ABSTRACT
Scholars and policy-makers have debated whether DDR interventions should be security- or development-oriented; as well as the correct balance between targeting ex-combatants with reinsertion aid or extending that aid to recipient communities and victims. This chapter analyses the relationship between these security or development approaches to DDR, focusing on the politics behind the demobilisation and the decision as to who to target with reintegration benefits. The comparison between the two DDRs that took place in Colombia under the presidency of Álvaro Uribe and Juan Manuel Santos makes it evident that the negotiations create differential treatment of the leaders and the troops; thus the target population is defined with regard to the political bargaining, in which the judicial benefits gain more importance than the economic ones and where the reintegration programmes play no part in the decision as to who would receive benefits. These DDRs are also linked to three different understandings of demobilisation: as a tool to obtain gains in the negotiation process; as a counterinsurgency strategy; or as the result of a long and slow process of negotiation in which the armed factions address other overarching problems regarding wider social and economic development, citizenship and democracy.
