Security Sector Reform Research Articles

Bridging the Gap: The United Nations Peacebuilding Commission and the Challenges of Integrating DDR and Transitional Justice

While peacebuilding is a long-term and complex endeavor, a cacophony of actors and agendas, together with a persistent tendency to focus on short-term needs at the expense of long-term priorities, stymie efforts to build lasting peace. Complex problems call for innovative and integrated interventions. The staples of post-conflict peacebuilding — including, disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR), security sector reform (SSR), rule of law initiatives, and transitional justice mechanisms ranging from prosecutions to truth commissions — are meant to serve overlapping constituencies and common purposes. In practice, however, such initiatives have often operated on separate tracks, leading to redundancy, avoidable tensions, and lost opportunities. This article focuses on the special challenges that arise out of the need to develop more integrated approaches to DDR and transitional justice and argues that the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) must play a stronger role in bringing together this and other pieces of the post-conflict puzzle. Even though the possibility of tension between transitional justice mechanisms and DDR programs cannot be eliminated, careful attention to areas of overlap should be part of innovative and integrated approaches to post-conflict peacebuilding going forward in order to advance common goals. The gains of such an approach would be modest, but worthwhile.

Beyond the Post-Conflict Checklist: Linking Peacebuilding and Transitional Justice Through the Lens of Critique

While historically seen as being in competition with the demands of peace, transitional justice is increasingly accepted as an important element of post-conflict peacebuilding. Along with the demobilization and disarmament of ex-combatants, security sector reform, rule of law programs, and elections, it has now joined a virtual checklist of post-conflict interventions spearheaded by the international community in post-conflict countries. This increasingly shared space between transitional justice and post-conflict peacebuilding initiatives has sparked new interest among both scholars and policy makers in sounding out potential connections between both fields. Although the pursuit of synergies between peacebuilding and transitional justice programs is a worthwhile goal, I argue that in developing these connections, we must also be keenly attentive to mutual shortcomings. Transitional justice and post-conflict peacebuilding have historically proceeded on separate tracks, yet there has been a remarkable similarity in the critiques and concerns that have been leveled against both fields in the last two decades. There are strong reasons to suspect that more integrated approaches to peacebuilding and transitional justice will have the tendency to exacerbate some of the tendencies that have given rise to these parallel critiques rather than alleviate them. Seeking synergies and overlaps through the optics of these historic concerns and critiques could be one technique of resistance to these tendencies, leading to the development of innovative techniques for building peace with justice in conflict’s wake.

Rule of Law Promotion and Security Sector Reform: Common Principles, Common Challenges

Rule of law promotion and security sector reform (SSR) are expected to abide by the same guiding principles. Actors involved in both endeavors are demanded to base their activities on a solid knowledge base. They are urged to take a holistic approach and to ensure that particular components of such an approach are properly coordinated. They are pushed to strive towards local ownership. And, the credibility of external actors is deemed to be of paramount importance. However, there is wide consensus that both rule of law promotion and SSR by and large fail to adhere to these guiding principles. SSR practitioners would thus be ill-advised to rely on applying best practices from rule of law promotion, the older and more established field, to their own endeavor. Rather, both fields ought to step up their efforts to develop practically relevant lessons learned that could then, in turn, be reciprocally useful.

Justice Reform, Security Sector Reform and Local Ownership

The purpose of this article is to look more deeply at why the principle of local ownership has so often been disregarded in justice reform and security sector reform (SSR). In doing so, it identifies various dilemmas that account for this lack of regard, including issues relating to local vs. international norms; donor vs. local interests and representational issues at the national and local level. Subsequently, it will examine how local ownership dilemmas impact on programming including during the assessment, implementation and monitoring and evaluation stages and then consider how local ownership can be strengthened particularly in fragile states.

