About the Report

This report reflects views expressed during a conference held 

at the United States Institute of Peace on June 29–30, 2010, 

titled “International Policy on Security Sector Governance: 

Opportunities and Gaps.” The conference sought to promote 

the security sector reform work of U.S. agencies by examining 

international and U.S. policy and practices to identify gaps, 

best practices, and comparative advantages in conducting 

reform. The conferees considered how the U.S. government and 

other stakeholders could benefit from the integration of new 

ideas into emerging justice and security development 

reform policy.

Eric Scheye, who served as the conference’s rapporteur, is 

a consultant in justice and security development, conflict 

management, and state building. He has worked for the United 

States, the UK, the Netherlands, Brazil, Argentina, the World 

Bank, the African Development Bank, the EU, the OECD, and 

the UN, as well as for various NGOs, such as the Institute 

for Security Studies (Pretoria, South Africa), and Saferworld 

(London). He has extensive field experience in the Balkans, 

Africa, and South America.

The views expressed in this report are solely those of the 

author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the 

United States Institute of Peace, which does not advocate 

specific policy positions.

1200 17th Street NW • Washington, DC 20036 • 202.457.1700 • fax 202.429.6063

Special Report 257 October 2010

© 2010 by the United States Institute of Peace. 

All rights reserved.

Eric Scheye

Realism and Pragmatism 

in Security Sector 

Development

Summary

•	 Security sector reform (SSR) policies and operational guidance have proved to be ineffective 

in prioritizing, sequencing, managing, and implementing donor-supported initiatives.

•	 SSR policies and operational guidance do not reflect economic and political realities in 

donor countries. This disjunction requires greater selectivity in the choice of partner countries and the kind of programmatic support provided. 

•	 A significant imbalance exists between supply and demand for justice and security development, as core segments of partner governments typically resist and will continue to resist 

key provisions of SSR.

•	 Political will in partner countries is, like its companion concept, local ownership, highly 

fragmented, reflecting a natural competition between and among rationally self-interested 

stakeholders.

•	 Effective programming requires donors to direct their influence and support toward those 

constituencies (and their leadership) in whose self-interest it is to implement SSR programs, despite the resistance to justice and security development by other stakeholders 

and competing political actors.

•	 Donor-supported justice and security programs should be disaggregated and should concentrate on narrowly defined problems and issues, rather than seek to be holistic and 

comprehensive.

Challenges in Justice and Security Development

The time has come to modernize the donor community’s understanding of security sector 

reform to reflect contemporary realities, fill in the gaps that exist in current practice, and 

design programs that better align with regional differences.1 The results of donor-supported 

United States Institute of Peace www.usip.org

SPECIAL REPORT

Contents

Regional and U.S. Perspectives on SSR 3

Challenges in Operationalizing SSR 5

Donor Approaches in Response 8

Conclusion and Recommendations 15
2

SSR activities to date have been meager,2 particularly in relation to the resources expended. 

More fundamentally, however, the focus and core objectives of SSR have not been helpful 

either conceptually, in coordinating and managing donor-supported initiatives, or operationally, in prioritizing, sequencing, and implementing them. 

It is widely accepted that SSR is a political activity, but within the donor community 

there appears to be little understanding of how to act politically. This is despite the mantra 

that SSR is an inherently political enterprise and the fact that among the core principles is 

local ownership. Another core tenet of SSR is effective governance and civilian oversight 

of security sector institutions and systems, but in the field there appears to be considerable resistance on the part of most partner governments to engaging in such development 

activities. Finally, while SSR highlights the importance of national strategic policies and 

frameworks, along with institution and capacity building, there is a discrepancy between 

this set of initiatives and the recognition that donor efforts, first and foremost, ought to 

focus on the immediate needs of people rather than institutions.

On a more practical level, there are persistent difficulties in the coherence and coordination of donor support programs. More important, however, SSR has overemphasized military 

and police development, along with criminal justice, to the detriment of effective and sustainable programming.3 As a result, donor-supported SSR programs have tended to downplay 

justice development and overlook issues pertaining to family, property, administrative, and 

civil and commercial law, areas of political contestation and inequity that are frequently the 

precipitators and aggravators of many of the world’s conflicts.

Two basic donor approaches have evolved in response to the gap between the SSR policy 

prescriptions and their implementation. Although the two approaches are not mutually 

exclusive, they are characterized by very different assumptions and therefore result in different types of development programs. The first kind of strategy is concerned with comprehensive and integrated donor-supported development as originally enunciated in the OECD/

DAC Handbook on SSR: Supporting Security and Justice (OECD Handbook). This alternative 

concentrates primarily on issues such as strategic policymaking and institution and capacity building while emphasizing the centrality of civilian oversight and accountability. It can 

be characterized as the “traditional” or “orthodox” approach. In contrast, the “realistic” 

or “pragmatic” approach accepts that the existing model is not well attuned to the challenges of contemporary contexts. Selectivity and risk management are core concepts of this 

approach. Consequently, the pragmatic approach believes it is advisable to adopt a consistent problem-solving “justice and security” orientation, contouring donor assistance more 

closely to identified needs. This model also suggests that programming ought to be disaggregated, with the implication that the U.S. maritime security schema and the World Bank’s 

Justice for the Poor initiatives are models for future donor-supported SSR initiatives.

This report’s discussion and analysis of these two distinct but not mutually exclusive 

approaches to the future direction of SSR is divided into three sections. The first section 

outlines different regional perspectives on SSR and scrutinizes the current orientation of 

the U.S. government. The second section presents the widely accepted challenges that have 

persistently plagued donor-supported SSR programming and for which current policies have 

seemingly offered little guidance. Of special import are the difficulties attached to implementing donor-supported justice and security initiatives. The third section describes the 

two basic donor responses to the endemic challenges to successful implementation of SSR.4

The report concludes by offering a number of concrete recommendations that can be readily 

implemented by donor countries.

The views expressed in this report do not necessarily 

reflect the views of the United States Institute of Peace, 

which does not advocate specific policy positions.

To request permission to photocopy or reprint materials, 

e-mail: permissions@usip.org

About the Institute

The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, 

nonpartisan institution established and funded by Congress. 

Its goals are to help prevent and resolve violent conflicts, 

promote post-conflict peacebuilding, and increase conflict 

management tools, capacity, and intellectual capital worldwide. The Institute does this by empowering others with 

knowledge, skills, and resources, as well as by its direct 

involvement in conflict zones around the globe.

Board of Directors

J. Robinson West (Chair), Chairman, PFC Energy, Washington, 

D.C. • George E. Moose (Vice Chairman), Adjunct Professor 

of Practice, The George Washington University, Washington, 

D.C. • Anne H. Cahn, Former Scholar in Residence, American 

University, Washington, D.C. • Chester A. Crocker, James R. 

Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies, School of Foreign 

Service, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. • Ikram U. 

Khan, President, Quality Care Consultants, LLC., Las Vegas, 

Nev. • Kerry Kennedy, Human Rights Activist • Stephen D. 

