 2025 World Economic Forum’s Global Risks report warns that the social contract between citizens and governments is under severe strain, as inequality deepens and legitimacy weakens. These are precisely the conditions in which insecurity takes root. Yet international security policy has been slow to adjust. For decades, justice has been treated as secondary — important, but technical; desirable, but slow. In many places, courts were reformed on paper, laws modernized in theory, while people remained excluded by cost, distance, language, fear, or discrimination. The result is a dangerous gap: justice systems that exist, but do not necessarily protect; rules that promise fairness, but do not always deliver it. In that gap, grievances harden. Munich rightly places resilience at the center of its agenda. But resilience does not begin with military capability or technological superiority. It begins with trust. Where people trust the justice system to hear them, protect them, and treat them with dignity, societies become resilient from the inside out. Where that trust is absent, people turn elsewhere to informal networks, patronage systems, armed groups, or the street. This is how insecurity becomes personal before it becomes political. Justice that is accessible, affordable, and responsive to real needs is also one of the most effective forms of conflict prevention. Many recurring crises, whether over land, in housing, or resources, are not inevitable. They escalate because individuals and small businesses lack credible ways to resolve disputes peacefully. A functioning local mediation mechanism, a mobile court, or legal aid that people can use often prevents violence more effectively than force ever could. The same logic applies to economic security. Investment and growth depend not only on investor confidence, but on public confidence. When ordinary people cannot enforce contracts, register property, or challenge corruption, economies become exclusionary and brittle. Inequality grows, resentment deepens, and legitimacy erodes. Justice systems that serve people are not obstacles to growth; they are preconditions for sustainable prosperity. Moments of crisis make this clearer still. Climate shocks, pandemics, and displacement, now central to Europe’s security agenda, concentrate extraordinary power in the hands of the state. Justice systems that center people help ensure that emergency powers remain proportionate, that the most vulnerable are protected, and that necessity does not slide into abuse. Without such safeguards, crisis governance hardens into repression — and repression breeds resistance. For too long, security conversations have assumed that stability must come first, and justice later. This is a mistake. Justice is not what follows stability; it is what makes stability possible and the conditions for stability to take root. If the Munich Security Conference wants to redefine security for a fractured world, it must ask different questions. Not only around how states deter threats, but also how people experience safety. Not only whether institutions are strong, but also whether they are reachable? Not only about whether order is maintained, but also whether dignity is protected. Security built on selective rules and distant institutions will not hold. A global order that places people first through fair, consistent, and accessible justice is not idealism. It is realism for the world we now inhabit. If Munich is serious about shaping the future of security, justice cannot remain at the margins or as a by-product. It must move to the centre because that is where stability truly begins.