ABSTRACT
In July 2005, a statement by the presidency of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) recognised ‘that security sector reform [SSR] is an essential element of any stabilization process in post-conflict environments’.1 Three years later, on the eve of the release of a landmark UN report on SSR that called for the development of dedicated UN policies and capacities in the area, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon referred to SSR as ‘more than just a goal’ for the UN and its member states but a ‘shared obligation, especially in countries recovering from conflict’.2 The UNSC’s adoption of Resolution 2151 in April 2014,3 the first stand-alone resolution on SSR, unambiguously reaffirmed what was already widely accepted in the international community, that SSR was an indivisible pillar of the global peace-building4 and state-building5 agendas. Roughly 15 years after the concept was first articulated in a 1999 speech by UK Secretary of State for International Development Clare Short, SSR had come to represent a point of convergence between the fields of development, security and governance – a manifestation of the security-development nexus6 that has guided peace-building and state-building policy ever since. However, in sharp contrast to its rapid ascent in international policy, the SSR concept has featured a very meagre record of achievement in implementation settings. In fact, in conflict-affected cases, the most high-profile target for SSR assistance, it would be difficult to identify a single unfettered success story for the model that could inspire and inform its implementation elsewhere.7 As Robin Luckham explains, the considerable international effort dedicated to ‘rebuilding and reforming the security and justice institutions of fragile and conflict-affected states’ has ‘seldom added up to credible democratic strategies with solid roots in locally driven democratisation’ and has ‘tangibly increased the accountability of security institutions’ in only a few cases.8 This exemplifies the principal problem facing SSR, its conceptualcontextual divide.9 The rapid development and mainstreaming of the SSR policy model since 1999 has tended not to create and consolidate sustainable peace, security and development on the ground in conflict-affected countries.
