There has been a tendency to view all armed actors as ‘spoilers’ to be fought at all costs or, at best, pacified through disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR), rather than as agents of change who can play constructive roles in securing peace and building more legitimate states.
The purpose of this report is to present key policy-relevant findings from a two-year participatory research project on the timing, sequencing and components of post-war security transitions, from the perspective and self-analysis of conflict stakeholders who have made the shift from being state challengers to being peace- and state-building agents in South Africa, Colombia, El Salvador, Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Burundi, Southern Sudan, Nepal and Aceh.
Key findings:
- There is the need for multi-partial constructive dialogue and peacebuilding engagement with all key conflict stakeholders who have the effective capacity to either impede or promote constructive social change. This is all the more true for self-labelled ‘resistance and liberation movements’ who have large social or ethnic constituencies and represent legitimate socio-political interests, who embody an inclusive and participatory vision of society, and who have an interest in governance participation. Many such actors already perform responsible governance and security functions in areas under their control during conflict. They thus have the potential to play vital leadership roles in implementing post-war political reforms, community peacebuilding and the provision of (human) security. A broad engagement with all conflict interests and affected parties helps to preserve organisational cohesion, to ensure that the conflict’s root causes will be addressed, and to convert potential ‘spoilers’ into peacebuilding agents.
- Socio-economic facilitation schemes should pay attention to the divergent needs and aspirations within and between armed groups, and should use community-based approaches to reintegration. National stakeholders should be encouraged to build inclusive, accountable and democratic state institutions which integrate former contenders as well as marginalised social or ethnic groups. Locally meaningful schemes enabling such processes might include power-sharing provisions in decision-making structures and political/security institutions, electoral reform or democratic oversight and verification bodies.
- Peacebuilding strategies should place a strong emphasis on the empowerment of local stakeholders, based on the understanding that they will only feel genuinely committed to a transition process if they are centrally involved in driving it. Programmes driven by local needs, interests and practices have a much better chance of sustaining themselves once foreign assistance has dwindled and international missions have been completed. Resistance and liberation movements, in particular, should be acknowledged as proactive change drivers and encouraged to design and implement self-managed transition management schemes.
Recommendations:
- Mediators should facilitate fair and balanced agreements addressing RLMs’ (Resistance/Liberation Movements) claims to security sector transformation, democratisation or socio-economic reform, by ensuring that structural reform provisions are included in peace accords and designed according to the specificities of the conflict context and parties’ respective priorities. Peacebuilding agencies and NGOs should support the transformation of underground structures into effective political parties, through training and facilitation of peer-advice in conventional politics and good governance.
- National or multinational security experts should guarantee international legal and technical standards for military/police integration, vetting and re-ranking; if required locally, offer training for the new defence and security forces in conventional warfare and international codes of conduct; offer technical assistance in drafting security-related national strategic assessments, laws and regulations. International monitors of peace implementation (members of verification and oversight bodies run by the UN, regional organisations or other international actors) should interpret their mission mandates extensively, and accompany the implementation of peace accord provisions that go beyond immediate security stabilisation measures; involve local (state and non-state) actors in oversight and monitoring activities, and plan for a timely transfer of these competencies to inclusive national bodies.