ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates Liberian Security Sector Reform (SSR) relationship to the wider institutional state architecture and the political economy of state-building. The securitisation of development became one of the guiding ideological principles in the Liberian SSR. A public security provisions can be categorised as regime, state and human security. The ending of the Liberian conflict coincided with the post-9/11 securitisation of development and the fragile state discourse. The Liberian state has resorted to foreign military assistance to protect itself from its own citizenry. The 2003 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), United Nations Security Council Resolution 1509 and the 1986 Constitution of Liberia provide the legal framework for the SSR. In the absence of a national security sector strategy in 2005, the notion of an affordable army became one of the guiding principles of the Liberian SSR. The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1509 specified a role for United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) in reforming Liberia's police.
