Modern post-conflict security sector reform in Africa: patterns of success and failure

ABSTRACT

This piece examines recurring patterns in the ‘where’ and ‘how’ of security sector reform (SSR) implementation failures in post-conflict African SSR programmes featuring substantial external involvement that have been undertaken since the mid-1990s. It finds, briefly that in these efforts, gaps in SSR implementation have tended to occur at the same points in the SSR process repeatedly. The most common issues include failures to correctly assess the post-conflict security environment, failures to ensure local ownership of reform efforts, failures to devote sufficient resources and attention to disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR, a process with close ties to SSR and force integration), failures by donors to coordinate goals and resources, and failures to include critical parts of both the de jure and de facto security sector in reforms. Post-conflict African success stories also share common characteristics, most notably a deep and wide level of societal involvement at most stages of the SSR process. These patterns, analysed as a necessary first step to discovering the ‘why’ of implementation failures in such cases, collectively suggest a focus on the early mobilisation of domestic political demand for SSR, rather than on varying methods of applying external pressure, as a fruitful avenue for future research.

KEYWORDS:

• security sector reform
• peacebuilding
• African Union
• disarmament
• demobilisation
• reintegration
• DDR
• SSR

Introduction

Promoting security sector reform (SSR) in countries emerging from war is one of the critical missions that the African Union (AU) – following the path laid out by the United Nations (UN), the World Bank, and others – has increasingly assumed in recent years. However, despite two decades of implementation experience, as of 2016 there has been no increase in the tiny number of post-conflict SSR efforts generally considered successful. In another field of endeavour, the approach might have been discarded as unworkable in practice. However, in the absence of any alternative path to the same critical ends, i.e. stable, self-governing states in which citizens enjoy basic security and justice services, do not export security problems (refugees, militants, drug-traffickers, etc.), and do not require continual aid and periodic intervention, SSR remains indispensable.

It has become a cliché to state that failure to implement is the problem with SSR. The core recommendations for SSR practice have remained fairly constant over time, as has the failure to shape programmes accordingly. While the obvious question regarding failures of SSR implementation is ‘why’, it should be equally clear – given the vast scope of activity fitted under the heading of SSR – that to answer this one must first address the prior questions of ‘where’ and ‘how’, particularly if the answers systematically vary based on region, level of intervention, intensity of conflict, and a host of other variables.

This article attempts to examine the ‘where’ and ‘how’ of SSR’s implementation failures for both the thematic issues and the subset of cases most relevant to the AU – instances of post-conflict SSR with significant external involvement undertaken since the mid-1990s: Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Mali, Côte D’Ivoire, Burundi, Chad, Libya, the Central African Republic (CAR), and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). To this end, the piece is organised into five sections. The first provides background by reviewing both prevailing definitions of SSR and the conditions that led to its popularisation. The second section reviews and aggregates the experiences of various African states that have undertaken post-conflict SSR efforts (successfully and otherwise). Many thorough case studies of the efforts examined exist; by scrutinising these cases for patterns, this article attempts to draw more generalisable conclusions for this case universe. The third section explores scholars’ and practitioners’ evolving and diverging attempts to define and so resolve recurrent issues within SSR, focusing on those most relevant to African post-conflict efforts. The fourth section distils the findings of this examination into a set of recommendations for the AU, and the fifth concludes with thoughts on how these findings suggest further specific directions for research.

This examination finds, briefly, that in African post-conflict efforts, gaps in SSR implementation have tended to occur at the same points in the SSR process repeatedly. The most common issues include failures to correctly assess the post-conflict security environment, failures to ensure local ownership of reform efforts, failures to devote sufficient resources and attention to disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR, a process with close ties to SSR explored in the ‘issues’ section of this article, and force integration), failures by donors to coordinate goals and resources, and failures to include critical parts of both the de jure and de facto security sector in reforms. Post-conflict African success stories also share common characteristics, most notably a deep and wide level of societal involvement at most stages of the SSR process. Possible directions for further research gleaned from these patterns are explored in the conclusion of this article.

Defining SSR

Any exploration of SSR successes and failures requires first drawing some boundaries around the concept. Unfortunately, there has never been a consensus definition of SSR, though definitions have tended to expand over time. What consensus exists is largely captured in the definition put forward by the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD-DAC) of the ‘security system’ to be reformed (named to convey the interconnection of institutions) as:

[…] core security actors (e.g. armed forces, police, gendarmerie, border guards, customs and immigration, and intelligence and security services); security management and oversight bodies (e.g. ministries of defense and internal affairs, financial management bodies and public complaints commissions); justice and law enforcement institutions (e.g. the judiciary, prisons, prosecution services, traditional justice systems); and non-statutory security forces (e.g. private security companies, guerrilla armies and private militia).¹

Of the ‘rival’ definitions, the most relevant to the cases examined in this article is offered by Ball et al., who argue that – particularly in Africa – SSR is not a sufficiently ambitious or comprehensive approach, proposing the following alternative:

Security-sector transformation: A holistic change to the security sector, aimed at altering the relations of power within the sector in the direction of civil/constitutional control to transform institutional culture, promote professionalism, improve resource utilization and operational effectiveness (on the side of the security forces, better policy management (on the side of civil authorities), in tandem with accountability and respect for human rights and international law and involving inputs from a wide-range of stakeholders and role-players [ … ].²

Ball et al. hold that the term ‘reform’ has been used too widely in reference to superficial changes meant to legitimise unpopular regimes, while ‘transformation’ is an accurate description of the task.³ In practice, however, almost all efforts have fallen short of this expansive definition. The following section explores the particular conditions that gave rise to SSR and subsequent disagreements as to its correct interpretation and implementation.

Initial rationale for SSR

SSR emerged as a possible solution to pressing problems in both security and development in the 1990s, which witnessed a critical shift in thinking about the military’s role in developing countries, sparked by the end of the Cold War. As existential dangers for the great powers receded, experts began to argue that the bilateral, train-and-equip focused assistance that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the United States (US) provided to allies/clients could be destabilising.⁴ Militaries receiving aid had become dependent, growing larger (and more ambitious) than their economies could sustain and tending to have outsized control over political processes.⁵ In Africa, the last colonial/racist regimes and a number of autocracies were faltering and government budgets were shrinking, forcing militaries to adjust to the needs and values of democratic governments as well as finding a way to reintegrate ex-combatants.

Concurrently, assessments in developing countries highlighted the lack of security and justice as major concerns for the impoverished.⁶ This fed into the evolving acceptance of ‘human security’ as a guide for operations. Claire Short, who was Secretary of State for International Development in the United Kingdom (UK) at the time, said in her 1999 speech that coined the term ‘security sector reform’, that ‘state, regional and even global stability is not simply a question of relations between states. Rather, it is a function of the welfare of the people who constitute these nations’.⁷ This was compelling, as donors strategised to prevent or resolve the messy ‘New Wars’ of the 1990s, where increasing danger to civilians was linked to state weakness and failures of critical institutions.⁸ It was hoped that change could be encouraged through ‘the main innovation of the SSR model [ … and] its focus on governance. The professionalism and effectiveness of the security sector is not just measured by the capacity of the security forces, but how well they are managed, monitored and held accountable’.⁹

Institutionalisation, disappointment, and new tactics

SSR was rapidly accepted as a critical goal of post-conflict state building. However, after more than a decade with few success stories, scholars’ and practitioners’ frustration has grown, particularly since, as previously mentioned, basic orthodoxy regarding a sound SSR effort is largely unchanged, with ‘a fair amount of agreement that these various approaches should address two main problems: the ineffective and inefficient provision of security and, increasingly, justice, in part because the providers may themselves be a source of insecurity; and the inadequacy of accountability and oversight in the security sector’.¹⁰

Execution is widely held to be the problem. As Zyck notes, scholars ‘attribute lack of SSR success to donors’ and recipients' failure to live up to principled security sector engagement by, for instance, imposing short timelines, privileging technical capacity-building over state-building approaches, bypassing security sector governance and parliaments, marginalizing civil society and outsourcing implementation to private security companies (PSCs)’.¹¹ To address this gap, some argue that SSR must remain ambitious – when the challenge is to fundamentally alter the relationship between the government and people across interdependent institutions, an incremental approach cannot work.¹² If international actors were serious about devoting political and diplomatic capital, time and resources, they argue, success would follow.

