Participatory research on human insecurity and small arms in South Asia

This report is a synthesis of outcomes and findings of a five-day workshop that was the initial activity for the project "Human Security and the Threat of Firearms: Perspectives from South Asia", co-ordinated by the Small Arms Survey and The Regional Centre for Strategic Studies. The project aims to measure how people themselves experience security and the relationship between small arms and human security, and to appraise the impacts of small arms on people and vulnerable groups in four communities via a combination of development tools and methodologies. Participatory research, particularly Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and Participatory Urban Appraisal (PUA) are being used as a way of evaluating people-centred security where the focus is on the subjective experience of fear and insecurity, rather than on "objective" criteria and data on small arms related insecurity, which the literature is characterised by. Participants of the workshop in June 2001 were researchers from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. They came together to define and prioritise research objectives for pilot studies in these countries. The report defines PRA and links it to security and small arms, and to human security, outlines the pilot projects and concludes with the research agenda.