Rule of Law and Security Sector Reform: Casual Assumptions, Unintended Risks and the Need for Norms

This article examines rule of law (ROL) and security sector reform (SSR) linkages in crisis management. In particular, the article looks into why international assistance providers chose to categorize a situation and ensuing response strategy as rule of law or SSR, how this categorization is motivated and explained to international and national partners and stakeholders, and how this categorization affects national laws, institutions and other arrangements in post-conflict and crisis societies. The article is borne out of an observation, based on events in the Arab Spring, that the character of international community responses to rule of law threats and challenges has as a strong focus on security. Rule of law promotion taking place in UN and EU missions has undergone a ‘securitization’ in how reforms are conceived and put into practice, compared with rule of law in development aid and past experiences of rule of law assistance in post-communist transitions.

Introducing the Rule of Law in Security Sector Reform: European Union Policies in the Palestinian Territories

This paper examines the efforts of the European Union to advance Security Sector Reform and to bridge the gap with the Judiciary Sector Reform and the rule of law in the Occupies Palestinian Territories. Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, the EU engaged actively in the state-building project in the Occupied Palestinian Territories by taking a number of initiatives in situ. Security has been a key issue in all Israeli-Palestinian agreements concluded during the post-1993 Oslo interim period up to 1999 and then, with the resumption of the Palestinian intifada in 2000, security became primordial to all internationally-sponsored diplomatic initiatives and peace plans. The article analyses the EU initiatives undertaken to help the Palestinian Authority reform its security and judiciary sectors, and argues that while the European Union has, in theory, supported the rule of law perspective in Palestinian Security Sector Reform, in reality it has not paid much attention to improving democratic civilian oversight and accountability.

Guns, Laws and Politics: The Political Foundations of Rule of Law and Security Sector Reform

Despite increasing attention by donors to Security Sector Reform (SSR) and Rule of Law development (ROL), results have been mixed. This article explores conditions within recipient states that shape the outcome of these programs. Drawing from literature on state-building, I argue that the development of security and justice institutions reflects relations among political elites and citizens. Concentration of power by ruling elites as a result of a narrow political base or discretionary control over revenue undermines incentives for leaders to accept constraints on executive power. Regimes rooted in broad or fragmented coalitions without easy access to revenue are more likely to accept legal and institutional constraints. The outcome of rule of law development and security sector reform programs is largely determined by donors’ impact on these conditions. I illustrate these dynamics in three post-conflict countries, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sierra Leone and Timor-Leste, where donor-funded programs have yielded varying results.

Rule of Law and Security Sector Reform in International State-Building: Dilemmas of Converging Agendas

In this article we discuss the integration of international security assistance and rule of law promotion within larger state-building projects. Going beyond the widespread claim that both approaches should be closely linked within overarching security sector reform (SSR) efforts, this article inquires more systematically into their relationship both at a conceptual level and at the level of state-building practices. It argues that the creation of effective security institutions cannot be easily reconciled with programmes that promote mechanisms of legitimate political control as one dimension of the rule of law. Rationales behind security and rule of law support diverge: the former aims to strengthen a state’s enforcement capacities, while the latter seeks to restrict them. The case of security and rule of law support to the Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank illustrates the tensions that can result. The article shows that in the Palestinian case, selectivity, fragmentation and timing issues have impeded the coherence of international assistance.

Security and the Rule of Law in Colombia and Guatemala: Priorities, Trade-offs and Interdependencies

The ‘liberal peace agenda’ assumes that security sector reform (SSR) and the consolidation of the rule of law are both interdependent and complementary. Evidence from Colombia and Guatemala suggests, however, that in practice conflict resolution and peace-building strategies may prioritize attaining national security over the rule of law (Colombia) or taking measures to strengthen the rule of law only when faced with serious post-conflict insecurity affecting elites and the hollowing out of the state by organized crime and criminalized elite competitors (Guatemala). Peace-builders should therefore pay particular attention to strengthening justice systems and protecting fundamental rights of citizens and victims of state and non-state violence. Strategies to increase the state’s security capacity and to reform the security sector should be synchronized with an overarching rule of law agenda. In violent settings where insecurity has many faces and cuts across the blurred lines between legality and illegality security remains elusive without a stronger rule of law.

Rule of Law Promotion and Security Sector Reform: Partners or Rivals?

Rule of Law Promotion and Security Sector Reform: Partners or Rivals?

