It is increasingly recognised that security sector reform (SSR) can improve the circumstances of poor people by creating stable and predictable environments. But in what ways can the Department for International Development (DFID) be involved?
‘Poverty and the Security Sector’ is a DFID paper which seeks to outline why security matters and how SSR can help advance the objectives of the Government White Paper on International Development, ‘Eliminating World Poverty’. This paper lists the types of SSR activities that DFID can support to achieve their objectives of advancing development and poverty elimination in developing countries.
DFID can support training for civilian and security sector staff in areas relating to human rights, humanitarian law, gender awareness, conflict resolution, negotiation skills and threat analysis.
- The security sector includes military, paramilitary, intelligence services and civilian structures that control the security forces. Police carrying out normal law enforcement are not included.
- There should be support for activities that improve civilian government control of the security sector, so that the security sector and its chain of command (civilian and military) should become more accountable and transparent.
- Security forces should be supported in activities that strengthen their specific or broad capacities to aid wider development objectives such as training in humanitarian relief.
- Support and assistance in establishing chains of command in Defence Ministries should help to enable the development of accountable, transparent and economical systems of control for arms procurement and stock management.
- Support for mine-clearance in Cambodia and demobilisation in Sierra Leone have helped to stabilise the social environment and increase peace and stability and help in the transition from conflict to peace.
Careful attention is needed to ensure that DFID supports activities that improve, not diminish, the recipient government’s capacity to improve human security and fight poverty.
- DFID can only work where there are legitimate civilian authorities who have the capacity to control the security forces, recognise the need for reforms and seek external assistance.
- UK government interest in the security sector in any particular country may have many dimensions, for example foreign policy, international crime prevention or commercial activities. This underlines the importance of cross department consensus of SSR as a development issue
- DFID will need to increasingly provide advice to other UK government departments on military export credits and export licence applications from a development and poverty elimination perspective.
- On occasion DFID activities in SSR may be carried out in conjunction with funding of associated activities of either the Ministry of Defence (MoD) or Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).