On the other side, many emphasise that, especially in Africa, most security and justice for ordinary people is not provided through the state. They have come to believe that SSR’s ‘preoccupation with the state and Western liberal principles is unrealistic and counterproductive, and that reformers must seek to shape programs around local dynamics and perceptions of security’.¹³ Aiming for focused international will and resources that will rarely arrive is futile. This thinking prescribes a more incremental, evolutionary approach to post-conflict SSR and greater non-state actor engagement.

Beyond this, Sedra observes three basic approaches.¹⁴ First is the throwback ‘train-and-equip’, focused on increasing capability but not accountability or governance. Sedra notes that ‘This approach most often comes to the fore in the most difficult reform cases, where insecurity and political instability is acute. Under such pressure donors tend to do two things: instrumentalize SSR to address immediate instability and insecurity, and revert to what is most simple and familiar, training and equipping the security forces’.¹⁵ This approach also gives donors cover to pursue more traditional bilateral security priorities; many have attributed its resilience to the requirements of the War on Terror. Ball and Hendrickson describe how, particularly in Africa, many governments supported US counterterrorism efforts in exchange for direct military assistance delivered without pressure to reform.¹⁶ De Goor and Van Veen identify this trend as a major reason why development actors have become less invested in SSR.¹⁷

 The second variant – ‘orthodox’ SSR – is a recommended order of operations developed in the initial years of practice – a security needs assessment, government buy-in, and a holistic and multi-year strategy with clear short-, medium- and long-term goals. The problem was inflexibility and expense; in volatile post-conflict situations, it was easy for newly-arrived interveners to misread initial conditions. A coup, faltering government support, one component not going as well or quickly as expected – numerous developments could derail careful sequencing. Additionally, as these programmes tend to target many institutions simultaneously, they require immense resources, intensive multi-actor coordination, and medium- to long-term funding they rarely received.¹⁸ When these programs falter, as in Afghanistan or Haiti, they were sometimes abandoned for the next crisis and sometimes reverted to train-and-equip efforts.

 Finally, an emerging school of thought holds that, in transitional environments, ‘a better approach is to gradually build reform momentum and buy time for the development of a political consensus and the stabilization of the security environment through ad hoc projects in areas and institutions ripe for reform’.¹⁹ This general idea of ‘stabilization’,²⁰ ‘interim stabilization’,²¹ or similar, acknowledges that in the most volatile situations governments may be completely incapable of meeting basic security needs, thus leaving civilians at greater risk from violent crime, inter-communal reprisal and general opportunistic predation than from the ‘official’ conflict.²² Frequently, neither national nor local governments are in a position to ‘locally own’ any process: ‘Indeed, it is often the case in fragile and failed states that an intervening military force initially operates under the international law governing the occupying powers’.²³ These forces – often a peacekeeping mission – can provide what Downes and Muggah refer to as ‘breathing room’, ensuring basic security and suppressing spoilers while encouraging locals (and donors) into dialogue about which SSR activities are most immediately necessary and possible.²⁴ Some specific stabilisation measures include the ‘establishment of civilian service corps; military or security sector integration arrangements; the creation of transitional security forces; dialogue and sensitization programmes; and differentiated forms of transitional autonomy’.²⁵ The major downside is that this commits an intervening force to filling the ‘security gap’ indefinitely, as it cannot responsibly withdraw until replaced by local actors.

African post-conflict SSR: the record

Of course, these divergent approaches developed in response to successes and failures on the ground. This section focuses on the patterns that have recurred most prominently in African post-conflict SSR efforts, first in failed and/or stalled attempts, and later in the smaller universe of successes. Given the current lack of an adequate standard for measuring SSR success or failure (an issue explored later in greater depth), these sections only reference fairly clear-cut and generally accepted instances.

Failures of security assessment and national ownership

It is widely agreed that it is necessary but not sufficient for a proposed SSR programme to have national government support. However, often, the consultations with other parts of society, or even the government itself, that are needed in order to produce a plan that satisfies true security needs do not take place, or are undertaken in a cursory fashion. Notable cases of near-complete failure to assess and consult include:

• Guinea-Bissau, where in terms of civil society inclusion the ‘overall impression remains that instead of guaranteeing self-determination, only a minimum degree of local co-determination in the form of selective consultations was granted’.²⁶

• Liberia, where in 2006, years after SSR efforts began, the US government (charged with rebuilding the army) commissioned a comprehensive security review from the Rand Corporation in which the Liberian government was so minimally involved that some security agencies were not even aware that it had taken place.²⁷ Significantly, security was also unaddressed in the otherwise broad national consultations that fed into Liberia’s post-war development strategy.²⁸

In some efforts, these assessments and consultations took place but without follow through, and seemingly to check a box for a donor. In Guinea-Bissau, for example, the ‘process seemed largely driven by international actors with local political power actors using SSR to garner international goodwill’.²⁹ The 2005 Malian National Conference on Peace and Security and the 2008 CAR Political Inclusion Dialogue were praised when conducted, but produced so little action as to embitter and discourage many of those who participated.³⁰

The CAR process was relaunched a few years later under a new government, illustrating another common challenge; assessments and consultations often take place in situations (such as Somalia, South Sudan and the CAR) where renewed conflict is imminent.³¹ Even if the assessed or assessing government survives, the situation on the ground is likely to have changed enough to justify beginning the assessment process from scratch.

Failures of DDR and force integration

DDR failures in these cases are numerous and interconnected. In some cases (Liberia, Sierra Leone, Mali, Libya and the DRC), inadequate funding/underestimation of the task left some combatants out of the process, while planned demobilisation periods and reintegration training were shortened beyond usefulness or cut entirely.³² In others, such as the CAR, assistance was so delayed that cantoned combatants gave up and resumed low-level attacks against rivals.³³ Worryingly, in many states DDR (largely externally funded) seems to have become an expected part of combat cycle. The CAR, the DRC and Guinea-Bissau have all hosted multiple DDR efforts in quick succession, to little or even negative effect. In other states, notably Mali, the promise of an eventual DDR package has been a recruiting tool.³⁴ Recent Sudanese and South Sudanese efforts were so heavily corrupted as to be largely patronage programmes for various commanders.³⁵ When government/antagonist forces are combined to form a single military, in many instances – Chad, Sudan, Cote D’Ivoire, DRC, South Sudan – they are combined only on paper and serve under separate, non-integrated chains of command.³⁶ Payroll funds (to real or fictitious soldiers) function as payment to commanders to buy their temporary loyalty. De Waal diagnoses this process in much greater detail in his writings on the political marketplace.³⁷

As de Waal (and Debos) also note, what many of the most prolonged and wasteful cases share is the conviction among government elites and the population that, while DDR and force integration may take place, the conflict is not over, but merely paused.³⁸ This belief is reflected in the lack of care and attention given to long-term considerations in many peace agreements, as such considerations are clearly irrelevant where the average agreement life span is measured in months. Further, when donor timescales are just a few years, there is little incentive among combatants to keep the peace after aid dries up. A few counterexamples help underscore the point – Liberia, which ended its war with a widely-accepted political settlement and a long-term security guarantor in the form of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), remains at peace, despite its flawed DDR process and ongoing issues with non-reintegrated combatants.³⁹ Despite recent instability, Burundi’s painstakingly and lengthily-negotiated DDR and force integration arrangements in the peace agreements that ended its civil war kept the security sector functioning, and the military largely out of politics, for many years.⁴⁰ Given a true buy-in to a peace by warring parties and the population, DDR and force integration processes can be quite flawed and still not fatally destabilising – absent such a buy-in, all technical solutions seem futile.

