All peace-building processes related to armed conflict must go through a final stage in which, after the signing of agreements, combatants surrender their arms, demilitarise, and reintegrate into civil life. This complex process is called the DDR of ex-combatants. DDR is part of broader agreements over justice, police reform, the restructuring of armed forces, elections, political change, etc., as negotiated in a peace process. Therefore, DDR is part of a wider strategy of peace building. This study is a comparative analysis of active, 2007 DDR programmes, whether they were in the early planning phase or implementing final social reintegration activities. The main goal of this year’s report is to provide an overall vision for the active DDR programmes and, as such, widen the general and current understanding of the process. Specifically, this report aims to address academics and practitioners.
Individual analysis reports on the 19 DDR programmes form the basis of this comparative analysis. These 19 DDR programmes are situated in various continents: two in the Americas (Colombia, within the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, AUC, and Haiti), three in Asia (Afghanistan, Aceh, Indonesia, and Nepal), and the 14 others in Africa (Angola, Burundi, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Eritrea, Liberia, Niger, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, and Uganda).
Amongst the countries looked at in this report, there were nine peace agreements; one ceasefire agreement involving the ending of combat for a specified period; three agreements for a cessation to hostilities involving, among other things, ceasefires and promises to end kidnapping and hostilities; two memorandums of understanding, in Angola and Indonesia; and two other understandings, the Conference on Reconciliation in Somalia and the Amnesty Law in Uganda, with differing procedures. As will be seen, many countries considered more than a peace agreement. We should note that Haiti has not adopted any agreement for establishing a peace process due to difficulties in identifying the rival parties amongst the country’s armed combatants. It is important to point out that in 13 of these countries, peace agreements specifically contemplate the possibly for DDR, while the remaining two countries contemplate reform for the armed forces and security system.
In general, countries should execute DDR in an integrated manner and not only chronologically. Peace agreements must include DDR and implement it in a coordinated fashion, not separated by phases. They must incorporate mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation, but also integrate these into other related processes such as transitional justice and security-sector reform. For this, initiatives such as the United Nations Integrated Strategy on DDR, announced in December 2006, face the challenge of evaluating their impacts and widening their agendas in step with other initiatives. Another essential challenge for DDR is national empowerment, not only government empowerment but also of civil society.
