Page 97 - Empowerment and Protection - Stories of Human Security

If applied consistently 3 with its underlying
principles, methodology
can pave the way
towards operationalising human security from a theoretical framework towards a practical approach.
It is worthwhile to look more closely at the ‘how’ of applying the human security approach towards the local and individual level. Drawing from the experiences of producing this publication, this section relects on the relevance of a methodology for human security. First, a brief description of the process to develop this publication is provided, including our approach to developing a common yet lexible method to capture the individual experiences of people in all the featured countries.
In the second section, the authors and the organisations involved share how they conducted the interviews, and some of the challenges
they faced in their respective contexts. Their observations regarding methodology are revealing about the levels of fear associated with discussing ‘security’ or human security issues. It shows that human security concerns are also part of the process, and not merely an outcome.
In the third section, we elaborate on why a focus
on methodologies for human security is important. It has the potential to lead to a better understanding of how to operationalise the human security approach in research, policy and practice.
The range of different types of security, from freedom from fear to freedom from want and freedom
from indignity, are unique to each individual and context. This publication does not aim to provide a comprehensive overview of all the human security threats in the featured countries, nor does it attempt to describe all the country facts. It tries to build on the existing efforts of others and on the experience of the participating organisations. Given the lexible approach, the sample size and limited scale, the indings of these studies cannot be interpreted as representative. Instead, it aims to relect a snapshot of lived experiences of insecurity, and to inform recommendations from a civil society perspective, which can counter-balance dominant top-down narratives.
A small number of statistics and igures were featured in the country chapters to relate to the relevant themes and connect the stories to existing larger scale indexes and quantitative data. However, it should be noted that statistics are also subject to interpretation and inaccuracies, and, in some cases, contested between the discordant actors. They were used here only as background information.
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