ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the international environment that enabled security sector reform (SSR) and highlights the relatively brief moment in post-Cold War history when security was driven by a development agenda. It shows that there was a disconnect between technical policy discussions at the international level and local order-making practices in Sierra Leone that shaped one another in unpredictable ways through mutual translations and appropriations in the late 1990s and 2000s. The chapter explores some of the assumptions on which SSR as a set of policies and programs was based, specifically in addressing the challenges posed by fragile and failing states in the post-Cold War international security environment. It outlines the process whereby SSR initially emerged from the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development and from political struggles across government, as well as in multilateral forums such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