Libya After Qadhafi: Reshaping the Political and Security Systems

IntroductionThe fall of Muammar al-Qadhafi in October 2011 marked the end of the Libyan uprising, led to the close of NATO's intervention Operation Unified Protector (OUP), and ushered in a delicate political transformation which failed to come to a quick and decisive end with the first round of elections held in early July 2012. To assess some major pitfalls of the current transitional process, this article will propose an analysis of two main challenges the new Libyan authorities will face, the proper handling of which will determine the nature and stability of the future state. The first challenge is the political transition from an autocratic regime via revolutionary credentials to democratic legitimacy. The second involves the construction and governance of an entirely reshaped security sector, both in the military and civilian realms, transcending their previous roles in the Jamahiriyya either as Praetorian Guard or as state-sponsored bullies.1Libyan politics are not immune to the major novelty introduced by the Spring. Political representation transformed into a reflection of forces on the ground: what used to be called in derogatory terms the Arab Street - as opposed to the will of the dictator, or alleged Western interests - morphed into public opinion, which was now suddenly relevant in elections. Yet the first free national elections in Libya produced a mixed picture without clear majorities, partially due to the complicated electoral system, which was split into party lists and individual candidates. Furthermore, as could also be witnessed in local elections that took place in Misrata and Benghazi, political Islam as such seems not to be favored by the Libyan people. This means the search for charismatic, authoritative political leadership during the transition phase will most likely continue. However, achieving stability cannot be attained by a successful political transition alone. Rivalries between numerous and relatively autonomous kata 'ib (militias) could degenerate into open confrontation.2 If those rebel commanders, who have suddenly transformed into politicians, lose in the elections where they sought to acquire democratic credentials (and in the process to transcend their previous revolutionary achievements as militia leaders), such a scenario becomes more likely.The National Transitional Council (NTC) and its interim government have prioritized security sector and judicial reform from the very beginning in order to provide for a smooth transition in post-conflict Libya. However, in the current climate justice seems mainly to be understood to consist in indicting former regime officials (such as Qadhafi's son Saif al-Islam or the former Prime Minister Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi), rather than in terms of conducting reforms of the justice system. Simultaneously, assassinations are not uncommon. Jumma al-Jawzi, the judge who ordered the arrest of Abdelfattah Younes (commander of the National Liberation Army since his early defection, assassinated in July 2011) was killed in June this year.3 Several candidates running in the recent elections or former Qadhafl-era office bearers have been victims of politically motivated murder or assassination attempts as well.Despite the NTC s rhetoric about national reconciliation, security sector reform (SSR) is making slow progress in an environment that is prone to the settling of old intertribal disputes. These tribal rivalries, which had been used by Qadhafi as a reliable mechanism to consolidate his power, are now free-floating in the absence of a central authority. Practically, mediation efforts for the implementation of fragile cease-fires tend to be undertaken by shuyukh (tribal leaders), elders and notables from influential families. The army claimed on several occasions to have dispatched contingents to intervene in tribal clashes, such as confrontations in southwestern Sebha or southeastern Kufra. The reality looks quite different. …

Security Sector Reform and Georgia: the European Union's challenge in the Southern Caucasus

Security Sector Reform (SSR) holds different meanings and hence varying implications for recipients and donors. Therefore, as an initial point of departure it is necessary to offer a more precise understanding of what can the European Union (EU) offer as a donor to recipient nations in need of SSR? The empirical case of Georgia presents an interesting and challenging case for SSR. There have been a number of domestic and international conflicts in the post-Soviet era, which has left a volatile legacy. There needs to be a cautious and long-term approach that balances what Georgia needs and wants with what the EU can offer. Rather than a narrow approach to the SSR programme, a broader and more encompassing assistance needs to be undertaken in order to affect a more stable and sustainable change. This process shall require talking and offering, but also listening to what Georgian officials request and desire.