Krasner, Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations at Stanford University • Jeremy A. Rabkin, Professor 

of Law, George Mason University, Arlington, Va. • Judy Van 

Rest, Executive Vice President, International Republican 

Institute, Washington, D.C. • Nancy Zirkin, Executive Vice 

President, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights 

Members Ex Officio

Michael H. Posner, Assistant Secretary of State for 

Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor • James N. Miller, 

Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy •

Ann E. Rondeau, Vice Admiral, U.S. Navy; President, 

National Defense University • Richard H. Solomon, 

President, United States Institute of Peace (nonvoting) 
3

Regional and U.S. Perspectives on SSR

Because the cultural and historical legacies and trajectories of the world’s regions shape 

their different orientations to justice and security development, there is no single global 

perspective on SSR. Similarly, donors have different national interests that inflect the type 

of support they are willing to provide. The regional perspectives introduced below suggest 

the multivalenced orientations donors and partner countries bring to the SSR sphere and the 

potential conflicts that can arise in the presence of different perspectives.

An African Perspective

The African Union (AU) is currently engaged in formulating its justice and security policies. 

Focusing on postconflict reconstruction5 and with an orientation as a coordinator and 

convener of continental activities, the organization has identified as a priority issue what 

it perceives as a gross lack of coordination between and among the different SSR actors—

international and African stakeholders, the UN and its agencies, the UN and other international players. This lack of coordinated support has raised questions of how to reconcile the 

competing interests of Africa’s local owners and those in whose interest donor-supported 

SSR lies. It appears, for example, that a significant percentage of SSR has targeted regime 

security and a narrow technical conception of police development. Issues of governance and 

the strengthening of civil society participation in holding the justice and security sector 

accountable have lagged behind. In a similar vein, an emphasis on a limited understanding 

of state-building has overlooked the role local justice and security systems play in providing 

public goods and services, even though many of these traditional systems are integral parts 

of the state. Furthermore, because much of this donor assistance is uncoordinated, donorsupported SSR programs often duplicate one another. 

A Latin America Perspective

SSR is not an accepted term in Latin America. Instead, because of historical legacies, concepts of citizen security, civil-military relations, justice reform, and rule of law development 

predominate. Within Latin America, the strong role the military, police, and intelligence services have played in politics cannot be minimized. Their continued hold on political power in 

a number of countries must be taken into account, and widespread civilian fear and distrust 

of the security services acknowledged. Consequently, when most academics and governments refer to reform of the security sector, the clear demarcation of military, intelligence, 

and police functions is paramount. For this reason, the past ten to fifteen years have seen 

a focus on institutional frameworks, with an emphasis on civilian control and institution 

building, clarifying the role of advisers and ministers, and intense efforts to bolster civilian 

control and oversight. Nevertheless, too much donor support has consisted of “train-andequip” initiatives, with few whole-of-government programs. It should also be noted that, 

although there is resistance to U.S. policy in the region, there is also an appreciation of 

how the United States manages its civil-military relations, maintains civilian control, and 

organizes its police services.

Because of the current prevalence of violence, youth gangs, and narcotrafficking, there 

is a strong trend in Latin American toward short-term, quick fixes. This is the approach 

regional politicians have often adopted. The result, however, has too frequently been uncoordinated justice and security development that seesaws in funding, effectiveness, and 

focus from election to election. 
4

A South Asian Perspective

Most SSR reforms in South Asia have been self-initiated and self-driven, which means they 

have tended to be ad hoc reforms and have not been integrated into a whole-of-government 

approach. Furthermore, the self-initiated nature of the reforms has led to an emphasis on 

donor-provided training and technical assistance, because these are the initiatives typically 

requested by the region’s national governments. As a result, there is an urgent need for 

donors to expose these national drivers of change to the global principles and standards 

of SSR.

There also appears to be a need for donors to help national actors adopt a more regional 

perspective, although this approach is structurally limited by two factors. First, the region 

is dominated by the rivalry between India and Pakistan and the war in Afghanistan. Second, 

while the principles of SSR may be universal, they need to be situated in the culture and 

context of the region, and this may prove problematic for donors to do.

A U.S. Perspective

Within U.S. policy circles, there appears to be a fresh breeze blowing, emphasizing the need 

for integrated whole-of-government programming and learning the lessons of past SSR 

efforts. With the engagement of, among others, ambassadors, USAID mission directors, and 

departmental officials, the National Security Council is leading a deliberative process that 

is expected to produce a new justice and security policy. It is anticipated that it will be 

“SSR 3.0,” which will connect SSR to broader rule-of-law and justice development initiatives, 

conflict prevention, and improved delivery of services at the local level.

There is a general recognition and acceptance of the challenge to reconcile worldwide 

requirements with the realities of reduced funding. As a consequence, the motivation exists 

to develop targeted and tailored approaches to defined justice and security problems. The 

identification of these distinct problems lies with the embassies, thus there is an acknowledged need to enhance the capacity of in-country U.S. personnel with regard to justice and 

security development. It is their responsibility to determine what program has a realistic 

chance of success, given their knowledge and analysis of critical country constraints and 

political realities.

In countries in which active conflict persists, however, in-country personnel are compelled to balance the political tensions between stabilization and development, which is a 

difficult tightrope to walk, as evidenced by U.S. programming in Afghanistan. The political 

imperative to have a “security first” policy is frequently premised on the belief that justice 

and security development can proceed only after the country is stabilized. Operationally, 

this assumption often results in train-and-equip initiatives, which account for much donor 

activity in Afghanistan. Among the challenges of this sequencing are, first, although the 

numbers of military and police personnel and their operational capacity will increase, as 

happened in Afghanistan, the financial sustainability of the security services may become 

increasingly tenuous.6 Second, the ability of the partner government to manage its security 

services effectively may be limited, thereby undermining the operational competencies of 

the security services, as has also occurred in Afghanistan in respect to the Afghan Ministry 

of Interior (MoI).7 Third, stabilization efforts can easily become captive to the politics of the 

partner country. In Afghanistan that has happened not only with respect to the challenge 

of corruption but institutionally, with the MoI’s resistance to reform initiatives up to and 

through 2008, and with the failure of the 2007 commission between the MoI and the Afghan 

attorney general’s office, as the latter seemed unwilling to “support reform efforts.”8

In countries in which active 

conflict persists, in-country 

personnel are compelled to 

balance the political tensions 

between stabilization and 

development, as evidenced 

by U.S. programming in 

Afghanistan.
5

Persistent Endemic Challenges in Operationalizing SSR

To begin updating SSR policies, it is necessary first to review the persistent and apparently 

endemic challenges that have plagued their implementation. Although there are numerous 

such challenges, all of which have already been cataloged, this report touches on only the 

most salient of them,9 and specifically those pertaining to substantive SSR issues.

Continued Lack of Donor Coordination

A persistent lack of donor coordination is a refrain sounded in virtually every SSR review and 

evaluation. However, the siren call for better coordination needs to move beyond, insofar as 

donors have different national interests and ways of working, a diversity that is essentially 

irreducible. This diversity in approach is particularly evident where donor involvement is 

most acute. In these instances—including Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and the Democratic 

Republic of the Congo (DRC)—there is and will be considerable competition between and 

among donors. Without a change in how donor agencies incentivize and promote their personnel, compelling field personnel to cooperate with one another and other development 

agencies, coordination largely depends on the personal relationships of practitioners on the 

ground, and continued policy pronouncements and guidance from national capitals will have 

little to no pragmatic effect.

