The most critical, and most often neglected, focus of security sector reform (SSR) is the bureaucratic agency responsible for the police and other internal security forces. In Iraq, Afghanistan, and earlier peace and stability operations, the United States went directly to the task of training indigenous police, giving little thought to the interior ministry, the institution to which the police would report.
The reform and the democratic control of the security sector-and the joining together of security and development-have become a major focus of international intervention into post-conflict societies. In theory, security sector reform (SSR) programs derive from a comprehensive national defense and security review. They involve, at the core, the transformation of a country's military and police forces-but they also involve a comprehensive review and restructuring of intelligence services, the penitentiary, the judiciary, and other agencies charged in some way with preserving and promoting the safety and security of the state and its citizenry. However, the process of SSR in Liberia, supported by the United Nations, the United States, and a number of bilateral donors, is far more rudimentary than the conceptual paradigm suggests. It is aimed simply at the training and equipping of the army and the police, with little attention or resources being devoted to the other components of the security system.
After a decade of popular uprisings and civil wars, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region experiences a deep governance crisis. The transformation, weakening or even the collapse of state institutions has changed the security framework, with direct implications for the safety and security of civilian populations across the region. Security Sector Governance and Reform (SSG/R) has to cope with hybridity and institutional fatigue. This report explores the MENA region's governance crises, providing case studies on Libya, Iraq, Tunisia, and Yemen. How can we effectively bring about meaningful SSG/R in hybrid security orders? In which way is "institutionalised insecurity" challenging traditional patterns of governance in vulnerable settings?
Securing Development: Public Finance and the Security Sector highlights the role of public finance in the delivery of security and criminal justice services. This book offers a framework for analyzing public financial management, financial transparency, and oversight, as well as expenditure policy issues that determine how to most appropriately manage security and justice services. The interplay among security, justice, and public finance is still a relatively unexplored area of development. Such a perspective can help security actors provide more professional, effective, and efficient security and justice services for citizens, while also strengthening systems for accountability. The book is the result of a project undertaken jointly by staff from the World Bank and the United Nations, integrating the disciplines where each institution holds a comparative advantage and a core mandate. The primary audience includes government officials bearing both security and financial responsibilities, staff of international organizations working on public expenditure management and security sector issues, academics, and development practitioners working in an advisory capacity.
Many efforts have been undertaken to address dysfunctional security sector governance in West Africa. However, security sector reform (SSR) has fallen short of radical – transformational – change to the fundamental structures of power and governance in the region. Looking more closely at specific examples of SSR in six West African countries, Learning from West African Experiences in Security Sector Governance explores both progress and reversals in efforts by national stakeholders and their international partners to positively influence security sector governance dynamics. Written by eminent national experts based on their personal experiences of these reform contexts, this study offers new insights and practical lessons that should inform processes to improve democratic security sector governance in West Africa and beyond.
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.
