Page 99 - Empowerment and Protection - Stories of Human Security

Country chapters
and security concerns
This section describes how the authors gathered information
in each of the countries. Most based their analysis on personal accounts described in interviews and focus groups, aiming for a balanced demographic composition, often combining accounts of community or civil society leaders with those of ‘ordinary’ citizens.
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In some countries, prevailing human security concerns affected the ability to gather diverse
and representative accounts. From the inputs we received from our contributors, we found that their observations regarding the process of interviews and methodology were insightful in their own right about the level of fear associated with discussing ‘security’ or human security issues.
We felt it pertinent to bring that out in this section, as it shows that human security concerns were part of the process, and not merely an outcome. This underscores the importance of a process that is informed by human security principles. In the following sub-sections, the authors described the methods used in their respective country chapters. In some cases, the subject matter was deemed
too sensitive to link to a speciic country , and are discussed separately below. The sections below are presented by the authors themselves.
Afghanistan
A series of stories were collected from Kabul, Nangarhar, Laghman, Kandahar, and Kunduz provinces to form a narrative of how locals view human security in Afghanistan. Face to face interviews, off-the-street interviews and telephonic surveys were conducted. Twenty-three interviews were conducted with representation from the Pashtun, Hazara, and Tajik ethnic communities. While the Afghanistan Justice Organisation tried to balance the gender representation by incorporating the participation of women in street interviews, face-to-face conversations and telephonic
surveys, only seven women were interviewed
for the chapter. This is often a challenge faced
by researchers in Afghanistan because societal sensitivities and pressure prevent women from participating. As acknowledged in the chapter’s title, the interviewees were predominantly from an urban setting, mostly from Kabul, and should therefore not be understood as representative of Afghanistan’s vast rural population. Nevertheless,
AJO interview in Kabul
The purpose of
the interviews was
to give people a chance to talk about what is most important to them.
a focus on urban areas, where many residents originate from other provinces and rural areas, contributed to revealing the urban-rural divide in the country.