The example of the DRC is illustrative. It has been suggested that in the DRC, one donor 

established its own independent relationships with selected national actors in order to 

advance its police development program. These national actors were not necessarily those 

who were officially authorized to conduct police development but were deemed to have 

the requisite power potentially to deliver on that agenda. As a result of this one donor’s 

initiative, a scheme that allegedly undermined official channels, all other donors were 

compelled to follow suit and conduct their policing support projects within the ambit of 

the more independently minded donor, a development that had both positive and negative 

repercussions. 

The role of the UN as an institution capable of coordinating donor activity was raised 

during the workshop. Admittedly, the UN may possess a comparative advantage in harnessing donors, but it was conceded that the organization, in particular the Department of 

Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), the UN Development Programme (UNDP), and the Department of Political Affairs (DPA), has scant resources and limited capacity to utilize those 

resources to address the complexities of justice and security development. With regard to 

the reality of peacekeeping in today’s environment, the UN is not a neutral actor, particularly 

in missions where the mandate is peace enforcement. As for the UNDP serving as a donor 

coordinating forum, a 2007 needs assessment noted that the UNDP “has extreme difficulty 

separating its ‘advice function’ from its ‘implementing role’” and “suffers from a conflict of 

interest when it, simultaneously, seeks to ‘coordinate and implement programs.’”10

Local Ownership, Politics, and Leadership

Among the most renowned mantras of SSR are that it is an inherently political endeavor 

and that local ownership of donor-supported programming is pivotal if those initiatives are 

to be effectively implemented. There is unanimous agreement that donors do not take the 

multivariate politics of partner countries sufficiently into account and that the concept of 

local ownership receives lip service but is extremely difficult to operationalize. A case in 

point is a 2010 donor initiative in which a major European donor and leading international 

SSR consulting company, while heralding the principle of local ownership, is insisting on 

initiating a three-year community policing program in a Balkan country, even though the 

There is unanimous agreement 

that donors do not take the 

multivariate politics of partner 

countries sufficiently into 

account and that the concept 

of local ownership receives lip 

service but is extremely difficult 

to operationalize.
6

partner government has little political interest and even less institutional capacity to undertake community policing.11

Local ownership is a maddeningly complex concept, and the OECD Handbook, donor 

policies, and strategy documents have done little to disentangle and provide pragmatic 

guidance.12 While it is acknowledged that “the state” or “the national government” is only 

one local owner among many, it is the legitimate one from the perspective of international 

relations and multilateral organizations such as the UN and World Bank, and the one that 

the donors’ state-building agenda prioritizes. Which of the multitude of other local owners 

should be privileged in donor-supported programs is another political challenge that has 

received little policy guidance for at least two reasons. First, the West’s understanding of 

the state is not necessarily applicable in postconflict and fragile environments, and second, 

partner national governments are most likely not the predominant providers of justice and 

security in their own countries. Similarly, although the core conundrum of “local ownership 

for whom” is a known challenge, there is no established SSR policy or guidance for delineating the issue further.

One of the underlying themes is that donors continue to have difficulties taking into 

account the complexities of how power works in partner countries. There is agreement that 

the key to the challenge of local ownership lies within the partner country’s shifting balances of power. Operationalizing local ownership, therefore, begins with an analysis of how 

the balance of power is structured by a country’s political economy and political settlement 

(or lack thereof).13 More precisely, operationalizing local ownership requires examining 

the self-interests and incentives of the partner country’s elites, how they manifest in dayto-day politics, and, for SSR, how they influence program implementation. Unfortunately, 

there is little to no pragmatic SSR guidance to aid donors in navigating these practical and 

all-important political shoals and tensions on which donor-supported SSR programs often 

flounder.

Part of the challenge is also that most SSR literature is similarly silent on the question of 

local leadership. Local leadership cannot be equated with local ownership; they are distinct 

concepts. However, local leadership may be the single most important variable in determining whether an SSR project is effective and sustainable, for without a local leader or cohort 

of leaders, there is no one to drive a project forward to completion.

Political Will and Deep-Seated Resistance to Justice and Security Development

Beneath the persistent difficulties donors have with operationalizing local ownership is a 

second concern. There is considerable disquiet, especially noticeable in partner countries, 

with the concept of political will. When a donor-supported program does not achieve its 

stated objectives, one of the usual explanations offered is that local actors lacked political 

will and commitment. While a lack of political will may at times be edifying in understanding 

program ineffectiveness, the reflexive ascription of blame to national partners is colonial 

in nature, fundamentally ill-advised, and politically mistaken, for two reasons: it does not 

take into account the self-interests and incentives of those local actors, and it assumes 

that donor-supported programs have, primarily, only one local owner. Political settlements 

in postconflict and fragile partner countries, however, are most often fundamentally contested, which makes it naive to presume the existence of a singular political will. Instead, 

it may be more prudent to assume that in these cases, political will is fragmented at best, 

and that there is a natural and deep-seated struggle of self-interests regarding the direction 

of the partner country’s justice and security policies.

While an understanding of political will as fragmented in many postconflict and fragile 

countries mirrors the analysis of local ownership, it also raises a much more foundational 

Operationalizing local ownership 

requires examining the selfinterests and incentives of the 

partner country’s elites, how 

they manifest in day-to-day 

politics, and how they influence 

program implementation. 
7

challenge to existing SSR policies. The central assumption of the OECD Handbook, as well as 

most other SSR policy directives, is that in most postconflict and fragile countries, a political consensus exists that engaging in SSR is a beneficial activity. The foregoing analysis 

of local ownership and political will suggests, however, that no Handbook or SSR policy 

assumption is more problematic. In fact, the empirical evidence from the field supports the 

conclusion that, overall, national authorities have resisted attempts on the part of donors to 

define and support the implementation of the SSR agenda. Given the militarization of economic activity in many fragile countries, the increase in transnational and organized crime, 

and the prevalence of endemic corruption in fragile and postconflict countries, significant 

and powerful disincentives exist within partner national governments to engage in SSR. 

Consequently, national governments, as well as other stakeholders, have frequently made 

the political decision that significantly strengthening their justice and security sectors is 

not in their self-interest because it would threaten their hold on power and undermine their 

self-interest.14 Discrete improvements in elements of the justice and security sectors may be 

advantageous and undertaken by partner governments, but that is a very different matter 

from external actors trying to impose a comprehensive and holistic SSR that is not wanted 

by most local owners and for which there is limited to no political will, even though such 

programming is a cornerstone of the OECD Handbook, as well as of many donor policies and 

their operational guidelines. 

Simply put, the demand for donor-supported SSR, particularly in postconflict and fragile 

environments, has proved to be decidedly limited and is most often circumscribed by the 

parochial self-interest of the powerful elites of partner countries. The question that plagues 

the implementation of SSR, therefore, is not why we, the donors, are not more successful. 

Rather, the question ought to be the decidedly more political one: which constituencies in 

the partner country would benefit from donor-supported SSR initiatives, and how should 

donors seek to promote the self-interests of those constituencies?

