Sourcebook On Security Sector Reform

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])

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 book examines the evolution, impact, and future prospects of the Security Sector Reform (SSR) model in conflict-affected countries in the context of the wider debate over the liberal peace project. Since its emergence as a concept in the late 1990s, SSR has represented a paradigm shift in security assistance, from the realist, regime-centric, train-and-equip approach of the Cold War to a new liberal, holistic and people-centred model. The rapid rise of this model, however, belied its rather meagre impact on the ground. This book critically examines the concept and its record of achievement over the past two decades, putting it into the broader context of peace-building and state-building theory and practice. It focuses attention on the most common, celebrated and complex setting for SSR, conflict-affected environments, and comparatively examines the application and impacts of donor-supported SSR programing in a series of conflict-affected countries over the past two decades, including Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, East Timor and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The broader aim of the book is to better understand how the contemporary SSR model has coalesced over the past two decades and become mainstreamed in international development and security policy and practice. This provides a solid foundation to investigate the reasons for the poor performance of the model and to assess its prospects for the future. This book will be of much interest to students of international security, peacebuilding, statebuilding, development studies and IR in general.

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.