Dear colleagues:

These discussions are very interesting.

I’m not sure if what I will post now is useful, but I decided to share with all of you a brief overview of a project that I have run here at the International Human Rights Law Institute (IHRLI) of the DePaul University College of Law. It is called the Iraq History Project (IHP). We documented the profoundly destructive impact of political violence under the regime of Saddam Hussein and following the US-led invasion by gathering thousands of testimonies with a methodology that plays off of many issues raised here.

Over the past six and a half years, studies show that 100,000 to 800,000 Iraqis have been killed and the United Nations estimates that one out of every six Iraqis have fled their home because of violence, creating one of the world’s most significant refugee and displacement crises. All of this has occurred in a country that suffered devastating losses over three decades of authoritarian rule in which the Ba’ath Party government killed hundreds of thousands, displaced millions and forced the entire nation to live under a state of constant surveillance and brutal repression.
The IHP has collected 8,911 testimonies representing over 55,000 pages of personal narratives recounting the individual experience of torture, massacres, assassinations, rape, kidnapping, disappearances and other violations.
The goal of the project is to provide Iraqis with an opportunity to talk about their experiences and thereby document the truth of political violence while placing a human face on the suffering of the Iraqi people. In this way, the project is similar to truth commissions in South Africa, Guatemala, Peru and elsewhere as well as to projects like the Shoah Foundation’s database of Holocaust testimonies and the REMHI project in Guatemala (particularly since these initiatives were not officially sanctioned processes like truth commissions).
The project has three main objectives: documenting past and present violations by collecting large numbers of testimonies from around the country; analyzing this material to reveal patterns of violence and repression; and, encouraging the development of domestic and international policies to assist victims through reparations, memorialization, education and national reconciliation. The project seeks to contribute to an improved understanding of the scope, impact and severity of systematic political violence over the past four decades in Iraq and to aid a broad social process of transitional justice, national reconciliation and reconstruction.

Here is an overview of the IHP methodology:

For the IHP, we designed qualitative methodology based on a review of similar large scale human rights projects, such as truth commissions. The project trained an all-Iraqi team of over 100 interviewers who worked throughout the country speaking with nearly nine thousand Iraqis representing the country’s diverse ethnic/religious population.

The interviews were carefully recorded by hand and then transmitted to a central office where they were entered into a secure and searchable database using Martus. Some of this material was transferred to a secondary analytic database using Access and SPSS.

The quality of the material gathered relies to a large degree on the skills and training of the IHP interviewers. Interviewers were selected to represent diversity of gender and religious/ethnic background. They ranged in age and professional background and included physicians, professors, lawyers, and journalists.

Interviewers used social networks, victims’ organizations, and local non-governmental organizations to identify and contact potential interviewees. Interviewers were paired with interview subjects in a manner that maximized their comfort and encouraged the collection of detailed testimonies. For example, women were interviewed by other women, Kurds by other Kurds, Assyrians by other Assyrians, etc. In addition, interviewees generally worked in the governorate or region where they live.

The interview process was designed to allow victims, their families and others to talk openly about their experiences in a manner that was both personally meaningful and useful for gathering material on specific violations and broad patterns of abuse. Since it is difficult for many victims to discuss their experiences of past repression, interviewers devoted special attention to approaching interviewees with kindness, respect and patience. Interviews typically lasted many hours and, in some cases, interviews took place over several meetings.

The IHP interviewers arrived at a designated location to meet interviewees. They provided the interviewee with a clear overview of the project and would then seek to establish a positive, trusting relationship. Because it is often emotionally difficult and even traumatic for people to discuss their experiences of political violence and repression, interviewers were trained to approach interviewees with great care.

Interviewers explained that the basic goal of the project was to prepare an account of political repression in Iraq during the regime of Saddam Hussein and after the U.S. led invasion through the personal stories of victims and their families. The interviewers described how these testimonies are gathered from victims and their families all over the country and that the material is stored in a database and that some of the results are to be published in various media with the goal of informing the Iraqi people about the suffering caused by the prior regime and in the past six and a half years. Interviewers sometimes discussed the possible use of the material in courses in schools and universities as well as the hope that the project might encourage the government to create programs to address victims’ needs.

We have presented the material gathered in books, newspaper inserts and on call-in radio programs in Arabic and Kurdish that have been heard by an estimated audience of over 500,000 Iraqis.

Interviewers highlighted the fact that participation was entirely voluntary and that there were no immediate financial or material benefits of being interviewed. Interviewers explained that interviewees should only participate if they were interested in contributing their story to the larger collection of testimonies about past political violence in Iraq. Interviewers then explained that they would answer any questions potential interviewees may have. They tried to ensure that interviewees had as clear an understanding as possible of the project. Interestingly, a number of interviewees later told our team that they were pleased that the project was honest in offering no direct benefits for participation. This was especially true for victims in places like Halabja where many prior interviews have been conducted, often alongside substantial promises of aid and assistance.

The interview methodology began by allowing the interviewee to speak openly about his or her experiences. Interviewers asked interviewees to tell their story in an unstructured manner. The IHP methodology allowed interviewees to talk about their experiences of past human rights violations in the way that is personally meaningful. Interviewers worked in a focused, yet informal manner, listening closely to the stories presented and carefully recording the testimonies by hand. They would write down everything the interviewee said in a word-for-word manner, interrupting the narrative only when absolutely necessary or to slow the process down to make sure all of what was said is accurately recorded.

Interviewers were encouraged to respect the fact that every person has their own way of telling their story. The methodology focused on the specific facts of each person’s story as well as the unique ways in which each interviewee chose to tell their own story. Interviewers were trained to work with each interviewee as an individual and to help victims feel as comfortable as possible while discussing these difficult and traumatic issues.

After the interviewee finished their story with minimal questions and prompting (a process that often took hours), the interviewers began asking questions. These questions followed the testimony as it has been recorded and focused on clarifying data, such as names, dates, and other relevant information. The interviewer might ask questions about dates, times, as well as how a particular event occurred or how a series of violations progressed. The interviewer might also seek clarification on feelings, descriptions, witnesses, information on perpetrators and anything that seemed necessary to fully understand the testimony. Interviewers would then mark down each element of additional information, whether a specific fact or a lengthy description, as well as any new elements of the testimony that arose from these questions.

After completing that stage, the interviewer would then read the testimony slowly, line by line, to the interviewee, asking him or her to correct or clarify any aspect of the narrative that they wanted changed. The purpose of that stage is to ensure that the interviewee fully accepted the testimony in terms of its accuracy, style and tone as a reflection of their personal experience. In this way, each interviewee approved the text of his or her testimony.

Then, the IHP staff would thank the interviewee and return home with the relevant paper records from the interview. Each interviewer would then prepare a clean version of the testimony using set guidelines. All original paper and notes would be destroyed. The final testimony material would be coded for safety and then transferred to the main office for review and entry into the project database.

The general data on each interviewee as well as the testimony would then be entered into the Martus database by staff working under the supervision of the database manager. The database encrypted the identifying information and narratives which are stored on a server located outside of the country to protect material from tampering, theft, or accidental damage. All paper records were destroyed after being entered into the database, which is password protected and can only be accessed by authorized staff.

Following the data entry, we engaged in selective analysis of material based on specific violations, historical events and other issues.

We worked closely with colleagues all over the world on this project, including excellent assistance from Benetech.

This is an ongoing project and we will post a revised website in Arabic, English and Kurdish shortly (www.iqhp.org).

I am planning to draft a detailed review of the methodology and to make available all of our training materials on how to conduct interviews, etc.

Any comments?