Donor National Interest and Its Ramifications 

With this inversion in mind, it is evident that there is a significant imbalance between the 

supply and demand for donor-supported SSR programming, one that reflects deep-seated 

strains in the national interests of donor and partner countries. These tensions have been 

persistent, and the empirical evidence suggests they are endemic to SSR programming, SSR 

principles and operational guidance notwithstanding.15

For example, there should be little surprise that approximately 65 percent or more of 

the EU’s SSR expenditures target support for police development and border management, 

subjects that are judged to be of key supranational and national interest. More specifically, 

it is decidedly in the EU’s interest that up to 75 percent of its SSR spending on neighboring states and those of the former Soviet Union supports border management projects. In 

Ukraine, the figure exceeds 80 percent. It is highly unlikely that border management is the 

top justice and security priority of the Ukrainian national government; Ukraine’s citizenry 

as local owners, broadly defined; the country’s poor; or marginalized and vulnerable groups, 

such as women and ethnic minorities. Border management, however, is an essential EU 

security issue and therefore an EU SSR priority in Ukraine.

Similarly, there is no mistaking the coincidence that the predominant British and French 

SSR involvements are in former colonies and in conflicts that are deemed of vital national 

interest. Comparable conclusions can be reached for the United States’ SSR assistance programs in that they are most frequently conducted in countries and target areas considered 

to be of national interest. Exceptions to these tendencies do exist, such as the Dutch 

involvement in Burundi or the German and Danish participation in Nepal, but these rare outNational governments have 

frequently made the political 

decision that significantly 

strengthening their justice 

and security sectors is not in 

their self-interest because it 

would threaten their hold on 

power and undermine their 

self-interest.
8

liers do not undermine the overall rule. Instead they prove the rule in such cases as Ethiopia, 

where significant donor resources are being invested because of donors’ national interest, 

even though the country’s ruling clique is ideologically opposed to the core principles of SSR 

and has evinced no interest in engaging in justice and security development.16

Consequently, it is simply inadequate to continue to voice the bromides that donor-supported programming ought to coincide with and support the national and local SSR strategies of partner countries. In the current political and financial environment, it has become 

increasingly clear that donor-supported programs are frequently undertaken to advance 

the donor’s national interests, as defined by the donor. As donor legislatures increasingly 

demand more democratic accountability and “bang for the buck” of public revenues spent 

on development, donor agencies have a clear fiduciary responsibility to their domestic taxpaying citizens, who are the ultimate local owners of donor-supported programs, to correlate 

their expenditures with their country’s national interest, however determined. The difficulty 

arises because SSR’s overarching principles and most donor policies provide little to no guidance on how to address this reality.

Where Are Justice, Civilian Oversight and Accountability, and Gender?

A host of other endemic challenges to how SSR is implemented in the field further illustrate 

the gap between SSR policy prescriptions and the reality of how programming plays out in 

practice. Less generously, the discrepancy between policy and practice is more like a chasm 

than a gap. For example, while SSR proponents have continually insisted it addresses justice development, there is a unanimous consensus among practitioners that the reality is 

decidedly different and that justice is frequently overlooked in SSR programs.17 Among the 

acknowledged obstacles is the fact that justice practitioners do not self-identify as members 

of the security sector or system. It is for this reason alone that the SSR policy needs to be 

updated and revised. Most likely, the better concept is justice and security development, 

because no amount of persuasion will bring justice development under an SSR umbrella.

In a similar vein, although accountability and civilian oversight are heralded as intrinsic 

components of SSR doctrine, many practitioners insist that they too are neglected areas of 

donor-supported programs. The general claim is that SSR has narrowly focused on technical 

aspects of SSR and traditional security agencies at the expense of governance issues. As the 

EU expenditures figure suggests, the largest percentage of SSR support remains centered 

on military and police development, and as a result, insufficient time and effort are paid to 

questions of civilian oversight and accountability.

Similarly and troublingly, while gender is loudly proclaimed to be a core operational 

objective, SSR programs in the field often lapse into generalized security programs without 

adequate attention to women’s rights. An additional challenge to SSR gender programming 

is that it tends to focus too narrowly on violence against women. While violence against 

women is a horrendous problem, a narrow focus on it slights the institutionalized gender 

inequities and inequalities that exist in family, property, administrative, and commercial 

and civil law, and it may be these forms of discrimination that are most problematic in the 

day-to-day lives of women.

Donor Approaches in Response to the Challenges of 

Operationalizing SSR 

In response to the persistent challenges and gaps in how SSR has been implemented in 

the field, practitioners agree that it is necessary first to move beyond the truisms and 

boilerplate language of SSR dogma, and second to focus more concertedly on changing 

While SSR proponents have 

continually insisted it addresses 

justice development, there is 

a unanimous consensus among 

practitioners that the reality 

is decidedly different and that 

justice is frequently overlooked 

in SSR programs.
9

the behaviors of the service providers in partner countries in ways that are sustainable. It 

appears that strategies to reconcile the undeniable gap between SSR policy prescriptions 

and how SSR has been implemented in the field fall into two broad groups. While the two 

approaches are not mutually exclusive, they incorporate decidedly different assumptions and 

premises. The first strategy refocuses attention on the need to undertake comprehensive 

and integrated donor-supported development, as originally enunciated by the OECD Handbook, emphasizing strategic policymaking and institution and capacity building, civilian 

oversight, and accountability. This is the traditional or orthodox approach. The alternative 

is the realistic and pragmatic school, which adopts a consistent problem-solving justice and 

security orientation in the belief that SSR programming ought to tackle discrete issues and, 

therefore, be disaggregated.

The Traditional or Orthodox Approach

The Need for a Common SSR Language. The key pillar of the traditional or orthodox approach 

to healing the rift between SSR principles and their implementation in the field is to reaffirm and underscore the importance and centrality of those principles to SSR. Adherents of 

the traditional approach repeatedly called for a common SSR language with respect to definitions, policies, guidance, and implementation. This call for, and the expected development 

of, an agreed-upon universal language have, according to proponents, a number of benefits. 

First, the search for a common language has propelled the promulgation of additional donor 

policies and strategies. It has also encouraged multilateral and regional organizations, such 

as the AU, to begin to formulate or hone their policies and strategies with regard to SSR. 

Second, it has invigorated the various training exercises conducted by donors for their 

personnel, which, by harmonizing SSR language, should enable better and more effective 

implementation of programs through greater coordination.

Unfortunately, these benefits have been watered down because many of the revised policies and training initiatives are based on SSR policies and practices that have already proved 

to be ineffective.18 The preferred sequence is, first, to rethink and retool SSR practice, 

and only then to update policies and strategies accordingly. A case in point is the recently 

published Measuring and Monitoring Armed Violence: Goals, Targets and Indicators.19 While 

the framework certainly advances the agenda of reducing armed violence, particularly with 

regard to information management, its underlying orientation remains largely state-centric 

and does not adequately address the connections between that practice area and development of the justice sector.