Failures of coordination

Donors largely agree that an imperfect but coordinated DDR/SSR strategy is superior to even the best-designed sub-sectorial programmes operating in isolation, given the need for holistic SSR. However, in practice, African efforts have resulted in several prominent coordination failures. In the DRC and Guinea-Bissau, multiple donors have been played off against one another, enabling host governments to postpone reform progress significantly.⁴¹ In Liberia, the major donor (the US) took responsibility for the military, but left the police and other institutions to the UN and other donors, with predictably lopsided results.⁴² In Somalia, failures to coordinate within the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) have led each troop-contributing country to train and equip its own Somali security force according to its own needs and norms, raising serious concerns about the ability of the Somali National Armed Forces to eventually act jointly.⁴³

Key parts of the security sector left out of reform

Human security concerns are theoretically the heart of SSR, due to the destabilising effects of daily insecurity. However, the organs of the security sector most involved in this area – the police, the prisons and the judiciary – have been persistently neglected or omitted from African post-conflict efforts. As previously noted in Liberia (and similarly in Cote D’Ivoire), the police received far less attention than the military, but in an oversight with more immediate consequences, the prisons and the judiciary were initially left out of reform efforts entirely, squandering an opportunity to rebuild the population’s trust in the government’s ability to prosecute criminals.⁴⁴ In Chad, the United Nations Mission in Central African Republic and Chad (MINURCAT) trained a small number of police to effectively police refugee camps, only to face a lack of prisons or courts with which to deal with arrestees.⁴⁵ Mali’s current troubles have been blamed in part on popular frustration over a corrupt judiciary, and were foreshadowed by the ‘police war’ of 2011–12, sparked in part by issues of corruption and nepotism.⁴⁶ In Chad, Guinea-Bissau, the DRC and the CAR, the police have been used as a source of jobs for demobilised soldiers with minimal if any attempt at vetting or retraining, worsening already weak institutions.⁴⁷

Another less-frequently discussed issue is that of security institutions (usually intelligence services and elite guard units), which are left out of reform efforts by governments for strategic reasons, often as a hedge against coups. Given the extremely sensitive nature of these institutions, external actors have often been unwilling or unable to include them in the reform process. However, as is recognised in frequent calls for ‘holistic SSR’ when they are excluded, they often undermine the reform process by serving as a home for the types of corrupt and repressive activities that SSR efforts are attempting to eliminate within the regular forces.⁴⁸ In Chad, for instance, the presidential guard has been a stronger force than the army, a dynamic echoed in Libya.⁴⁹ The presidential guard and intelligence services were similarly left out of reform efforts in the DRC and the CAR.⁵⁰ In Sudan, while the comprehensive peace agreement ‘called for the setting up of a non-operational security and intelligence agency[,] this provision was […] not implemented [ … ]. The National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) of Sudan, headed since 2009 by Muhammad al-Atta Fadl al-Mula, remains powerful and feared, and has even gained command of its own paramilitary’.⁵¹

Neglected peripheries and non-state actors

Few states have productively engaged the non-state actors who provide security services in SSR. This is a particular concern because conflicts originating in neglected peripheries are common, highlighted as a major factor in Liberia, Guinea, Chad, Mali, South Sudan, Sudan, Libya, the DRC and the CAR. A number of these states are so large and unevenly settled that they are described as ‘unpoliceable’ by conventional means without an unrealistic expansion of policing budgets; thus, engaging non-state actors may well be the only feasible option.⁵²

However, it is inaccurate to portray the governments of these states as hapless victims of poverty and geography. In many cases, governments do have a role for non-state security actors in peripheries – namely, as militias that are activated when needed (through cash and arms transfers) to forward the government’s agenda and suppress rebellions. This dynamic has been observed in the DRC, the CAR, Sudan, Chad and Côte D’Ivoire, among others.⁵³ Debos observes: ‘There is not a zero-sum game between the official and unofficial state: the strengthening of one does not necessarily imply the weakening of the other’.⁵⁴ Where this pattern appears, governments often resist the inclusion of these non-state actors in SSR efforts, because to do so would be to forfeit a valuable, semi-deniable tool.

Success stories? The importance of political demand for SSR

‘Success’ is a term that must be applied cautiously regarding SSR efforts – here, it is used not to imply achievement of a final goal, but rather significant and sustained improvement in day-to-day security conditions for the majority of the people within a state when compared to prior conditions. Thus, cases that are clear SSR successes in terms of improvement may still host high levels of crime, political repression, or other serious threats to human security. Using this standard, three of the clearest examples of success among post-conflict African states are Sierra Leone, South Africa and Ethiopia. Notably, the second and third cases took place before SSR was popularised, and South Africa helped to inspire the approach by example and through the advocacy of its veterans for its process. Examining all the factors that contributed to the relative success in these cases is beyond the scope of this article. However, it is useful to reflect on the most notable factors that the three share: political consensus between the government and the general population that significant SSR must take place, and a process for ensuring that reform priorities were broadly shared.

In all three cases, the government’s approach to SSR was transformational, not incremental. The Ethiopian and South African governments had been brought to power by popular movements, and thus had a strong mandate for – and interest in – radically changing then existing institutions. In Sierra Leone, the post-civil-war government was reinstalled after a military coup (following a previous coup d’état during the war) and then democratically re-elected, with incentive and mandate to prevent future upheavals.

Much of post-Apartheid South Africa’s leadership was familiar with consultative processes and building consensus from their time in the resistance and established patterns which fuelled the South African defence review process, including ‘hundreds of consultations with a wide range of NGOs [non-governmental organisations], business, academia, other government departments, rural and urban communities and specialist groupings’ to produce a defence review and security sector approach considered groundbreaking for its focus on internal human security over external threats.⁵⁵

Ethiopia’s insurgents pursued a more informally consultative process that grew from the necessity of winning and maintaining popular support during the civil war, when insurgent forces depended on winning the loyalty of the population to gain ground.⁵⁶ This process culminated in a focus on economic development as the path to security and a commitment to cap defence spending at 2% of the state’s budget, far lower than the regional norm.⁵⁷

In Sierra Leone, Jackson asserts, as the SSR process evolved, the government’s main source of information about security concerns outside of the capital was the newly-established Office of National Security (ONS), which – in the absence of capacity for other intelligence gathering – developed extensive links throughout the countryside with the goal of having locals report threats. The ONS used these links, once formed, to conduct a security review that essentially doubled as a consultation process, in which locals in various regions reported their most pressing security concerns.⁵⁸ Several observers link the input from this process to the government’s unusually strong focus on the link between poverty reduction/economic development and increased security.⁵⁹ This input also fuelled focus on police over military capacity building.

The fact that all three successes featured popular consultations resulting in a governmental decision to focus on human security (in the form of a focus on economic development and police capacity) over ‘traditional’ security goals seems to validate early SSR theorists’ similar focus, and raise questions about the long-term usefulness of programming focused first on national militaries.

Evolving recipes for SSR: issues and debates

Having examined both successes and failures of implementation, it is useful to examine how scholars and practitioners have attempted to define and resolve emergent issues over time. Early SSR scholars were optimistic that the details of central norms, etc., would eventually generate an operationalisable consensus. This optimism was misplaced. As Law laments, the ‘lack of a common SSR language [ … ] is the IGO [international governmental organisation] equivalent of the non-interoperability of communications systems of security forces’.⁶⁰ This section explores the discussions and disagreements surrounding key issues.

A tailored and holistic approach?

Scholars and practitioners have always emphasised that SSR efforts should be tailored to the needs of each case, and that reform programmes created to address these should be as holistic as possible, as reforming one portion of a highly-interconnected set of institutions (for example, police but not prisons) is unsustainable at best.⁶¹ The primary recommendation for mitigating the immense resource demands of a holistic approach is careful sequencing: conducting a needs assessment, carefully considering which goals are interdependent, and finally pursuing programming that lays the groundwork for future efforts while still being politically feasible – for example, offering civil society leaders and parliamentarians training in security-sector oversight before legislation/policy changes give them actual oversight.⁶²

Over time, as these approaches spread but still failed to deliver success, many have argued that assessments needed to consult a much broader range of stakeholders to be accurate. These broader consultations, it was hoped, would both give outsiders critical information about the political and cultural context in which SSR would take place and reassure various critical stakeholders that their concerns were being heard.⁶³ England and Boucher's list of the expanded universe of actors to be consulted includes: ‘national political stakeholders; local justice networks and informal security and justice providers; local citizens, residents, communities, and neighborhoods; and international actors with their own national interests’.⁶⁴

Ideally, broader assessments would create a strategic framework guiding all programming.⁶⁵ However, some contend that many post-conflict situations are too unstable for SSR; moving too quickly, they argue, risks donors empowering illegitimate and unaccountable actors.⁶⁶ Furthermore, a premature focus on SSR may divert resources from protecting civilians or maintaining peace agreements.⁶⁷ Finally, if the principle of local ownership means requiring the host government to set its own security priorities then the host government must first have some capacity to do so – and this capacity is often absent immediately post-conflict.⁶⁸ Therefore, the first question any assessment should ask is whether or not conditions allow for SSR – and, if not, what activities could realistically be pursued to prepare for future efforts.⁶⁹

Lack of evaluation mechanisms

Disagreement on how to recognise and measure success hindered learning from early SSR experiences. While SSR principles existed, it was not clear how progress toward these general principles could be concretely measured, especially in a way that provided comparability between cases. Expectations that evaluation mechanisms would eventually develop organically proved overly optimistic.⁷⁰ However, it eventually became clearer what specific types of indicators were most needed for post-conflict SSR, notably objective criteria to help determine at what point interveners should transfer authority over security institutions back to locals, indicators to measure change in the professionalisation of forces, and tools for assessing whether or not the population is receiving basic security services.

