ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the types of generic challenges that Civil Defense Forces (CDFs) have posed through looking at four contexts and how these experiences might be factored into post-conflict recovery in African contexts. African countries can all be described as primarily conforming to the war-torn and post-conflict transition model, rather than being conflict-prone societies, although many do remain conflict-prone. The chapter describes the conflict phase into post-conflict recovery, focuses on issues of integration and regulation relating to CDFs, including security sector reform (SSR), as a key challenge in accommodating CDFs into civilian or military frameworks where they do not pose a threat to human or state security. The chapter considers with the human and state security dimensions of CDFs both during and following armed violence. It explains three case studies of Peru, Guatemala, and Sri Lanka in the context of CDFs human rights and International humanitarian law violations.