While the drive for more concise polices and cohesive training programs is appropriate, 

there appears to be little direct correlation between the publication of new donor policies 

or the development of enhanced training initiatives and donor activities in the field. The 

difficulty seems to stem from a disconnect between headquarters initiatives and their 

uptake in the field. A clear indication of this is that the efforts made to strengthen the 

UN’s SSR policies have had little immediate or significant effect in changing how justice 

and security development is implemented in either Liberia or Timor-Leste’s peacekeeping 

missions. Another example of the disconnect between the issuance of initiatives and their 

actualization in the field is the heightened attention paid to policies and guidance notes 

on how to conduct assessments and the need for these assessments to be comprehensive 

and multisectoral without reference to the political imperatives that, frequently, limit the 

time period during which assessments can be conducted. This is not to fault the new SSR 

policies and training initiatives per se but rather to suggest that they primarily address the 

needs of headquarters staff and do not adequately correspond to the political realities on 

the ground.

The search for a common 

language has propelled the 

promulgation of additional 

donor policies and strategies. It 

has also encouraged multilateral 

and regional organizations to 

begin to formulate or hone their 

policies and strategies with 

regard to SSR. 
10

Governance, Accountability, and Oversight and Their Implications. The motivation to formulate a common language, however, does not have to do with merely reiterating and 

reaffirming current SSR principles. Rather, the concern for a common language came about 

in response to a palpable need for SSR doctrine to be more rooted in a governance perspective. It is fair to assert that the main thrust of the traditional or orthodox approach 

concerns good governance, accountability, and civilian oversight—and all the normative 

values embedded therein. Time and again proponents of this approach emphasize the need 

to strengthen parliaments and nonstatutory oversight bodies; to build bridges between the 

state, security sector, civil society, and its citizens; and to tackle more comprehensively the 

complexity of security sector governance.20 This form of oversight and accountability, borrowing the World Bank’s terminology, is known as the long route to good governance and 

accountability. It is primarily a state-centric approach, focusing on building the capacity of 

state institutions and developing strategic policies.21 In this sense, the traditional approach 

reiterates the call for a comprehensive approach and whole-of-government action, striving 

to create an integrated approach within countries. Tying this model together is donor support for inclusive processes to develop a national vision of the security sector.

The traditional or orthodox strategy is, effectively, a vigorous return to the past without 

addressing the endemic challenges confronting current SSR policy and practice. The strategy 

advocates a holistic institution- and capacity-building approach in which donors are called 

on to support national SSR frameworks, focus assistance on a broad range of state institutions or agencies (including parliaments), and bolster the activities of independent oversight bodies and other civil society organizations. Although greatly expanded, this strategy 

approximates ongoing SSR initiatives and endeavors, although with greater attention to 

state accountability mechanisms. Nevertheless, these SSR activities are essentially the very 

ones that SSR practitioners and researchers have already conceded as largely ineffective. 

In Sierra Leone, which is widely considered to be a success and where donor-supported 

SSR has been ongoing for roughly a decade, there was not a single conviction for rape in 

2009. This glaring failure comes despite a national security plan and extensive donor support to build, within the national police, Family Support Units, whose personnel have been 

provided excellent training. Furthermore, while civil society organizations have been given 

donor assistance throughout the decade, it is difficult to find more than a small handful 

of organizations that do much more than hold meetings, conduct training sessions, and 

advocate for greater government provision of public goods and services. While this type of 

pressure from below is inherently beneficial, it does little to further the delivery of tangible, 

day-to-day justice and security to Sierra Leone’s population, especially the poor and marginalized or vulnerable groups.

The traditional or orthodox approach also does little to address the basic political problem of SSR, namely, an imbalance in the supply and demand for SSR. Despite the vaulting 

rhetoric, this strategy, therefore, is essentially silent on the most important challenge vexing SSR practice, the one that defines the political context within which justice and security 

development takes place. In Sierra Leone, for instance, it is more than evident that state 

agencies and the ruling elites are effectively not interested in the normative values or the 

accountability safeguards propounded by the traditional SSR model, a conclusion openly and 

publicly conceded by the UK’s Department for International Development in a 2007 evaluation of its SSR activities.22 One of the key obstacles to justice and security development in 

Sierra Leone has been the existence of a deeply flawed code of criminal procedure, dating 

back to colonial times. Over the course of four years and two different administrations, a 

draft of a new code has languished within the Ministry of Justice/attorney general’s office, 

with senior officials denying its very existence. This is a clear expression of the Ministry’s 

political will, but it does not coincide with that of the donors, and it is explicitly intended 

The traditional or orthodox 

strategy is a vigorous return to 

the past without addressing the 

endemic challenges confronting 

current SSR policy and practice.
11

to prohibit and curtail the development of the formal state judicial system. In other words, if 

donors want to support SSR in Sierra Leone, a conflict exists between the national interests 

of the donor and the political ownership of the ruling elite, as exhibited in the behavior 

of the Ministry of Justice/attorney general’s office, one that the traditional SSR approach 

provides no guidance to resolve.

Furthermore, in a country with a desperate dearth of lawyers with which to staff a formal 

state-centric judiciary system that could exercise accountability and oversight functions, 

the Bar Association of Sierra Leone has argued for a reduction in the number of students 

qualifying for admission to law school. This Bar Association stance is another unmistakable 

political statement designed to further the parochial interests of an elite group rather than 

the citizens of Sierra Leone, who are clamoring for better justice delivery. Last, based on 

interviews, it would appear that the parliamentary members are significantly more interested in their personal prerogatives than in overseeing the activities and development of 

justice and security. Consequently, the governance strategy of the traditional approach is 

one that, in Sierra Leone, has been and will most likely continue to be resisted by political 

parties and important segments of civil society.

In short, the traditional or orthodox model, even as it voices a necessary corrective to 

current SSR practice, does little to address the fundamental political challenges confronting the implementation of donor-supported SSR—the discrepancy between the supply and 

demand for SSR. The traditional approach correctly observes that without addressing the 

underlying cleavage between national authorities, security providers, and citizens, development is built on shifting sands, but it is precisely on these sands that justice and security 

rest, and the cleavages are those that most national authorities in postconflict and fragile 

environments do not want to address. The approach offers few concrete suggestions for how 

donors are to handle the cold reality of this paradox. It offers no guidance on how to choose 

among the plethora of competing political owners in a partner country, let alone confront 

the conflicts between donor and partner country national interests.23 Other than calling for 

inclusive processes, the traditional approach also provides no practical guidance on how to 

handle the political self-interests of the various stakeholders in partner countries and the 

fact that political will is not a unitary concept but a deeply fragmented notion reflecting the 

competitive nature of political reality in postconflict and fragile environments.24

The Realistic or Pragmatic Approach

Selectivity, National Interest, and Risk Management. The realistic or pragmatic approach 

begins with the assumption that the world has changed since the OECD Handbook was 

written in 2005-07 and that updated policies are needed to match reality. That new reality 

is one of selectivity: the tension between providing assistance to every country in need 

of SSR, concentrating on identifiable but circumscribed problems, and focusing primarily 

on those countries where support can be most efficacious. While still adhering to the four 

principles of SSR, the realistic-pragmatic approach accepts that donors are, must, and will 

be selective about the countries to which they provide SSR assistance and about the types 

of programs they will support.

