Today, many individuals are victims, not of foreign military aggression and nuclear war, but of violence committed against them by their own state. Moreover, the security of individuals is threatened, not by military forces, but by criminals and terrorists, the forces of nature, disease, and poverty. The traditional interstate security paradigm has no place for most of these threats, and considers many of them to be essentially domestic affairs. The aim of my paper is to briefly look at the choice between a state-centered and an individual-centered approach to global security. I will look at the debates on ‘human security’ and ‘state security’, focusing on the most influential reports and declarations on this issue of the last two decades.