Saferworld has developed an approach that explains the principles underpinning Community Security interventions, and suggests practical implementation strategies that draw on our work and the work of a select number of agencies. The handbook is aimed at both policy makers and practitioners – particularly programme managers – and intends to help them work through the steps involved in planning, implementing, evaluating and improving Community Security interventions. It sets out the objectives of Saferworld’s Community Security work, explains why we see it as important, and draws together a significant body of learning and experience that ties together the theory and practice behind interconnected peace, conflict, security and development interventions.
This Community Security handbook provides a methodology that is important for peace, security and development progress, because it allows communities to define and implement interventions tailored to their exact needs and priorities, and in this way helps communities find creative, collaborative and preventative solutions to security challenges, including:
- Weak/poor state–citizen relations
- Overly state-centric models and views of security
- Lack of institutional resources and capacity
- Challenges in fostering genuine accountability and political incentives for security and justice reform
- Lack of active citizenship and public engagement on issues related to security and justice
- Tensions within and between communities, particularly involving marginalised groups
- Lack of effective models for providing security, including poor rule of law and access to justice at the local level
- Lack of decent opportunities for income generation and better livelihoods
- Gender inequality and its potential to feed into gender-based violence and gender-related conflict dynamics
- The need to reintegrate former combatants into communities
- The need to decentralise, or extend the reach of, security and justice provision whilst maintaining values andaccountability
- The need to anticipate tensions and security challenges and work on them preventatively and constructively.
Community Security as a process:
Community Security is a process focused on promoting a community driven approach to understanding and providing security. It has a clear focus on improving the relationships between and behaviours of communities, authorities and institutions. The process uses participatory assessments and planning and seeks to contribute to a full range of security and development improvements as decided by communities themselves. The process may lead to anything from better service delivery, to reduced social exclusion, enhanced relations between social groups, or strengthened democratic governance. The key is that the problems addressed, the process behind it, and the results achieved, contribute to a more secure environment.
Community Security as an end-state:
Security is, as much as anything else, something we experience. Therefore Community Security can also be seen as an end-state whereby people feel protected and valued as members of society. This end-state is achieved when the processes behind Community Security are functioning, or rather, the mechanisms to ensure communities can articulate their security needs exist in conjunction with the local and institutional capacity and willingness to respond to them.
