Issues of local ownership in Kosovo’s security sector

Abstract

Local ownership represents an overarching concept in international development. However, its core principles have been occasionally neglected in the practice of state-building such as in the case of Kosovo. This paper explores relations between the international community and local actors in the process of Kosovo security sector development after 2008, when the country declared its independence. This article finds that externally-driven models were imposed in some phases of security sector development. The actions of the international community disregarded the local context and created distrust by the local actors. The study relies on extensive face-to-face interviews with relevant national and international stakeholders, a public opinion survey with a sample of 1102 respondents, focus group and personal observation.

Keywords:

• Local ownership
• security sector development
• Kosovo
• EULEX

Notes

1. Security sector architecture in Kosovo, in a narrow sense, is made of Kosovo Police (KP), Kosovo Security Force (KSF) and Kosovo Intelligence Agency (KIA). The focus of this paper will be in two first institutions: KP having primarily role in ensuring public safety and order whereas KSF – a lightly armed force – currently having disaster relief mandate, widely seen as the basis for Kosovo’s Armed Forces.

2. The first author of this paper is one of the most active researchers in the field of security in Kosovo. Florian Qehaja is currently head of the leading security related think tank in Kosovo – the Kosovar Centre for Security Studies (KCSS). Qehaja has extensive experience due to his participation in legal and policy drafting.

3. As for the management and details of the survey, a national sample has been drawn that is representative of the Kosovo population from 18 years. This sample was based upon telephone area codes. The ethnic breakdown of the interviewed respondents reflected the ethnic composition of the population in accordance to the 2012 Kosovo Census Report (ASK 2013). The random sampling was applied, using the ‘nearest birthday method’, ensuring a stratified approach and therefore creating an equal probability of citizens of Kosovo being chosen for the interview.

4. The first author was one of those involved in the capacity of civil society representatives.