BLOG | NOV 27, 2021
UNDERSTANDING SECURITY SECTOR REFORM
As the events over the past few years in Cabo Delgado, northern Mozambique indicate, Security Sector Reform (SSR) is essential and needs to be integrated into a political process that supports and enhances local communities.
An insurgency in the resource-rich north of Mozambique has been gradually worsening over the past three years as fighters linked to Islamic State have continued to carry out atrocities across the region that have overwhelmed Mozambique's security forces. Since 2017, over 2000 people have been killed, with nearly 800,000 more needing aid. Plans for international development around the region and in northern Mozambique have been put in doubt due to the instability, which has also spilled across the porous border into Tanzania and significantly threatens regional security.
If left unchecked, it is likely that a severe humanitarian crisis will engulf the region and could cause global ramifications.
WHAT IS SECURITY SECTOR REFORM?
The Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance describes SSR as a process of transforming the security sector to strengthen accountability, effectiveness, and respect for human rights and the rule of law.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
Security provides the stable platform for political, economic, educational and infrastructural developments to happen, therefore SSR’s main objective is to lay the foundations for an effective and well governed security system. SSR aims to ensure that the appropriate level of resources is attributed to the security sector so that other funding can be invested into social and economic development. A functional security sector is a precondition for democratisation, which also provides legitimacy to the state and enhances the rule of law. A functioning security sector contributes towards regional stability and enhances opportunities for international cooperation.
Since the end of the Cold War, Security Sector Reform programmes have been seen as an important tool for stabilising and reconstructing post-conflict countries from the Balkans to Africa.
SSR is a coordinated series of actions. These actions can be comprised into the following phases:
PREPARATORY AND ASSESSMENT
The first step for implementing an SSR strategy is to undertake an assessment. Assessments should be conducted through a partnership between the indigenous government and the donor community. In addition they must implement understand factors such as local human terrain analysis; integrating human geography and cultural information. Previous SSR programmes have been driven by donor countries or organisations, however for best practice they must engage a wide range of societal actors, both state and non-state. This helps provide a framework for monitoring and evaluation, and facilitates the development of a political consensus on the goals of the reform process.
Assessments should include the following:
• An understanding of the local environment and its key actors
• Human terrain analysis
• A GAP analysis
• Identify potential challenges to program implementation
• Assess needs against available resources and establish realistic timelines
• Propose strategic options and program design
• Determine key performance indicators (KPIs) for evaluation
IMPLEMENTATION
This stage involves the mobilisation and deployment of the needed resources, whether it is human capacity, in the form
of trainers, advisors, mentors, and programme managers. During this phase, the SSR process should be linked into local peace and reconciliation and state-building activities, including disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration (DDR) programs, poverty reduction strategies, and other international development schemes. Not only is it crucial that links be developed across the SSR process, but the process itself must be integrated into wider state-building framework. The reforms are implemented according to the established plan and time-frame.
MONITORING AND EVALUATION
Effective SSR requires mechanisms to monitor reform implementation and outcomes and to adjust programmes in light of any changes. Monitoring is essential in order to evaluate progress and KPIs of the reform. The focus of this phase is the long- term consolidation of reform deliverables made during the main implementation phase. SSR is by nature a long-term process. Even if the process is rooted to being sensitive to local customs and traditions, as SSR best practices would dictate, it still involves a high degree of engineering and adaptive monitoring which can remain pragmatic and flexible to any changes that might occur.
Although SSR is now viewed as an important step to stabilisation within a country or region, the reality is that there has been few definitive SSR success stories.
Lessons learnt from previous SSR programmes should be taken into account, principally that it is not a siloed discipline and should encompass political, institutional, societal and economic factors. Although SSR should be a legitimised political process, it is a concept centred on the individual and communities rather than governments or regimes. SSR does not finish when there is an end to hostilities in a community, it is something that should be an integral part of a longer programme. A mechanism that works with host nations to build their own capacities to legitimise and sustain reform for the long haul.