Featured Member: Sari Kouvo

“Following Afghanistan over the years, you realize that for many international and Afghan actors, the lives of Afghans really don’t matter.” Coming to understand how humans become dispensable in wars and humanitarian crises has been a disheartening experience for Dr. Sari Kouvo, co-director and co-founder of the Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN). Even so, it has also become part of what motivates her and an important aspect of the work of her organization. “Bringing out real stories of people’s lives to an international audience is necessary in order to show that human lives are important everywhere and that we are not looking away,” Dr Kouvo explains.

Based in Brussels, she travels to the AAN office in Kabul, Afghanistan for a few weeks every two months. The organization conducts field-based research on politics and security in its widest sense, including areas such as women’s security, human rights, humanitarian affairs, and democratization, which is then disseminated both through daily blog entries and longer research reports. Apart from producing her own research and editing the work of others in the organization, Dr. Kouvo focuses on donor relations, capacity building and management of AAN and its office. 

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Bringing out real stories of people’s lives to an international audience is necessary in order to show that human lives are important everywhere and that we are not looking away.

- Dr. Sari Kouvo

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She does not see herself as directly working in the humanitarian field, but rather as “an international lawyer who ended up working in Afghanistan, with a great interest in conflict, post-conflict, and fragile state situations.” Despite that, she finds that, working in such a context, issues such as humanitarian access, military conduct and humanitarian law become central.

Moreover, in situations of humanitarian crisis, Dr. Kouvo finds that there is often a complete breakdown of rule of law, with the major actors involved sometimes not even recognizing the applicable legal frameworks. In such situations, she sees it as critical to push for the basic values and principles that can help reinstate respect for legal norms.  “I am still convinced that law, and the standards we create around it, is one of the few tools we have to limit the abuses by the most powerful,” she says.

But even as humanitarian crises and state failure can bring out the worst in people and lead to the breakdown of rules and norms, Dr. Kouvo has seen how it can also bring out the best in them. “Seeing how Afghan families help each other, how communities try to support each other, and how people create networks and contexts of survival in very, very difficult situations has been an important lesson for me,” she says, underlining that acts of solidarity and care are present even under the worst of circumstances.

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Interview conducted by Markus Forsberg