The OECD DAC Handbook on Security System Reform was published in 2007. What impact has it had in the headquarters of donors and agencies and on the ground? This report, by the OECD, makes recommendations based on the responses received between April 2007 and April 2009. It addresses priorities outlined in the SSR Handbook, which include the challenges of bringing about coherence and co-ordination, and the importance of supporting local ownership. The concluding section builds on this analysis to identify opportunities that can support the further operationalisation of the SSR Handbook.
The SSR Handbook was developed to help donors implement SSR at field-level in line with international norms and standards. The OECD officially endorsed the SSR Handbook on 4 April 2007. Following its publication, the handbook was extensively disseminated in donor capitals and across the broader international community.
The handbook focuses on fostering a supportive political environment through local knowledge and emphasising local ownership. It also advocates adopting common approaches across sectors such as defence, police, and intelligence, and mainstreaming oversight and accountability of the security system. Finally, it discusses how to achieve the right mix of human and financial resources and how to integrate SSR in the broader framework of post-conflict peacebuilding.
The SSR Handbook has become a key reference material for SSR policies and programming guidelines at headquarters.
- A notable shift has taken place in donor agencies, with many OECD DAC donor agencies beginning to integrate SSR as a core component of development assistance.
- SSR is now seen as directly linked to the prominence of ‘whole of government’ approaches, which seek to ensure that development agencies work on SSR matters in cooperation with relevant counterparts.
- In-country political processes may be time-consuming, but are key components of sustainable SSR.
- A key challenge remains ensuring that SSR programmes are context-specific.
- Donors need to develop their own vision on how to support national SSR processes to avoid harmful gaps between expectations and activities.
A number of findings are common to both the measures advocated in the SSR Handbook and response to its subsequent dissemination.
- Key areas of the SSR agenda still receive insufficient attention. Efforts too often focus on police and military reform at the expense of the criminal justice sector and wider efforts to support the rule of law.
- In some cases, those working on SSR at headquarters still lack sufficient in-country political knowledge despite the possibility of financial and expert resources at headquarters.�
- SSR in the narrow sense of lending technical support to the military or other security bodies will fail to take into account the dynamic political environment.
- While local ownership has widened the range of co-operation between development agencies and partner countries, it has not increased partner country ownership of and accountability for SSR processes.