Considering paths forward, in 2010 Schroeder proposed an approach prioritising local perceptions, building composite measurements of quality of security sector provision and security sector governance using existing indicator sets, including the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, the Global Peace Index, and the Civil Society Index.⁷¹ Downes and Muggah further suggest that in order to measure the cumulative effects of different programmes, actors should perform joint evaluations.⁷²

Local ownership: who and how much?

From the outset,⁷³ agreement has been widespread that ‘demand for change must come from within countries’.⁷⁴ SSR’s governance aspect, where security services commit to civilian control and civilian institutions assume oversight, requires fundamental attitude and relationship changes unlikely to be created through donor coercion. Recognition of this has created uncertainty about how to proceed when the demand is not present from official actors or, at least, not present in a form that donors are willing to fulfil.

Measuring ‘local ownership’ is necessarily a combination of different factors given different weights, with the ‘who’ being the most obvious. It is widely agreed that the host government needs to be active in reform. Most hold that civil society actors should also be involved, both to build support beyond the government reform and to provide vital information about everyday security.⁷⁵ While some have argued for direct donor engagement with civil society, others argue that governments need to control such consultations themselves.⁷⁶ Adding further complexity, neither government nor civil society are usually strong or unified in post-conflict contexts, as Adedeji Ebo highlights in his 2004 review of the first ‘official’ SSR efforts in post-conflict African states. Government elites may continue jockeying for position and resources.⁷⁷ Civil society may divide along sectarian or ethnic lines, or into a ‘donor-friendly’ contingent of non-governmental organisation (NGO) vs other organisations that are less approachable but more representative.⁷⁸ Given the certainty of conflicting interests then, who ‘owns’ SSR?

A related query is ‘how much’ local input into reform is necessary or desirable, from ‘passive acceptance of externally driven policy reforms’ to ‘wide societal participation in policy formulation and implementation’.⁷⁹ Those focused on immediate post-conflict SSR often argue that, given that local actors (however defined) are likely to be unable or unwilling to move forward, ‘international actors may be forced to make sensitive security decisions in place of a host state [and …] should be given the mandate and resources to make decisions’.⁸⁰ Scheye and Peake suggest that ‘local owners’ are those who are most effected by an institution and that therefore, in policing, owners should be local government and citizens, while central governments should handle military affairs; this is a less clear-cut division, however, where the military has handled security inside the state.⁸¹ Finally, Bendix and Stanley argue for clarity first, where ‘both donors and recipients should clearly state which actors they have in mind and what precise role they are willing to assign to these actors’.⁸²

Unfortunately, donors have ‘no consistent definition of local ownership [ … ] local ownership of externally supported SSR tends to conform to the lowest common denominator’.⁸³ External SSR promoters usually revert to the easy and familiar – working with central governments.⁸⁴ In a typical scenario, ‘elites wish to maintain an opaque and un-democratic control over the security services to ensure that it meets their interest. Donors allow them to do so partly out of respect for national ownership and state sovereignty and partly because their modes of engagement, being short term and focused upon technical rather than political solutions, are ill-suited to long-term governance challenges […]’.⁸⁵

Regrettably, this dynamic has persisted despite an increasing scholarly consensus that greater inclusion is key to better results; effective SSR must conduct wide-ranging consultations with all affected parties in a society and facilitate these parties’ dialogue with each other, to generate a rough consensus about the nation’s security needs, trade-offs with other priorities, and other key issues.⁸⁶ Especially where civil society is weak and interests greatly diverge, many have called for boosting the capacity of civil society actors who call for SSR so as to mobilise existing demand and increase pressure on official actors.⁸⁷ Furthermore, in this model, donors must be willing, as they rarely have been, to use political and diplomatic pressure to ensure that this dialogue is conducted in good faith.

Non-state security providers

In many cases, engaging solely with government security providers neglects the security and justice providers that ordinary citizens rely upon. Informal actors, England and Boucher estimate, make up as much as 80% of the security and justice sector in many post-conflict states, and the public often prefers them to state forces.⁸⁸ Williams further argues that, in Africa in particular, ‘guerrilla forces and indigenous military organizations [ … ] have played a positive role in contributing to the physical security of communities’.⁸⁹

This class, not clearly defined, generally includes all those using force inside the state, other than the state, in a manner that is at least somewhat protective – guerrillas, liberation movements, community self-defence forces, private security companies, paramilitary groups and political party militias, among others.⁹⁰ As frustration with state engagement has grown, so has enthusiasm for working with these providers to meet basic security and justice needs, especially immediately post-conflict and for basic policing functions, which states undergoing reform tend to neglect in favour of the military.⁹¹

There is no consensus about how to engage with these groups. Numerous commentators have warned that such groups have varying levels of legitimacy with different local populations – sometimes respected, sometimes tolerated in the absence of better, sometimes feared.⁹² They generally do not operate within accepted human rights standards, are likely to pursue their own communal agendas, and can be corrupt.⁹³ Engaging with such actors requires detailed contextual knowledge that interveners often lack. Mobekk notes several instances of ‘traditional’ practices that have been fabricated post-conflict to serve the interests of powerful locals.⁹⁴ However, Baker argues that refusing to work with questionable local non-state security providers when official state security providers are equally questionable or unavailable makes little sense: ‘As long as support for such local networks is not strengthening repressive and abusive policing, but moving them towards more democratic policing’.⁹⁵

Most scholars advocate for a parallel approach, wherein outside support is provided to both formal and informal systems, alongside efforts to regularise irregular forces – either gradually folding them into existing structures, creating new ones to formalise them, or encouraging them to form non-violent parties.⁹⁶ The challenge may be less to link the two systems than to transform the nature of the linkage; for example, many states habitually activate local protection militias to attack neighbours or out-groups so the government can repress with plausible deniability. Some procedures for engaging non-state actors are emerging. One example is Wulf’s subsidiarity principle, which holds that security provision should be as local as possible, and only when ineffective should the next highest level assume responsibility. Conversely, the norms which govern security provision should be established at the top.⁹⁷

Peace agreements

SSR provisions are increasingly included in peace agreements, usually drafted in negotiations with the most powerful warring parties and those donors willing to fund such efforts. As a result, they often fail to address the security concerns of ordinary citizens or less powerful groups (who may become spoilers if insecure).⁹⁸ The desire of mediators to reach agreements that end violence quickly is understandable but has contributed to a succession of weak, unenforced and quickly disregarded agreements. Often, provisions that minimally conform to accepted basic principles – civilian control over the military, parliamentary oversight, etc. – threaten the powerbases of the negotiating parties if implemented. Further, donors and governments must often plan for funding higher, short-term security costs and scaling back to sustainable levels once stability has been achieved without disrupting re-established security institutions – a tricky proposition that can leave donors afraid of having to fund indefinitely lest they re-spark war.⁹⁹

Worryingly, Duursma finds that the inclusion of SSR and/or DDR provisions in a given peace agreement does not have a significant impact on the agreement’s durability.¹⁰⁰ Hutchful’s examination of nine cases of SSR provision in peace agreements provides some evidence that this lack of impact, much like SSR failures generally, can be attributed to systematic failures of provision drafting and implementation; when these failures are avoided, success is more likely than when SSR provisions are either poorly written and implemented or not included in the agreements at all.¹⁰¹ Specifically, he and other scholars offer evidence that agreements are more durable if more representative, and argue for consultations with as many stakeholders as possible, particularly oft-excluded groups like women.¹⁰² Apart from consultations generating a wider buy-in, these actors may have insights on the drivers of conflicts and possible solutions ranging beyond those at the negotiating table. Finally, some have suggested directly integrating non-state security and justice actors into agreements, particularly DDR and SSR, both as an acknowledgment of their security provision role and as a first step toward legitimising and establishing oversight over them.¹⁰³