Taking finite resources and selectivity seriously implies that SSR assistance is, first 

and foremost, about the donor’s political choice, and that political decisions will be made 

according to the donor’s perception of its national interest. Analysts, policymakers, academics, and researchers may and will disagree about whether any individual decision coincides 

with the donor’s national interest. Nevertheless, the political choices of which countries to 

support and what types of assistance to provide are ones based on perceived national interest, and that reality cannot be overlooked or set aside, conceptually or operationally.

The traditional approach 

provides no practical 

guidance on how to handle 

the political self-interests 

of the various stakeholders 

in partner countries.
12

Political choices have consequences and opportunity costs. The choices are not only in 

which countries and what type of justice and security programs to undertake but also in 

which countries and programs one decides not to engage. Donor decisions, therefore, ought 

to be and are based on assessments and calculations of risks—what to do and what not to 

do. The result of this understanding of justice and security development is that risk management becomes a key variable. For example, a donor decision to become engaged in Yemen 

might mean that donor is not able to support programming in Kenya, a choice that carries 

significant political costs that must be managed.

Furthermore, a donor may choose, for reasons of national interest, not to support SSR 

activities in Yemen. That decision, however, does not logically mean that the same donor 

must eschew any security or justice engagement with Yemen. Engagement and managing 

the risk of that political choice may entail supporting other types of programs, ones that 

do not qualify as justice and security development, such as train-and-equip projects for 

one or more of the many Yemeni security services; expanding donor-supported educational, 

water, and health initiatives in Yemen as a way to build social support for the government of 

Yemen; supporting and encouraging Saudi Arabia and other regional partners to be engaged 

in Yemen on justice and security development; or strengthening Yemen’s commercial law 

and the related special courts. 

On the other hand, a donor may perceive that it is in its national interest to support 

justice and security programming in Yemen. At the same time, it may also realistically 

determine that there is little likelihood of sustainable initiatives conducted jointly with the 

Ministry of Justice (MoJ). With an eye to risk management, donor-supported programming 

in Yemen could concentrate on strengthening the procedures by which property is registered 

and the cadastre is maintained; one or more of the various security services (Coast Guard, 

police, intelligence, antiterrorist units); the prosecutorial service, in an effort to make it 

more independent from the MoJ; or the notaries and scribes that exist throughout Yemen; 

or the donor could provide the MoJ with a modicum of assistance to maintain a minimal 

political engagement. However it is conducted, recognizing that justice and security development is an exercise in political choice and risk management expands the donor’s potential 

playing field.

Local Ownership and Political Will Revisited. By understanding justice and security development as the donor’s political choice, the pragmatic approach takes politics seriously. The 

political challenge is to blend the donor’s national interest with identifiable local needs and 

interests. The donor’s choice of programming ought to coincide with the partner country’s 

national strategy, if one exists,25 for there is no question that sustainable donor-supported 

SSR requires local acceptance to be effectively implemented, but it is the donor’s choice 

to select which element of the national strategy to support. Of course, a partner country’s 

national government can decide to prohibit a donor from undertaking an SSR program or 

a component of a program, as has recently happened in Nepal to a donor with regard to 

police development. It is also true that for donor support of a justice and security initiative to be effective, it may need to be less rather than more visible. These are among the 

various possibilities and permutations of implementing justice and security development. 

Neither, however, undermines the basic premise of the realistic-pragmatic approach that the 

choice of programming remains the donor’s and not that of the partner country’s national 

government. 

The challenge of local ownership is to implement the donor’s choice of programming in 

the context of competing political wills of the various national partners, each of whom acts 

in its own perceived self-interest. Local ownership is a political and iterative process, one 

of negotiation and implementation between and among the donor, the partner country’s 

national government, and the much more local owners of the specific components of the 

The challenge of local ownership 

is to implement the donor’s 

choice of programming in the 

context of competing political 

wills of the various national 

partners, each of whom acts in 

its own perceived self-interest. 
13

program under consideration. The balance of power between the donor and the partner 

country’s national government fluctuates continuously. Similarly, the balance of power 

among the multitude of stakeholders in the partner country are in constantly in flux, particularly in postconflict and fragile environments. At every level, donor activity alters the 

balance of power and the various actors’ calculation of their self-interest. Local ownership 

requires that the donor politically manage the risk of this uncertainty though continuous 

political negotiation. It is this continuous political negotiation that truly defines the context of justice and security development.

In this process, the crucial variable for effective programming is the identification of 

donor support for the local constituencies and their leadership cadre who are committed to 

driving the specific program forward. These are the constituencies and leaders who perceive 

a vested self-interest in the program’s success at the most local level. Managing risk and 

optimizing local ownership, then, means that donors need to leverage support to and for 

these constituencies and their leaders so that these groups “win” and are able to effectively 

implement and achieve programmatic goals, despite resistance to justice and security development by other partner government stakeholders and competing political actors.

Above and beyond the need for donor personnel capable of evaluating balances of power, 

determining stakeholders’ self-interests, and conducting ongoing delicate political negotiations, it is necessary to determine the local owner of a particular component of a program. 

Furthermore, it is necessary to determine when, during implementation, ownership migrates 

to another local owner. Making such determinations is a skill connected to expertise in 

organizational behavior and change management, subspecialties that are usually not within 

the purview of development agencies. Building in midcourse changes requires a level of 

microprogramming that donors are unaccustomed to undertaking but that is essential. An 

additional practical implication of the realistic or pragmatic approach is the importance and 

primacy of the donor’s in-country staff. It is essential, for instance, to knit development 

activities more tightly into the donor’s overall in-country political and diplomatic efforts, 

which means familiarizing both sides of the donor’s staff with the other’s perspectives and 

work. This may rub against the inclinations of many development experts, but for justice 

and security development, there may be no alternative.

Disaggregating Justice and Security Development. As should be evident, the realisticpragmatic approach does not advocate holistic and comprehensive donor-supported SSR, 

such as promulgated by the OECD Handbook’s guidance or the traditionalist-orthodox model. 

This does not imply that the pragmatic strategy rejects the basic assumption that justice 

and security development is a delicate interdependent system, much like a fragile ecological 

system in which an intervention in one area will have repercussions in another. Rather, the 

pragmatic approach believes that justice and security programming needs to be disaggregated, for the drive to undertake comprehensive SSR is misguided for a number of reasons.

First, the contemporary reality is that funding is more limited than previously, which 

precludes the ambition of holistic justice and security programming. An excellent example 

of the need to curtail ambitions is the UNDP’s Global Rule of Law four-year program. The 

initiative intends to provide support in twenty countries with a budget of approximately $45 

million, which means less than $500,000 per year for each country, after the organization’s 

overhead costs are subtracted. This sum could be sufficient if the UNDP’s program were 

to concentrate on only two projects in each country, such as support for judicial training 

institutes, the establishment of police academies, reducing antigender violence, or boosting legal aid. Conversely, the program would have sufficient funds if it were to limit itself 

to a handful of countries. But, as currently configured, the program is patently inadequate 

when country programs are meant to be holistic and comprehensive, with components of 

police development, reducing antigender violence, supporting legal aid, providing paralegal 

Managing risk and optimizing 

local ownership means donors 

need to leverage support to 

and for these constituencies 

and their leaders so that these 

groups “win” and are able 

to effectively implement and 

achieve programmatic goals.
14

training, assisting court administration, creating judicial training institutes, enhancing civil 

society, supporting parliaments, and more.26

Second, comprehensive justice and security programming is, in reality, wishful thinking, in light of deep and often endemic political volatility, acute insecurity, limited or 

nonexistent resources and capacities, systemic corruption, or deep-seated poverty, all of 

which are the common conditions of fragile, failed, and postconflict states. Under these 

circumstances, observing many of the principled prescriptions of the traditional or orthodox 

model is a luxury and operationally impractical. This is especially true with regard to the 

ability of postconflict and fragile countries to absorb and manage the levels of change being 

advocated. The issue, however, is not only the technical side of SSR but the normative one 

as well, for many partner country governments perceive the implications of holistic SSR 

as colonial in their application and implications, if for no other reason than no Western or 

donor country has undergone such a holistic and comprehensive SSR program.