Defense Education Enhancement Program: The Consortium Perspective

The Early YearsThe Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes, based at the George C. Marshall Center Garmisch, Germany, is leading an innovative and unprecedented program for defense education reform five Partner countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Moldova). The modus operandi for these efforts includes finding fertile ground for defense reform other countries beyond the Partnership for Peace nations. Defense education general is gaining attention as a useful tool for security policy makers. Why and how this is happening is an intriguing story that begs to be told. This article attempts to tell that story.It begins, as do so many post-Cold War accounts, with the demise of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR 1991 and the steadily growing interest from Central and Eastern European countries NATO membership. At the same time, the newly independent sovereign states of the USSR, the former Soviet Socialist Republics, began to choose their own paths. Some of them installed democratic systems of government and links to the West, while others retained authoritarian rulers.NATO's response to all three groups began first as an offer of a of friendship, an exploration of a new cooperative relationship. By 1994, this hand evolved into the Partnership for Peace, a practical program of bilateral cooperation for those states willing to participate as Partners alongside NATO Allies. NATO shaped these individual programs initially around achieving interoperability for peacekeeping operations, a useful goal indeed as a number of Partner countries deployed troops to Bosnia and Herzegovina 1996. By 1999, NATO opened its doors to three new members, a political choice based heavily on military criteria - specifically, on what these countries could add to the Alliance's capabilities.In the same year, NATO endorsed the Partnership for Peace Consortium, a joint German-American initiative established to strengthen defense and military education and research through international cooperation. Switzerland and Austria quickly joined the Consortium as stakeholders. NATO remained on the sidelines, preferring to see the organization operate in the spirit of PfP, free to follow the interests of the stakeholders and the Partner members.Uncharted TerritoryThe Consortium embarked on a journey of discovery into uncharted territory, helping the Partners find their way security sector and defense education reform. Switzerland's Center for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces played a key role these early years. Working groups fields of interest to both the stakeholders and the Partners formed, met, and exchanged ideas. Although exposure to Western colleagues was valuable, a number of working groups drew criticism because they lacked products or deliverables, as some like to call them.1A new vista opened for the Consortium with the publication of NATO's Partnership Action Plan for Defense Institution Building (PAP -DIB) and its supporting initiative for Education for Defense Reform 2004-05. Soon after, NATO's International Staff saw promise the Consortium as a way to influence defense institution building Partner states and joined the Consortium as a stakeholder. But what concrete tasks should the Consortium take on? How and where should it start?New Energy, New DirectionsAn intriguing idea emerged early 2006. An ad hoc group of defense educators, calling themselves the Friends of PAP-DIB, met several times that year and elaborated what eventually became the foundation for the current Defense Education Enhancement Programs, or DEEPs. The formula was simple concept - to engage Western defense educators peer-to-peer discussions with their Partner counterparts on three themes:* What to Teach (that is, curriculum content)* How to Teach and Learn (pedagogy)* Faculty Development (peer-to-peer mentoring aimed at a holistic approach to defense education). …

Harnessing Serbian civilian capacity for peace support operations: A nascent community?

The article will explore the possible emergence of a civilian capacity community in Serbia comprised of Serbian policymakers, researchers and practitioners who are interested in peace support operations and willing to deploy Serbian experts through multilateral organizations such as the European Union, United Nations and the Organization of Security and Co-operation in Europe. Having recently undergone a security sector reform, Serbia can offer to share relevant experience and expertise with these organizations through secondment or direct hire, in order to support the countries experiencing complex crises or those that are emerging from conflict. Serbian expertise can serve to soften some of the criticism leveled against peace support operations and provide relevant expertise to those in the field.

Reconstructing Security after Conflict: Security sector reform in Sierra Leone

As Sierra Leone prepares for its second general election after the war, a nervously anticipated event which will put the state to a severe test, Jackson and Albrecht launch a study of security sector reform (SSR) between 1997 and 2007. They promise ‘partly a history of the UK intervention in Sierra Leone and partly a reconstruction and critique of efforts made to reconstruct a state’ (p. 1), and on that count they will disappoint no one. The body of the book is made up of three chronologically organized and highly detailed chapters which trace reform during open conflict (1997–2002), through a period of SSR innovation (2002–5), and finally to a consolidation phase (2005–7). The book as a whole develops a number of important themes – how policy develops in response to context; the emergence of SSR largely as a rationalization of decisions already made; institutional struggles for primacy; and the pivotal role of individuals.