Linking DDR and SSR

Best practices literature stresses how the successful reintegration of former combatants creates a permissive environment for SSR, while DDR failures – especially of reintegration – undermine follow-on SSR efforts by promoting crime, corruption and the persistence of wartime networks.¹⁰⁴ The link between SSR and DDR is ideally iterative; planning for SSR should precede DDR because decisions about ‘the size and composition of forces, but also the funding needs of security sectors, and the roles and objectives of the various institutions’ should shape DDR programme decisions about demobilisation, training, etc.¹⁰⁵ DDR efforts then shape the environment for SSR implementation ‘by affecting the security situation, particularly with respect to crime and the likelihood of resurgence of armed conflict’.¹⁰⁶

In practice, however, DDR often must begin before such planning – and immediately post-conflict, peace agreements and ceasefires can depend on demobilisation happening too rapidly to allow for an SSR assessment to take place beforehand.¹⁰⁷ However, disarming combatants in such conflicts may prove both difficult and, if the interveners cannot guarantee their security, irresponsible.¹⁰⁸ As England and Boucher argue, ‘[t]he gap between the end of DDR and the beginning of SSR should be minimal to avoid creating a security vacuum […]’.¹⁰⁹

Unfortunately, changes in practice reflecting understanding of the DDR–SSR link have been minimal – programming continues to neglect reintegration in favour of easier-to-measure disarmament and demobilisation. This has been amplified by cases in which a gap between the ‘DD’ and the ‘R’ (often caused by funding shortfalls) has led to renewed conflict. Common failures include the failure to communicate whom a DDR process will cover and what they can expect to receive to those eligible, and failures to identify and register legitimate DDR beneficiaries.¹¹⁰ For example, the practice of expecting a combatant to turn in a weapon to participate in DDR both excludes some who are eligible and needy (women and children who served in unarmed roles) and may include some who were not combatants but have acquired a weapon to access benefits.¹¹¹ Many suggest addressing these problems by making DDR more participatory (amongst both combatants and receiver communities), hopefully thus shaping programming so that it is appropriate for each situation and generates buy-in.¹¹² Examples include enlisting communities in regulating weapons ownership as well as tailoring reintegration packages (rural vs urban, etc.).

Donor coordination and capacity building

Once SSR gained acceptance, donors faced the challenges of building their own capacity and coordinating within their own governments or organisations, as well as with one another. They have seen success towards the first goal and middling progress towards the second; unsurprisingly, the more political rather than logistical and technical the challenge, the greater the difficulty.

Early on, the demand (from donors) for SSR programmes outstripped the supply of qualified experts, noted as one explanation for sub-par programming.¹¹³ Eventually, the development of resources – such as 2004′s OECD-DAC Guidelines on security system reform and governance – makes it easier to train new personnel.¹¹⁴ Still, in peace operations, the UN has struggled to find qualified recruits, with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the AU even further behind.¹¹⁵ Other actors tend to use personnel have who security backgrounds but lack SSR-specific training, which contributes to the focus of many efforts on training and equipping rather than governance. Recently, observers have lauded the creation of ‘expert pools’ of qualified civilians with SSR experience, such as the International Security Sector Advisory Team (ISSAT) of the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF), which allow for SSR efforts that are more professionalised.¹¹⁶

The hybrid security/development nature of SSR had early advocates which urged donor governments and organisations to take a ‘whole-of-government’ approach, breaking barriers between development and military assistance. Similarly, there was a call for the division of labour between donors, with many arguing that no single entity possesses the necessary expertise to deal with all the interconnected components of any given security sector.¹¹⁷ Actually achieving adequate coordination in this division of efforts has proved difficult.¹¹⁸ Schroeder ascribes the lack of cooperation to a number of factors, such as differing definitions of SSR and also resource competition between actors (even intra-organisation and intro-government), different operating procedures, timelines, funding sources, etc., and incompatible mandates.¹¹⁹ Law characterises much international governmental organisation (IGO) interaction as attempts to either ignore or absorb/merge with other organisations, with true cooperative endeavours, with division of labour by capability, rare.¹²⁰

Several years in, Chanaa described situations in which there had been ‘no systematic consideration of which institutions are best suited to which parts of security reform, or which donors are best positioned to influence institutional change’,¹²¹ while Hendrickson suggests:

Bilateral assistance programmes […] have much more latitude to deal with sensitive issues surrounding military reform. As a result, there is more scope for DFID to do the initial diagnostic work on various aspects of security-sector reform, such as defence resource management, as a prelude to greater involvement by the World Bank, for example, in financing a reform programme.¹²²

To improve coordination, many have called on SSR actors to sign onto a joint strategic framework for each case, derived though a comprehensive security needs assessment. Some propose that regional organisations should further share a common ‘SSR normative framework’ which provides guidance for all SSR efforts.¹²³ Operationally, many hold that one organisation or nation should be recognised as the lead in any given effort, tasked with the responsibility of coordinating all SSR-related efforts.¹²⁴ With some exceptions, such as Sierra Leone (UK-led), these suggestions have been implemented half-heartedly, if at all. Situations where a host government plays multiple, uncoordinated bilateral partners against one another persist.

England and Boucher offer a compelling explanation for this disorder, highlighting that it is unrealistic to view all multilateral coordination issues as communication and logistical problems, ignoring underlying differences in national and organisational interests.¹²⁵ For example, a far-off donor may be more concerned with a receiver state military’s ability to suppress drug trafficking while a neighbouring state is focused on the reintegration that prevents former combatants from migrating across the border for work.¹²⁶ Rather than assuming a pose of disinterested altruism, interveners may be more likely to agree on a common SSR approach – considerably enhancing leverage on a receiver state – if they openly discuss and negotiate these interests. Similarly, if SSR must be designed based on a deep analysis of the political conditions of the receiver state, donors will benefit from pooling their information regarding those conditions and considering how the kinds of influence they variously wield can be used to shift in a more SSR-friendly direction.

Receiver and regional capacity building in Africa

Early scholars of SSR have pointed out that, given the emphasis on local ownership, it was essential to build knowledge and capacity in regions likely to embark on SSR processes– especially in Africa, as the continent was both the site of a large number of SSR targets as well as the most well-known ‘locally-driven’ SSR success story, South Africa.

The interconnected West African wars of the early 1990s demonstrated the need for a regional approach to SSR (as well as DDR). Unfortunately, several years of programming left many observers unimpressed. Uzoechina characterises a ‘second wave of insecurity’ in West Africa as:

Linked to the failure of disarmament, demobilization, rehabilitation and reintegration processes and poorly conceived and implemented security sector reform (SSR) processes […]. Spewing the symptoms of insecurity beyond the affected states, the period witnessed unprecedented proliferation of small arms and light weapons (SALW), which were recycled in different conflict zones […].¹²⁷

Ebo, among others, blames the failings of the ‘array of SSR missionaries’ on various donor organisations that operated with little coordination and less accountability to local actors, undermining the norms of oversight their programmes were meant to inculcate.¹²⁸

One major obstacle is that immediately after the conflict, physical security is generally provided by international actors. Absent the institutions they are trying to build it is unclear to which local actors they should be accountable.¹²⁹ However, Haangi suggests that the only solution is for international actors to resist the temptation to speed programmes along by imposing reform. Instead:

As difficult or seemingly counterproductive as it may seem in the short-term, participative reform processes involving a range of local actors are critical in order to embed reform in wider societal structures […]. Enhancing governance capacity should not be considered an option in the security dimension of the reconstruction effort. Without investing in oversight mechanisms, the key requirement of sustainable, locally owned reform cannot be achieved.¹³⁰

But how can such an approach be enforced? Regional capacity building has been offered as a partial solution to the problem. Organisations like ECOWAS and the AU were early on urged to develop a common understanding of what SSR and DDR should attempt to achieve on behalf of member states so as to give direction to fragmented donor efforts.¹³¹ Further, it was thought that they could leverage their local knowledge and influence with both donors and recipients to ensure that programming reflected that understanding. However, as Ebo observes, ‘[i]n the implementation of the ECOWAS Mechanism and the associated normative framework that has been derived from it, there remains a wide gap between normative provisions and actual practice’.¹³²

Over time, external interveners have improved their track record of capacity building. However, this has been focused on political elites in capital cities. Even for civil society engagement intended to build support for SSR beyond the state, Hutton observes that the ‘current trend is for government actors to select civil society representatives to participate in deliberations on SSR, but this is rarely more than token or symbolic representation’.¹³³

The institutionalisation of SSR in Africa

This section briefly reviews the way in which ‘official’ doctrine has changed over time to reflect the evolution in thinking on SSR. Given the many organisations involved in implementation, the section focuses on just a few that have been particularly relevant to SSR practice in post-conflict African cases in the past, although actors such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) are increasingly assuming a more active and systematised role.