There is a third and wholly operational reason for disaggregating justice and security initiatives. Holistic programming by definition aggregates, integrates, and seeks to coordinate 

justice and security development initiatives at higher and higher levels within the partner 

country’s national government. But the greater the degree of aggregation of policies and 

operations across state agencies, the less substantive will be the policy and operational 

synergies between and among those agencies and the more problematic will become the 

likelihood of significant structural reform, as the political competition between the various 

actors will intensify, bureaucratically within the partner government, between the partner 

government and donors, and among the donors. In other words, the more comprehensive a 

justice and security program, the greater the political conflict it unleashes between the selfinterested political wills of the national stakeholders and the less susceptible the national 

stakeholders are to negotiation.

The need to unbundle justice and security programming does not imply that current 

efforts to support the formulation of partner country national frameworks, policies, and 

strategies should be brushed aside. National frameworks and policies have their place and 

time, partly because the skills acquired by local partners in the process of drafting the strategies are valuable in the long-term process of building human capital in partner countries. 

Furthermore, in postconflict and fragile environments, support for these frameworks may 

be the most appropriate justice and security function the UN can perform.27 Still, national 

frameworks and policies require, at a minimum, three to five years to draft, if they are to be 

done well; have exhibited little effect on improving justice and security delivery for, at best, 

a decade or more; are rarely implemented or capable of being implemented; and are among 

the first casualties of democratic elections when there is an alternation of governments and 

the opposition party assumes power, as was the case in Timor-Leste. If the recent examples 

of Burundi and the DRC are indicative, there also appears to be little commitment for partner 

countries to undertake such holistic SSR initiatives other than to milk the resources that 

donors tied to the initiatives. 

In this age of selectivity, more modest, smaller, and more tightly focused initiatives 

have a greater likelihood of meeting the universally accepted four overarching principles of 

SSR, including effective and sustainable development. Narrowly targeted programs are also 

less likely to be resisted by partner national governments, given their smaller footprints and 

their concentrated focus on an identifiable and concrete problem in justice and security 

provision. Such narrowly defined problem-solving justice and security concentrations could 

be in the areas of community safety, maritime security, police corruption, youth or gang 

violence, property and land rights, legal aid and paralegal assistance, and pretrial detention. The key is the identification of a single, tangible issue to which donor support can be 

effectively applied. Identifying the challenge also suggests that the justice and security 

Narrowly targeted programs are 

also less likely to be resisted by 

partner national governments, 

given their smaller footprints 

and their concentrated focus.
15

program may not necessarily fall within the ambit of criminal justice but could focus on 

property disputes, access to water, or inequities arising out of how family law is practiced, 

areas of contestation out of which conflict can erupt. These types of concentrated initiatives coincide better with local ownership and political will, and are better able to bridge 

and blend the national interests of donors and partner countries.

The U.S. assessment framework for maritime security and the World Bank’s Justice for 

the Poor program are excellent examples of what a realistic-pragmatic justice and security 

approach looks like. Rather than striving to be holistic, they focus instead on adopting a 

consistent problem-solving strategy—a critical difference. This means that every activity in 

the program is directly linked to the resolution of a single identifiable issue, such as piracy 

off the coast of Somalia or access to justice in rural Sierra Leone. For example, to bolster 

maritime security off the coast of Somalia, initiatives relating to policing, governance, border control, justice, and economics need to be undertaken, but they are conducted only as 

they relate to maritime security. In this way, the core idea of comprehensive programming is 

retained, namely, the need to relate different elements of justice and security programming 

in order to achieve a measurable result—in this case, maritime security.

With a disaggregated approach to programming, gaps will inevitably appear in a partner 

country’s justice and security system that require support but for which there will be no 

assistance. Comparable gaps occur with the traditional strategy, but the reasons for them 

are different. The issue is not that gaps arise but that the political negotiations between 

donor and partner country recognize they will occur and that the accountability for addressing them lies with the partner country, given that donor support is limited and partner 

governments are solely responsible for the delivery of public goods and services to their 

citizenry.

Conclusion and Recommendations

SSR is moving into a new era of selectivity. It is an era in which understandings of what 

local ownership, political will, and effective justice and security programming entail are 

in need of updating to reflect political realities and the lessons learned from past donorsupported SSR programs, many of which have been less effective than desired. It is also an 

era in which justice and security programming should be increasingly unbundled and more 

narrowly concentrated on addressing defined problems.

The following recommendations are offered to begin the process of operationalizing this 

new era of selectivity:

•	 Revise expert rosters to include individuals who possess political negotiation, organizational behavior, and program management skills.

•	 Develop training programs for practitioners and in-country personnel that culminate in the 

application of problem-solving techniques and hone political skills, such as the identification of constituencies who will support justice and security programs.

•	 Develop operational guidance notes on defined and selected justice and security problems 

such as maritime security, youth and gang violence, pretrial detention, paralegal assistance, 

gender violence, women’s inheritance rights, conflicts over land tenure and water rights, 

court administration, local and community justice and safety provision, and ministerial 

mentoring.

•	 Develop operational guidance notes that clarify the interdependence and concrete relationships between and among the various elements of the justice and security system for 

selected justice and security programs (see list above).
16

•	 Increase support to international and national NGOs that target specific issues in justice 

and security development (see the list above) in order to promote the creation of teams 

of subject-specific experts.
17

Notes

1. Current SSR theory and practice are grounded on the Handbook on SSR: Supporting Security and Justice (Paris: 

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2007), which has codified four widely 

accepted SSR principles:

•	 establishment of effective governance, oversight, and accountability in the security system;

•	 improved delivery of security and justice services;

•	 development of local leadership and ownership of the reform process; 

•	 sustainability of justice and security service delivery (21).

2. This widely accepted conclusion does not imply that all donor-supported SSR programming has been ineffective, 

for there have been a number of relatively successful programs. Furthermore, the time period by which to evaluate 

programmatic effectiveness may be ten or more years, insofar as much justice and security sector development 

requires generational change. Lastly, the ineffectiveness of current donor-supported SSR programs may also be 

due to a lack of donor adherence to the four principles. 

3. Too often, prison development gets lost within criminal justice.

4. It should be noted that this conference report does not delve into the myriad issues related to how donor 

agencies are organized to meet these substantive challenges. These important process challenges, such as the 

recruitment and deployment of experts, the choice of funding mechanisms, and the like, are addressed in other 

United States Institute of Peace publications.

