Challenges To Security Sector Reform

Security sector reform (SSR) is key to ensuring sustainable democratisation and peacebuilding processes in the Horn of Africa. This monograph, edited by Len Le Roux and Yemane Kidane, compares SSR experiences in the region and highlights security reform challenges facing the Horn of Africa. SSR in the Horn should include both restructuring of security institutions and strengthening of political, judicial and civil society oversight capacities. It should also be based on a comprehensive, accurate analysis of overall regional and national contexts.

Over the last decade the failure of countries to emerge from conflict has focused attention on state security sectors. This book examines how the external approaches to security sector reform (SSR) have evolved and what they entail; the specific problems faced by the SSR agenda; and what policy recommendations for engagement can be drawn from reform experiences.

Multilateral organizations - the United Nations (UN) in particular - have played, and continue to play, an important role in shaping the security sector reform (SSR) agenda, both in terms of policy development and the provision of support to a wide range of national SSR processes. This volume presents a variety of perspectives on UN support to SSR, past and present, with attention to policy and operational practice. Drawing from the experience of UN practitioners combined with external experts on SSR, this volume offers an in-depth exploration of the UN approach to SSR from a global perspective.

There has now been more than a decade of conceptual work, policy development, and operational activity in the field of security sector reform (SSR). To what extent has its original aim, to support and facilitate development, been met? The various contributions to this book address this question, offering a range of insights on the theoretical and practical relevance of the security-development nexus in SSR. They examine claims of how and whether SSR effectively contributes to achieving both security and development objectives. In particular, the analyses presented in the book provide a salutary lesson that development and security communities need to take each other's concerns into account when planning, implementing, and evaluating their activities. The book offers academics, policy-makers, and practitioners within the development and security communities relevant lessons, suggestions, and practical advice for approaching SSR as an instrument that serves both security and development objectives. (Series: Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces [DCAF])

This Security Sector Reform (SSR) Paper offers a universal and analytical perspective on the linkages between Security Sector Governance (SSG)/SSR (SSG/R) and Sustainable Development Goal-16 (SDG-16), focusing on conflict and post-conflict settings as well as transitional and consolidated democracies. Against the background of development and security literatures traditionally maintaining separate and compartmentalized presence in both academic and policymaking circles, it maintains that the contemporary security- and development-related challenges are inextricably linked, requiring effective measures with an accurate understanding of the nature of these challenges. In that sense, SDG-16 is surely a good step in the right direction. After comparing and contrasting SSG/R and SDG-16, this SSR Paper argues that human security lies at the heart of the nexus between the 2030 Agenda of the United Nations (UN) and SSG/R. To do so, it first provides a brief overview of the scholarly and policymaking literature on the development-security nexus to set the background for the adoption of The Agenda 2030. Next, it reviews the literature on SSG/R and SDGs, and how each concept evolved over time. It then identifies the puzzle this study seeks to address by comparing and contrasting SSG/R with SDG-16. After making a case that human security lies at the heart of the nexus between the UN’s 2030 Agenda and SSG/R, this book analyses the strengths and weaknesses of human security as a bridge between SSG/R and SDG-16 and makes policy recommendations on how SSG/R, bolstered by human security, may help achieve better results on the SDG-16 targets. It specifically emphasizes the importance of transparency, oversight, and accountability on the one hand, and participative approach and local ownership on the other. It concludes by arguing that a simultaneous emphasis on security and development is sorely needed for addressing the issues under the purview of SDG-16.

Challenges to security and human rights involving extractive and other industries gave rise to an evolving framework of policy, standards and good practice generally known as business and human rights (BHR). Problems with inefficient and unaccountable security institutions are addressed by security sector reform (SSR). From an empirical perspective – the view from the often mutual operating grounds of BHR and SSR – both approaches share many challenges, as well as end goals. It is thus striking that only on rare occasions are challenges in governance of the security sector addressed upfront as problems of poor resource governance, and vice versa. This paper describes the grounds where SSR and BHR coincide in principles, actors and activities, and which synergies can be built on that base. It makes the business case for SSR, and the SSR case for business. The paper assesses how SSR can channel resources and know-how from business to address critical challenges related to ownership, capacity and sustainability of reform processes. Opportunities for bridging BHR and SSR are drawn from a broad range of policy and guidance, and by looking at lessons from case studies on Guinea, Colombia and Papua New Guinea. SSR and BHR should not collide; ideally, they should cohere. A variety of multistakeholder initiatives open new opportunities to bring this about, with particular relevance to SSR in extractive environments. The overall conclusion, supported by practical propositions for implementation, is that the existing policies and standards in SSR and BHR already allow, and call for, a less rigid approach to the challenges addressed in both fields.

This textbook is designed to be used by those tackling the complex and challenging issues of security sector reform (SSR). The questions of ‘What is security?’ and ‘How can governments deliver it in the most efficient and effective manner?’ are central to this volume. The text explores the ways in which security might be achieved, providing readers with the guiding principles of governance and management. Principles are illustrated through reference to the experiences of countries engaged in reform of their security institutions, allowing the reader to identify continuities and discontinuities in the process of change within the security sector. Written by practitioners for practitioners, the book provides readers with a framework with which to assess and respond to first-, second- and third-generation issues within SSR. All chapters include an introduction to the topic, empirical case studies, and exercises to encourage readers to reflect upon their own experiences of governing and managing security. This book will be of much interest to students of security studies, defence management and defence policy, as well as to practitioners in the field of security management.