ECOWAS

In response to interconnected conflicts in West Africa, ECOWAS heads of state signed the Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management, Resolution, Peacekeeping and Security in 1999, authorising ECOWAS to implement DDR programmes in member countries.¹³⁴ This was followed in 2001 by the ECOWAS Protocol A/SP1/12/01 on Democracy and Good Governance, committing signatories to maintaining apolitical armed forces and police under civilian command.¹³⁵ While some have criticised ECOWAS for its lacklustre implementation, the protocol did establish a set of norms that member states could be measured against. These initiatives were followed in 2006 by the ECOWAS Code of Conduct for Armed and Security Forces in West Africa and the ECOWAS Convention on Small Arms and Light Weapons (which, since it is binding, is seen as an improvement on voluntary initiatives).¹³⁶ Further, in 2008 ECOWAS developed a draft Regional Framework for Security Sector Reform and Governance (still under development), which reflects most of the key elements and best practices previously identified.¹³⁷

The African Union

The AU’s first major SSR initiative was the 2006 AU Post Conflict Reconstruction and Development Policy (PCRD) which, to consolidate post-conflict peace, prioritises ‘the transformation of the organs of the state, especially those relating to security and justice’.¹³⁸ Notably, it includes sections on gender, child soldiers, regional approaches, and the need to involve both civil society and non-state security providers in SSR and DDR.¹³⁹ The most unique feature of the document, as Mlambo describes, is its explicit linking of state strengthening (and thus the reform of state institutions) explicitly to economic progress.¹⁴⁰ In most other SSR initiatives, only the security-leading-to-development causal chain is explored, excluding the contribution of development to security.

In 2007, the UN began the Strategic Partnership for SSR, geared toward aiding development of the AU Framework on SSR (approved in 2013) and incorporating AU input into UN SSR development.¹⁴¹ Key issues arising during the consultations include the need to clarify what the relationship between state security actors and non-state security providers should and could look like, as well as reconciling the need for SSR with the lack of enthusiasm for it from a number of potential receiver states without violating national ownership.¹⁴² Its adoption was contentious, with some states expressing concerns that SSR is just a smokescreen for outside interference in their internal security.¹⁴³ Consequently, the framework is not binding, but instead framed as an implementation guide.

Several points of variation and emphasis from other documents are illuminating. The framework offers an expansive definition of security, including ‘the non-military notion of human security based on political, economic, social and environmental imperatives in addition to human rights’.¹⁴⁴ The security sector is defined broadly – in addition to the military and the police, it includes the intelligence services, public oversight/management bodies, and justice and rule-of-law institutions. Significantly it gives considerably attention to non-state security providers, particularly traditional authorities.¹⁴⁵ The articulated goal is not to replace these actors with state equivalents, but to ensure that they are also brought into ‘conformity with legal norms, rule of law and human rights’,¹⁴⁶ though little specific guidance is given. The text ‘deplores’ the use of private military companies, a stand that may shape donor programming and address concerns about privately run efforts ignoring governance.¹⁴⁷

The framework is ambiguous on SSR during peace support operations (PSOs). For instance, it stresses that any SSR effort needs to be undertaken on the basis of a ‘national decision’ – though ‘where such a vision has not yet been coherently articulated, external partners may seek to support the development of such a national vision’, allowing room for external interveners to engage in interim stabilisation measures to build capacity.¹⁴⁸ However, it is unclear what constitutes ‘national ownership’; the framework lists a variety of ‘national stakeholders’ who should be included in SSR, but offers no guidance as to who must be included – for example, if the government of a state were to launch an SSR process without buy-in from other stakeholders, should that process qualify? The framework counsels against SSR where conditions are ‘not conducive’ but gives little sense of these conditions or what is recommended instead. The document does hedge against programmes adopted purely to please donors by insisting that governments pursuing SSR must commit some of their own financial resources.¹⁴⁹

Primarily, the framework serves as a blueprint for the SSR implementation tools that the AU has developed or is still developing. These include the establishment of an SSR reform unit at the AU Commission under the Peace and Security Department ‘which will coordinate all African Union security sector reform activities’, a plan for the Pan-African Parliament and regional parliaments to provide ‘common normative standards’ and ‘enhance parliamentary capacity to play a watchdog role’, and a model code of conduct for security actors.¹⁵⁰ The framework also addresses past issues with donor/local coordination, strongly encouraging member states undergoing SSR to clarify roles and expectations early and thoroughly.¹⁵¹ It remains to be seen to what extent the framework’s goals will be realised.

The path forward

If, as argued at the beginning of this piece, the fundamental drivers of SSR success and failure are primarily about changing the incentives of host governments and donors generally, what any one organisation can hope to accomplish is limited. However, the AU, by virtue of its unique position between donors and governments, can – at least in its own activities – serve as a laboratory for approaches that might change this calculus and, further, refuse to support or legitimise programmes so poorly designed as to be destabilising. A list of recommendations towards this end follows.

Interim stabilisation

Preconditions for SSR and even DDR programmes are often absent when a PSO is deployed. Current scholarship notes the need to build toward these conditions through local capacity building.

• The AU should create specialist groups to be deployed alongside other PSO forces to engage in data collection and analysis regarding existing local security and justice arrangements. This provides a baseline for determining how existing structures can be adapted to meet security needs.

• PSOs (coordinating with other groups) should attempt to build, not just capacity, but local support for and knowledge about SSR in advance of any nationwide plan. Increased local support and understanding is likely to bolster any such efforts.

Peace agreements

• Even at the risk of delaying agreement, when the AU mediates it should support (and strongly encourage) belligerents to undertake a joint analysis of the security sector and the reforms necessary to maintain stability and provide basic services. To the greatest extent possible, ‘Tier II’ actors – local community groups, civil society, etc. – should be assisted in injecting their own evaluations of security priorities. This only partially addresses the tendency of antagonists to treat the security sector as a zero-sum source of spoils, but even modest progress represents improvement.

• Peace agreements should include the establishment of joint mechanisms between the parties and outside implementers to resolve follow-on issues such as the pace of DDR, eligibility criteria, etc. Experience suggests that not all issues will be resolved in any one agreement, and the lack of an organised way to address these issues after the fact raises the risk that an agreement will fail.

National ownership

• When setting SSR priorities, the AU SSR Framework notes that ‘[t]o be truly national, a Member State will include as many national stakeholders as possible into the SSR process’.¹⁵² Experience suggests that where non-government stakeholders are not included, and/or where inclusive national security plans and assessments are lacking, SSR efforts fail. Therefore, the AU should not support (and should encourage others not to support) SSR efforts that lack substantial and ongoing buy-in from a wide variety of stakeholders. The AU should further offer support for continuing consultations.

DDR

• The AU should expend all possible efforts to ensure that when a DDR programme is launched, sufficient implementation funds are available (preferably in a coordinated fund). Numerous past cases of delays and gaps have exacerbated conflict and reduced confidence in the process, making future efforts more difficult.

• DDR programmes should include education campaigns to ensure that recipients receive information about their eligibility and expected benefits from a source other than their own group leadership.

• The DDR literature literature stresses that the ‘R’ (i.e. reintegration) programmes should be a higher priority than disarmament. In many cases, disarmament is unrealistic before basic stability. The AU should support programming that reorders DDR activities accordingly, including programmes that consciously place reintegration before total disarmament (given the success of this unconventional sequencing in South Africa and Ethiopia).

• The AU should not support DDR programmes that demobilise combatants into the police or other non-military services without extensive vetting and retraining. Communities should play a role in vetting those who will police them.

Non-state security and justice providers

• The AU Security Sector Reform Unit should collaborate with other relevant actors to develop practice notes regarding engagement with non-state security and justice providers, derived from existing successful arrangements.

Evaluation and exit strategies

• The AU should establish evaluation metrics (with the UN) that focus on human security, governance, and oversight goals such as:

  • Improved local perceptions of individual and community security;

  • Increased perceptions of the reliability and probity of local police; and

  • Increased civilian oversight over local and national security providers.

