Security issues are generally thought of as conflict. They are associated with armed fighting, military intervention and civilian deaths. The Ebola crisis definitely does not fit into this category. Yet the UN security council on Thursday declared the Ebola outbreak “a threat to international peace and security”.

According to the World Health Organisation’s latest figures, this is the deadliest Ebola epidemic on record having infected more than 6,200 people in West Africa, killing nearly half of them. The US Centres for Disease Control has estimated that the number of cases in Liberia and Sierra Leone, in a worst-case scenario, could rise to 1.4 million by January. The virus is spread through bodily fluids and once symptoms become apparent can kill within four to five days. Symptoms include rampant fever, severe muscle pain, vomiting, diarrhoea and, in some cases, internal and external bleeding through the eyes and mouth.

The UN Security Council declared the Ebola outbreak a “threat to international peace and security“. To provide context, this declaration was made in the same meeting of the UN Security Council as that which discussed ISIS and unanimously passed a resolution compelling member states to ban their citizens from supporting the Islamic State group. This is only the second ever public health emergence to be addressed by the Security Council. Ebola, like ISIS, has bypassed attempts by governments to control it.

This highlights the broad nature of a security crisis and the wide ranging methods that can be used to deal with one. Though the most common form of crisis may be armed conflict, there a broader range of characteristics that should be considered. A crisis is merely an event that does, or is expected to, cause unstable and dangerous conditions. The Ebola crisis does such. The number of cases is currently doubling every three weeks making it highly unstable. Given how easily it is currently spreading and the unpredictable nature at which it is doing so, it is also highly dangerous. The government of Sierra Leone has implemented travel bans across the country and has ordered more than one million people into quarantine, yet the disease is still spreading and many of those not affected are starving given the hast with which many of the movement bans were implemented.

It could be classed as a humanitarian crisis given it is threatening the health of a large group of people. However it can also be classed a security crisis as given rate at which the disease has spread and the induced vulnerability of surrounding countries, as well as the threat countries on a global scale, that this creates. This is highlighted in Obama’s speak to the UN general assembly, where he grouped Ebola with the crisis in Ukraine and the threat posed by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria as new dangers to global security.

Ultimately it does not matter what kind of crisis the Ebola outbreak is classes as, as long as it is called a crisis. The UN using that one word is enough to mobilise countries around the world, broadening their efforts to stop the crisis. European nations have pledged millions of dollar to the effort as well as health aid workers, similarly the USA has also pledged troops to help the effort.

Will this be enough to curb the rate of spread and save the lives of thousands of people? Only time will tell. But the UN’s efforts are a big step towards achieving such a goal.

Declarations of war are marketing strategies produced to emphasis one set of reasoning and understate another. They are announcements of securitisation that dramatise and emotionalise an issue to make it seem morally and ethically necessary. They try to pull at the heart strings of the population in order to ensure the population approves of the governments strategy. In doing so the declaration brushes over certain details of reasoning, to ensure the most likely to receive public support are most highlighted.

As such humanitarian intervention is the “best” a reason a government can cite for declaring war on another states. As the Human Rights Watch said “what could be more virtuous than to risk life and limb to save distant people from slaughter?” Some wars genuinely are to save the lives of others. Interventions, such as that of the French in the Democratic Republic of Congo or the Belgian mission during the Rwandan genocide, were clearly motivated by a desire to stop the ongoing breaches of human rights and were supported by the United Nations.

When American President George W. Bush announced the start of military action in Iraq, the suspected presence of weapons of mass destruction was cited. The high-risk nature of these weapons requied military action, securitizing the legitimate force, or the threat of such force – as with the Cold War. However, this factor was only one of many media focused upon when the war commenced.

For many Americas, the threat of nuclear weapons would not have been enough of a reason to start a war pre-9/11. And even after the dramatic events of that day, this reasoning wouldn’t have been enough for many people, so Bush pulled out the humanitarian card. This played on the heart strings of citizens. The West values human rights above all else, if a government is willing to violate those of their own population what else wouldn’t they be willing to do? Playing into the hands of the media, enabling them to use almost propaganda like journalism to help ignite the flames against terrorism and hatred for Saddam’s Iraq.

The majority of Bush’s speech focused on the people of Iraq and the inhabitants of the United States of America. He used phrases such as “free the people” and “defending the world from grave danger”; he said “people must trust” him and the military; he talked of honour and morality. He spoke of Saddam Hussein “attempting to use innocent men, women and children as shields for his own military”, which he spoke of as “a final atrocity against his people”. Before closing with his declaration asserting that the “dangers to our country will be overcome”. Bush securitized this as a societal problem, Saddam’s regime were violating human rights.

Yet no one was fooled by the idea that America went to war to ‘save the children of Iraq’. They attacked for purely their own benefit. Someone had managed to attack them from inside, they needed to show the rest of the world they were still strong and could fight back, that they could punish those that had threatened them. The humanitarian focus was purely a marketing strategy intended to influence the opinions of America’s.

Declarations of war are ploys to gain citizen support and acceptance even if in doing so it is necessary to bypass the governments actual or key reasoning. The war is going to happen, why the population agree with it is merely detail.