5. It should be noted that the Economic Community of West Africa States, or ECOWAS, has a slightly different 

orientation, concentrating on conflict prevention.

6. This is precisely what has occurred in Sierra Leone as the government cannot afford the array and size of the 

security services (military, police, intelligence, and Office of National Security) the donors have helped establish. 

The attempt to do so has profoundly distorted government budgetary allocations, to the acute detriment of 

judicial institutions and public access to state-provided justice.

7. See Robert Perito, “Afghanistan’s Police: The Weak Link in Security Sector Reform” (Washington, D.C.: United 

States Institute of Peace, 2009).

8. See Fatima Ayub, Sari Kouvo, and Rachel Wareham, Security Sector Reform in Afghanistan (New York: Initiative for 

Peacebuilding, 2009), 12.

9. See, for instance, Security System Reform: What Have We Learned? Results and Trends from the Publication and 

Dissemination of the OECD DAC Handbook on Security System Reform (Paris: OECD, 2010).

10. Eric Scheye and Luc van de Goor, Requirements and Challenges for Establishing an International Security Sector 

Advisory Team: A Needs Assessment Carried Out on Behalf of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Amsterdam: 

Clingendael Institute, 2007), 9. Needs assessment was conducted by the Clingendael Institute in 2007.

11. The advice of practitioners and anthropologists against engaging in community policing has also had no effect 

on the donor country or its implementing partner.

12. “While the substantive elements of peacebuilding (i.e. democracy, rule of law, market economy) clearly define 

peacebuilding practice, the two procedural principles—ownership and context—are often neglected or 

marginalized. Extant research strongly suggests that this lack of attention to ownership and context go a long 

way in explaining why so many peacebuilding efforts are judged to be ineffective and unsustainable over time.” 

Ole Jacob Sending, Why Peacebuilders Fail to Secure Ownership and Be Sensitive to Context (Oslo: Norwegian 

Institute of International Affairs, 2009), Executive Summary.

13. The UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), for example, has argued that the state is “a product 

of state-society relations” and its structure and patterns of authority are “determined by an underlying political 

settlement,” based on “common understanding[s],” which, in all democracies, inevitably serve the interests of 

the elite (States in Development: Understanding State-building. A DFID Working Paper [London: DFID, 2008]).

14. See, for instance, Alice Hills, Policing Africa: Internal Security and the Limits of Liberalization (Boulder, CO: Lynne 

Rienner Publishers, 2000).

15. Another particular strain is between the international community’s desire for urgency and the partner national 

government’s need for deliberate change it can absorb. This is partly a challenge of capacity within the partner 

country, but it is also a question of tensions between national interests.

16. See Helen Epstein, “Cruel Ethiopia,” New York Review of Books, April 24, 2010.

17. It is often claimed that justice development is more intricate and more difficult to evaluate, requires longer 

timelines, and necessitates even greater donor political intervention than do military or police reform. All of 

these claims are debatable, but none of them adequately explains why SSR has systematically overlooked justice 

development for the past five years.

18. It should to be noted that the UK is in the process of developing a new training regime for its personnel, one 

that substitutes the concept of “security and justice” while explicitly avoiding use of the term “SSR.”

19. UNDP, Measuring and Monitoring Armed Violence: Goals, Targets and Indicators (Geneva: UNDP, 2010)

20. An excellent example of this is the OECD’s Security System Reform: What Have We Learned?

21. Institutional capacity-building projects can be effective and successful, as evidenced by a German-Danish 

endeavor in Nepal which focused on tax collection. However, it needs to be noted that the project has taken a 

decade to exhibit positive results, see OECD, Do No Harm: International Support for Statebuilding (Paris: OECD, 

2010), 103.

22. “There is a lack of political will for greater accountability.” DFID, Sierra Leone Country Governance Assessment 

(London: DFID–Sierra Leone, 2007), 1.

23. In the UNDP’s guidance note, Rule of Law in Fragile and Post-Conflict Situations, there is no recognition of the 

natural political tensions and strong resistances within partner countries to donor policies that, at one and the 

same time, have an “initial focus . . . on building the capacity of national institutions [and is] . . . centred on 

institution building and the creation of civilian oversight mechanisms,” advocate for and attempt to implement 

“justice and security [projects] at the community level,” and are “based on principles of inclusion, participation, 

and empowerment” (New York: UNDP, July 2009), 7. As a result, the guidance note offers little operational 

direction and assistance to justice and security practitioners in the field.
18

24. An excellent example of the traditional-orthodox approach is UNDP’s four-year Global Programme on 

Strengthening the Rule of Law in Conflict and Post-Conflict Situations. While the UNDP may be breaking new 

and exciting ground on how to integrate rule-of-law programming with humanitarian relief, the program shies 

away from confronting the endemic challenges of justice and security development. In its 2009 Annual Report, 

the UNDP refers to “interference by the military and politicians in the judiciary” in Guinea-Bissau. The report 

also highlights the fact that legal documents and courts hearings in Timor-Leste are conducted “in a language 

spoken by a minority of Timorese” because of a decision made by Timor’s political elite and ratified by the UN, a 

decision that was primarily designed to strengthen the elite’s control of the country. The report, however, does not 

mention that these obstacles to justice and security sector development are expressions of local ownership and 

political will, and clear evidence of active resistance to development. Nor are suggestions offered as to how the 

practitioners on the ground are to navigate around them to implement the donors’ agenda. Instead, the Annual 

Report repeatedly calls for a more holistic approach and another infusion of technical solutions. See UNDP, Global 

Programme on Strengthening the Rule of Law in Conflict and Post-Conflict Situations: Annual Report 2009 (New 

York: UNDP, 2010).

25. In some postconflict and fragile situations a partner country national strategy will exist, and in fewer instances 

that strategy will have actually been drafted by the partner government itself rather than by donors through a 

consultation process.

26. Similar shortfalls of funding exist for the United Nations Office of Drug Control, the United Nations Development 

Fund for Women, and UN-Habitat programs, which seek to support SSR activities around the world.

27. See Nicole Ball, Eric Scheye, and Luc van de Goor, From Project to Program: Effective Programming for Security 

and Justice (Amsterdam: Clingendael Institute, 2007); Fatemeh Ziai, Developing a Strategy for Early Peacebuilding: 

Priorities, Sequencing and Delivery of Rule of Law and Security-related Activities by UN Peacekeeping Operations (New 

York: UN DPKO, 2010).

Of Related Interest

•	 Institutionalizing Security Sector Reform by Gregory A. Hermsmeyer (Special Report, 

September 2010)

•	 The Link Between DDR and SSR in Conflict-Affected Countries by Sean McFate (Special Report, 

May 2010)

•	 Local Ownership of Security Sector Reform by Liz Panarelli (Peace Brief, February 2010)

•	 Congress and Parliaments in Security Sector Reform by Robert M. Perito (Peace Brief, 

January 2010)

•	 Afghanistan’s Police Reform by Robert M. Perito (Special Report, August 2009)

•	 Iraq’s Interior Ministry by Robert M. Perito and Madeline Kristoff (Peace Brief, August 2009)

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