  • Progress on these metrics should inform an exit strategy and benchmarks for implementing that strategy.

Conclusion

As this examination shows, there are detectable patterns to the ‘how’ and ‘where’ of SSR implementation failures in post-conflict African states. This knowledge by itself is useful, in that it allows organisations such as the AU to implement policies aimed at avoiding repetition of these patterns as far as possible. However, as the ‘issues and debates’ section of this article explores, many piecemeal solutions to various SSR programmatic weaknesses have been proposed before, often to little effect on the ground. There is very likely a larger underlying problem or problems driving implementation failures.

While, as noted, the ‘why’ is not the primary inquiry of this article, the pattern of recurring issues identified leads the author to suspect that the answer lies, on the donor side, partially in the gap between short-term and long-term donor interests and partially in problems of collective action – in the long run, donor states and institutions’ desires would benefit from SSR success. However, in the short term, the political pressure necessary to convince an unmotivated government to meet citizens’ demand for security services – to see through a fair and thorough DDR process which includes all relevant security organs in reform programming and devotes security resources to peripheries – is immense, and must often be exerted alongside other donors. Donors who abandon this difficult approach can gain government gratitude, security and counterterrorism cooperation, and other valuable short-term benefits. Donors who maintain pressure while others settle for the easier-though-ineffective path may see little return, either in short-term concessions or in progress towards real reform (since the host government accesses aid and the legitimacy of cursory compliance though defectors). How to effect the changes in the incentives of both donors and recipient governments is a critical area and warrants further research.

On the recipient side, the pattern that emerges is as follows. Often, post-conflict there is demand for more and better security services from ordinary people (evidenced by the growth of non-state security and justice providers where state providers are corrupt and/or ineffective) and the commercial sector (as shown by the growth of private security companies). There is also demand for a more accountable security sector, both from the population and from non-ruling political parties and groups where state services cannot be counted on to impartially provide services. However, in spite of this demand, the regimes governing these states usually face strong countervailing incentives not to meet it. These include objections from existing security forces, the desire to keep direct, unmonitored control of security resources, and unwillingness to dismantle useful tools such as militias.

For the reasons explored above, donors and interveners who promote SSR efforts have proven ineffective at changing the political calculus of these governments, while said governments excel at using various techniques – including stalling and playing donors off against one another – to stave off pressure for SSR results. These techniques are especially effective given that the modus operandi of external actors – short funding cycles, a focus on easily-quantifiable results – is not a match for the long-term efforts that experts hold necessary for SSR progress.

Donors may someday be able to overcome their collective action problems and exert effective external pressure. Meanwhile, the few success stories explored in this article share a pair of characteristics: a ruling regime with a strong political incentive to listen to the security demands of ordinary people, and widespread participatory mechanisms through which these people could voice their priorities. One of these characteristics may encourage the other, or they may only be correlated. However, it is clear that more research is needed to explore this relationship and determine if it yields any potential paths forward.

Acknowledgements

This work was produced under the supervision of the World Peace Foundation as part of its African Peace Missions project. Support was provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York through the Institute for Human Security, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sarah Detzner

Sarah Detzner is a doctoral candidate in the Fletcher School at Tufts University, Medford, MA ([email protected])

Notes

1. OECD, OECD-DAC Guidelines on Security System Reform and Governance, 5.

2. Ball et al., Security Sector Governance in Africa, viii.

3. Ibid.

4. Short, ‘Foreword’.

5. Ball, ‘The Evolution of the Security Sector Reform Agenda’.

6. Narayan et al., Voices of the Poor.

7. Clare Short, ‘Security Sector Reform and the Elimination of Poverty: A Speech by Clare Short, Secretary of State for International Development’ (speech given at the Centre for Defence Studies, King's College London, 9 March 1999. DFID, 1999).

8. Kaldor, New Wars and Old Wars; Brzoska, Development Donors and the Concept of Security Sector Reform.

9. Sedra, ‘Introduction’, 16.

10. Ball, ‘The Evolution of the Security Sector Reform Agenda’, 36.

11. Zyck, ‘Review Article: Explaining SSR's Dearth of Success Stories’, 498.

12. Bryden and Olonisakin, Security Sector Transformation in Africa.

13. Sedra, ‘Introduction’, 26.

14. Sedra, ‘Towards Second Generation Security Sector Reform’, 102, 111.

15. Ibid.

16. Ball and Hendrickson, Trends in Security Sector Reform (SSR), 33.

17. van de Goor and van Veen, ‘Less Post-Conflict, Less Whole of Government and More Geopolitics?’, 89.

18. Isima, ‘Scaling the Hurdle’, 327.

19. Sedra, ‘Towards Second Generation Security Sector Reform’, 111.

20. Fitz-gerald, ‘Stabilization Operations and Post-conflict Security Sector Reform’, 154.

21. Downes and Muggah, ‘Breathing Room’, 136.

22. Ibid.

23. Fitz-gerald, ‘Stabilization Operations and Post-conflict Security Sector Reform’, 161.

24. Downes and Muggah, ‘Breathing Room’, 136.

25. Ibid.

26. Kohl, The Reform of Guinea-Bissau's Security Sector, 23.

27. Bendix and Stanley, ‘Deconstructing Local Ownership of Security Sector Reform’, 100.

28. Spatz, Liberia Policy Brief.

29. Hutton, ‘Following the Yellow Brick Road?’, 198.

30. Moulaye, ‘Missed Opportunities for Comprehensive Security Sector Reform in Mali’; Sedgwick, ‘Advocating for Security Sector Reform’, 15.

31. Ibid.

32. Ebo, Challenges and Opportunities of Security Sector Reform in Post-conflict Liberia, 10–11; W. A. Knight, ‘Linking DDR and SSR in Post Conflict Peace-building in Africa’, 48; Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 272–273; Sayigh, Crumbling States; Sedgwick, ‘Advocating for Security Sector Reform’, 19.

33. N'Diaye, “The Central African Republic,” 131.

34. Caparini, DDR and SSR Challenges in Mali, 11.

35. Turyamureeba, The CPA-DDR Program in South Sudan, 5.

36. Weber, Transformation Backlog in South Sudan, 2–3; Pamminger, ‘State-Internal Actors in the Armed Conflict in Chad’, 60; Mobekk, ‘Security Sector Reform and the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo’, 273; Uzoechina, Security Sector Reform and Governance Processes in West Africa, 19.

37. de Waal, The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa.

38. Ibid. See also Marielle Debos, Living by the Gun in Chad: Combatants, Impunity and State Formation, Zed Books 2016.

39. Sedgwick, ‘Advocating for Security Sector Reform’, 25.

40. Ball, Putting Governance at the Heart of Security Sector Reform, 17.

41. Eastern Congo Initiative, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, 9; Hutton, ‘Following the Yellow Brick Road?’.

42. Spatz, Liberia Policy Brief.

43. Wondemagegnehu and Kebede, ‘AMISOM: Charting a New Course for African Union Peace Missions’.

44. Rauch and van der Spuy, Police Reform in Post-conflict Africa; Spatz, Liberia Policy Brief; Ebo, Challenges and Opportunities of Security Sector Reform in Post-conflict Liberia, 3; Sedgwick, ‘Advocating for Security Sector Reform’, 17–18.

45. O’Neill, Police Reform in Situations of Forced Displacement, 8.

46. Caparini, DDR and SSR Challenges in Mali, 21.

47. Marielle Debos, Living by the Gun in Chad: Combatants, Impunity and State Formation, Zed Books 2016, 109; Security Sector Reform (SSR) in Guinea-Bissau; Mobekk, ‘Security Sector Reform and the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo’, 278; Sedgwick, ‘Advocating for Security Sector Reform’, 15.

48. Law, ‘Intergovernmental Organizations,’ 20

49. Pamminger, ‘State-Internal Actors in the Armed Conflict in Chad’, 61; Poggioli, ‘Gadhafi's Military Muscle Concentrated In Elite Units’.

50. Berman and Lombard, The Central African Republic and Small Arms, 16; Eastern Congo Initiative, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, 9.

51. Naik, Sudan Policy Brief.

52. Shaw, South Africa: Crime in Transition.

53. ‘Armed Groups in Eastern DRC’; Berman and Lombard, The Central African Republic and Small Arms, 11; Natsios, ‘Beyond Darfur-Sudan's Slide toward Civil War’, 77; Debos, ‘Combatants and the State in Chad’, 141; Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, Summary of Armed Groups and Political Parties in Cote D’Ivoire.