Civil society and security sector oversight

Much is made in the security sector reform literature of the role of civil society as an overseer and monitor of the security sector, contributing to improved accountability and governance. This paper looks at how the notion of ‘civil society capacity’ needs to be disaggregated in order to develop meaningful strategies to assist civil society organisations to impact security sector reforms in complex, post-conflict contexts like the Democratic Republic of Congo. It draws on fieldwork conducted with 200 Congolese civil society groups that are attempting to engage in current security sector reform processes, and looks at which capacities are required to improve oversight by civil society groups.

Security Sector Reform and State Building

This article argues that there is a close link between security sector reform (ssr) and state building. Focusing on UK approaches to state building and ssr, it argues that these are an extension of liberal models containing a number of assumptions about the nature of states and how they should be constructed and that any analysis of ssr approaches needs to be seen within a broader framework of the international community, which tends to see the replacement of ‘dysfunctional’ societies as desirable both for the people of those states and for the international community. As a result, state building has largely been carried out as a ‘technical-administrative’ exercise focusing on the technicalities of constructing and running organisations rather than on the politics of creating states, leading to a lack of overall political coherence in terms of where ssr is, or should be, going and of what kinds of state are being constructed. Politics is frequently cited by practitioners as representing a set of obstacles to be overcome to achieve ssr rather than a set of assumptions about actually doing it. The effect of development and security policies working closely together in insecure environments is an overarching emphasis on security at the expense of the harder, more long-term process of development.

GEOPOLITICAL DETERMINATION OF THE SLOVENIAN ARMED FORCES – FORMATION OF MULTINATIONAL FORCES IN THE AREA OF WESTERN BALkANS

Ever since it won its independence, Slovenia has made great efforts to distance itself geographically and politically from the region, nowadays also known as the Western Balkans. In the past twenty years, most of Slovenia’s efforts have been directed towards becoming a European Union and NATO member. The Slovenian Armed Forces followed the lead by gathering its experiences and knowledge mostly in the Western Europe and the USA as well as in different military missions and operations led by the UN, NATO, the EU and the OSCE. When the situation in the former Yugoslavia settled and at least fragile peace was restored, newly formed countries decided to join the PfP programme and later on NATO (Croatia is already a member, while Serbia does not wish to become one, yet) and the EU. In such circumstances, Slovenia and the Slovenian Armed Forces saw a new opportunity to support these countries in their Euro-Atlantic ambitions and help them with security sector reforms.

Security sector stabilisation in counterinsurgency operations: the case of Afghanistan

This article argues that the debate on security sector reform (SSR) needs to be taken further by taking into consideration the fact that, even though the SSR concept was not originally developed as an element in stabilising states undergoing an insurgency, it is very much being used for exactly that. When conducting counterinsurgency with a focus on the creation of stability, the baseline will ultimately have to be security sector stabilisation (SSS) as a precondition for complete SSR implementation. However, the two must be connected to avoid them undermining each other. This is important if a comprehensive approach to programme implementation and especially sustainability is to guide the programme, and not just isolated ‘train and equip’ stand-alone projects that do not solve either the initial need for stabilisation or the long-term need for accountable security forces. Currently, in Afghanistan the surge for security by the international military is in danger of overtaking the other elements of the SSR, thereby undermining the primary end state and thus risking laying the wrong foundation for the long-term process of SSR.

Feeding the Horse: Unofficial Economic Activities within the Police Force in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

ABSTRACT Based on original interview material, this article addresses the organization of unofficial economic activities within the Congolese (Democratic Republic of the Congo) police force. In contrast to dominant assumptions in security sector reform discourses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in which property violations tend to be portrayed as disorganized, ad-hoc activities, following from irregular and insufficient salaries, the article shows how property violations are highly organized with large portions flowing upward in the chain of command. However, the article also argues for the need to go beyond one-dimensional notions of “unrestrained predation” and simplistic dichotomies between civilians (victims) and police/military (predators). Furthermore, it argues for a more contextual analysis in which the core security sector institutions are situated more firmly in the political and economic context in which they operate.