Security promotion in fragile states: can local meet national?

Security Sector Reform (SSR) is coming under increasing scrutiny from researchers. Recent studies have sought to determine whether such ‘top-down’ approaches can offer a comprehensive response to communities struggling to recover from conflict.

A favoured component of SSR, Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) is a case in point. Researchers are questioning whether policy makers predilection for the model has been at the expense of community initiatives that could aid the reintegration process. This is particularly important if the state is unable or unwilling to offer a robust DDR process.

This paper seeks to explore the connections between community security and DDR processes. In this comprehensive document the authors review the existing literature and detail:

• Community security: what it is and how it is organised
• Why a community-based approach to DDR?
• State DDR programmes and community security
• Cooperation between ‘State DDR’ actors and local security actors
• DDR policies of the main donors.

The paper then offers a number of conclusions/ recommendations, which include:

• Ensuring better complementarity between community security and centralised DDR
  would require linking local initiatives to centralised programmes. One way of doing this could be to alter the sequence of the D, D and R phases (with community-based reintegration preceding disarmament)
  
• State DDR actors (including donors, INGOs, etc.) lack knowledge of existing informal structures for security provision. More research and community involvement in the early stages of DDR programming is required
  
• The implementation of diverging approaches towards DDR is only possible when the current predominant ‘blueprint approach’ is abandoned in favour of more flexibility in policy and implementation. However, this runs counter to recent developments in DDR policy towards greater convergence around a commonly accepted set of standards and procedures
  
• The context is of paramount importance for DDR success. People’s willingness to disarm depends on their belief in the peace process, and more importantly whether their security is guaranteed. This concerns not only physical security, but also socio-economic factors. As such DRR should be imbedded within wider peacebuilding activities
  
• Informal community security structures can sometimes be of an illiberal nature, which places ‘state’ DDR actors before difficult dilemmas when it comes to cooperating with them.