54. Marielle Debos, Living by the Gun in Chad: Combatants, Impunity and State Formation, 177.

55. Williams, ‘Human Security and the Transformation of the South African National Security Environment’, 21.

56. Berhe, ‘The Post-Transition Ethiopian SSR Experience’.

57. Ibid.

58. Jackson, ‘SSR and Post-Conflict Reconstruction’, 125.

59. Ibid. See also UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, African Perspectives on Security Sector Reform.

60. Law ‘Taking Stock, Moving Forward’, 244.

61. Bryden, ‘From Policy to Practice’, 72.

62. Chanaa, Security Sector Reform: Issues, Challenges and Prospects, 70.

63. Hutchful, Security Sector Reform Provisions in Peace Agreements, 36.

64. England and Boucher, Security Sector Reform: Thematic Literature Review, 14.

65. Hutchful, Security Sector Reform Provisions in Peace Agreements, 35; Ball et al., Security and Justice Sector Reform Programming in Africa.

66. Hutchful, Security Sector Reform Provisions in Peace Agreements.

67. Ibid.

68. Ball et al., Security and Justice Sector Reform Programming in Africa, 23.

69. England and Boucher, Security Sector Reform: Thematic Literature Review, 27.

70. Downes and Muggah, ‘Breathing Room’, 144.

71. Schroeder, Measuring Security Sector Governance.

72. Downes and Muggah, ‘Breathing Room’, 143.

73. Variously called ‘national ownership’, ‘domestic ownership’, or other similar phrases, lacking consistently-used definitions.

74. Hendrickson, A Review of Security-Sector Reform, 9.

75. Caparini, ‘Civil Society and the Future of Security Sector Reform’, 246.

76. Ibid. See also Ball et al., Security and Justice Sector Reform Programming in Africa, xiv.

77. Ebo, ‘Security Sector Reform as an Instrument of Sub-regional Transformation’.

78. Caparini, ‘Civil Society and the Future of Security Sector Reform’, 252.

79. Ebo, ‘Intergovernmental Organisations and Security Sector Governance’.

80. England and Boucher, Security Sector Reform: Thematic Literature Review, 13.

81. Scheye and Peake, ‘Unknotting Local Ownership’, 240.

82. Bendix and Stanley, ‘Deconstructing Local Ownership of Security Sector Reform’, 102.

83. Ibid., 94.

84. Mobekk, ‘Security Sector Reform and the Challenges of Ownership’, 232.

85. Zyck, ‘Review Article: Explaining SSR's Dearth of Success Stories’, 499.

86. van de Goor and van Veen, ‘Less Post-Conflict, Less Whole of Government and More Geopolitics?’, 98.

87. Chanaa, Security Sector Reform: Issues, Challenges and Prospects, 69; Hendrickson, A Review of Security-Sector Reform, 31; Bryden, ‘From Policy to Practice’, 66.

88. England and Boucher, Security Sector Reform: Thematic Literature Review, 18.

89. Williams, ‘Africa and the Challenges of Security Sector Reform’, 13.

90. Bryden and Hänggi, ‘Reforming and Reconstructing the Security Sector’, 26.

91. Baker, ‘The Future is Non-State’, 212.

92. Bendix and Stanley, ‘Deconstructing Local Ownership of Security Sector Reform’, 99; England and Boucher, Security Sector Reform: Thematic Literature Review, 11.

93. Ibid.

94. Mobekk, ‘Security Sector Reform and the Challenges of Ownership’, 239.

95. Baker, ‘The Future is Non-State’, 214.

96. England and Boucher, Security Sector Reform: Thematic Literature Review, 69; Hutchful, Security Sector Reform Provisions in Peace Agreements, 23.

97. Wulf, ‘Reconstructing the Public Monopoly of Legitimate Force’, 99.

98. Brzoska, ‘Embedding DDR Programmes in Security Sector Reconstruction’, 105

99. England and Boucher, Security Sector Reform: Thematic Literature Review, 110.

100. Duursma, International Mediation in Civil Wars in Africa Dataset.

101. Hutchful, Security Sector Reform Provisions in Peace Agreements, 10–12.

102. Ibid., 13.

103. Ibid., 16.

104. UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, Second Generation Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) Practices.

105. Brzoska, ‘Embedding DDR Programmes in Security Sector Reconstruction’, 105.

106. Ibid., 109.

107. Ibid., 105.

108. Muggah and O’Donnell, ‘Next Generation Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration’, 7.

109. England and Boucher, Security Sector Reform: Thematic Literature Review, 23.

110. M. Knight and Özerdem, ‘Guns, Camps and Cash’, 508; Muggah, Innovations in Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration, 6.

111. W. A. Knight, ‘Linking DDR and SSR in Post Conflict Peace-building in Africa’, 47.

112. Ibid.

113. Bryden, ‘From Policy to Practice,’ 69.

114. Ibid., 92.

115. Holt and Shanahan, African Capacity-Building for Peace Operations, 24.

116. Fitz-gerald, ‘Stabilization Operations and Post-conflict Security Sector Reform’, 168.

117. Law, ‘Taking Stock, Moving Forward’, 243.

118. Law, ‘Cooperation among SSR-Relevant IGOs’, 43.

119. Schroeder, ‘Between Conflict and Cooperation’, 211.

120. Law identifies the major IGOs active at this time of his writing as the UN, the European Union (EU), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), ECOWAS, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF); see Law, ‘Intergovernmental Organisations’, 3.

121. Chanaa, ‘Security Sector Reform: Issues, Challenges and Prospects’, 63.

122. Hendrickson, A Review of Security-Sector Reform, 108.

123. ‘Security Sector Reform Provisions in Peace Agreements’, African Security Sector Network, 2009, 16.

124. England and Boucher, ‘Security Sector Reform: Thematic Literature Review on Best Practices’, 21.

125. Ibid.

126. de Goor and Erwin van Veen, ‘Less Post-Conflict, Less Whole of Government and More Geopolitics?’ 99.

127. Uzoechina, Security Sector Reform and Governance Processes in West Africa, 1.

128. Ebo, ‘Intergovernmental Organisations and Security Sector Governance’, 158.

129. Hänggi, ‘Approaching Peacebuilding from a Security Governance Perspective’, 5.

130. Ibid.

131. Bryden, ‘From Policy to Practice’, 74; Ebo, ‘Intergovernmental Organisations and Security Sector Governance’, 163.

132. Ibid., 181.

133. Hutton, ‘Following the Yellow Brick Road?’, 203.

134. ECOWAS, ‘Protocol A/SP1/12/01 on Democracy and Good Governance’, Article 44(c) and (d).

135. Ibid., Articles 1: e, Article 20: 1, 2

136. Uzoechina, Security Sector Reform and Governance Processes in West Africa, 16.

137. Ibid., 11–12.

138. Mlambo, ‘The African Union Security Sector Reform and Governance’, 209.

139. African Union, ‘Policy on Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development’.

140. Mlambo, ‘The African Union Security Sector Reform and Governance’, 213.

141. Ibid.

142. Ibid.

143. Ibid.

144. African Union, ‘Policy Framework on Security Sector Reform’, 5.

145. Ibid, 10.

146. Ibid, 12.

147. Ibid, 17.

148. Ibid.‘Generally, post conflict security sector reform processes may go through stages, moving from a stronger influence of external actors and partners in the early stages to a stronger influence of national actors in the later stages. Eventually, security sector reform processes need to come under full “national ownership”. Throughout, the relationship between external and national actors is expected to be an equal partnership of actors who have a common interest in a particular outcome and will invest resources to achieve this outcome’; see Ibid, 27. See also Downes and Muggah, ‘Breathing Room’.

149. Including, but not limited to: ‘(a) Representatives of various Government Departments and legislatures; (b) The local security sector, as defined in paragraph 3 of this policy; (c) Women's organizations; (d) Political parties; (e) Universities, research institutions and other think-tanks; (f) Civil society and representatives of youth organizations; (g) Customary and traditional organizations; (h) The local business community and financial institutions; (i) Labour unions and other professional groups; (j) Faith-based organizations, and (k) The local media’; see African Union, ‘Policy Framework on Security Sector Reform’.

150. Ibid, 25.

151. Mlambo, ‘The African Union Security Sector Reform and Governance’, 215

152. African Union, ‘Policy Framework on Security Sector Reform’, 27.