Key messages
Security arrangements challenge or uphold the status quo by enabling activities, preventing certain behaviours and compelling compliance. Understanding such arrangements helps map the security landscape and provides an entry point for actor-specific analysis.
Various community members' perceptions and descriptions of security actors as ‘guardians’, ‘enforcers’ and/or ‘actors of recourse’ can reveal 'for whom' local security arrangements are working, and how to address misconduct.
Understanding who benefits from security arrangements, and who benefits from challenging them, has direct implications for building constituencies and initiatives for reform.
The principle of security as an entitlement should be reconciled with the empirical reality that security is often organised as a means of enforcement. Thus, just as state-centric security must incorporate a people-centred perspective, so must community security be understood as ‘inseparable from the exercise of political power’.[42] At the community level, this power may be the authority of the state, the territorial control of a local strongman, the public support of a political party or the privileged position of a particular identity group. Competition between such powers can mean that security actors are more preoccupied with enforcing, challenging or benefiting from the current balance of power than they are with providing a safe environment. The aim of community security then is to shift those priorities, or the local power balances, towards arrangements that promote security for citizens.
To do this, community security practitioners must invest in understanding and continually analysing local institutions of power, and the agents and interests ‘that control or are controlled by them’.[43] Practitioners working in field offices are often all too aware of these dynamics. The critique made here points to the lack of integration of that knowledge into programme design.[44] This section seeks to operationalise this logic by offering three concepts that can be applied as lenses to analyse powerful actors and power structures at the local level. Such analysis is proposed as a complement to, not a replacement for, security needs assessments within communities.
Concepts for analytically informed programming
The notion of security is difficult to capture, but the experience of security can be explained in terms of one’s (in)ability to carry out activities of daily life due to (perceived) physical threats. That is, security is often experienced as either an enabling or an encumbering factor of other pursuits. In this way, three concepts help link the personal experience of security and how it relates to entitlement and power.
Safeguarding – enabling activities, free from or at an acceptable reduction of risk
Security as a means for enabling activities is akin to the idea of security as an entitlement and a human need. It is usually asserted through mechanisms that allow people to go about their daily lives, attending school, carrying out their livelihoods and interacting with other community members free from anxiety of being in harm’s way. If the activities being enabled are perceived to challenge the power of some, or the status quo,[45] proactive protection may be necessary, such as escorting or negotiating with powerful actors. Safeguarding also includes preventing violence, such as patrolling ‘hot spots’ or setting up community warning systems.
Enforcement – disruption or discouragement of activities; or compulsion to comply
Security as a means to enforce the status quo is typically manifested in rules or behaviour patterns that members of the community are not allowed to contravene, such as stealing or entering certain territory uninvited. Enforcement may restrict people’s mobility or means of expression. Enforcement is also enacted through compelling community members to observe certain behaviours. These rules may help maintain social order, such as property laws or social etiquette. They may also be key in upholding prevailing power relations, such as paying (informal) taxes or observing strict dress codes. Understanding the role security plays in maintaining the status quo and preserving power structures can reveal the institutions and incentives to address.
Recourse – opportunity to seek remedy for inadequate security performance
Security must also be understood in terms of governance over how the authority to enforce or safeguard is exercised. In the broadest terms, recourse refers to the power to hold actors (state or otherwise) to account for their performance. Some community members may have more access to recourse, and others less or none. Understanding these differences helps illustrate the distribution of security and power among community members. In so far as citizens are able to issue a complaint against a security actor, and reasonably expect this complaint to be acted upon, they have a mode of recourse. This signals that a system of governance can be appealed to in order to correct behaviour or provoke change. Hereby, patterns of enforcement and safeguarding could be encouraged to evolve into effective security as an entitlement of all citizens.
These components are described as a way to help nuance the understanding of local security and multiple security actors. It does this by providing programme staff with more specific frames for the various ways security is seen to be provided and the different kinds of roles security actors are perceived to play. These frames should be applied in accordance with local community members’ perceptions and descriptions, not external actors’ expectations or observations.
Identifying actors: a starting point for power analysis
As discussed above, analysing the broad array of ‘security actors’ [46] according to the roles they are perceived to play allows for a more precise notion of how certain agents work, for whom they work, and what this indicates about their role in the upholding or challenging the prevailing power structures. Though far from a ‘neutral’ topic, inviting community members to discuss the actors that affect their security is a concrete way to begin mapping the security landscape and can reveal insights about these actors’ incentives or their reluctance to support local reform.
Engaging a variety of community members in this discussion will help reveal differences between the ways in which various groups (women, men, minority communities, the elderly, young people, occupational communities) perceive security actors. Diligently and strategically widening the diversity of participants will provide a more accurate and more useful mapping. Concretely, this means an initial awareness of local power distribution in a community is necessary to ensure the consultation process is sufficiently representative of various (including marginalised) perspectives.
The following descriptions should not be applied as a normative prescription, sorting out ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’. First, there is bound to be some overlap in how actors are described. Second, distinction between these concepts and actors is not necessarily the point; it is not an exercise in taxonomy. These concepts are meant to help clarify how different security actors are perceived by various members of the local community and what that may reveal about the institutions and power structures these actors are upholding or challenging. This is not to ignore the fact that actors who are ‘guardians’ for some are seen as threats by others.[47] Part of what this analytical framework seeks to reveal is ‘for whom’ these security arrangements appear to be working.
Guardians could be generally recognised as those actors who are described as enabling certain activities, despite perceived interference or threat.[48] The way their performance is described by community members can indicate whether and how they prioritise people’s need for security in going about their daily lives and livelihoods. Understanding how people feel protected or protect themselves comes from listening to how they describe the people or practices that allow them to safely accomplish what they need to do.
Enforcers are actors who systematically discourage and disrupt activities that would challenge the dominant institutions of power or, similarly, those who can oblige compliance. The way their performance is described by community members would indicate that enforcers’ priority is to maintain (or establish) a certain ‘status quo’ or balance of power. Enforcers can be variously recognised by community members as a reassuring or threatening presence. For instance, seeing a policeman on the street may make some feel safer and others scrutinised or intimidated. The difference can shed light on who sees themselves as benefiting from the current arrangement of power and how security is distributed among different groups.
Identifying guardians and enforcers, and analysing the interests they serve, can prompt deeper analysis of these actors’ links with powerful elites and/or authorities within a community. These powerful entities thereby constitute the third element of analysis:
Actors of recourse are those to whom community members turn when enforcers and guardians overstep their bounds or fall short of the local performance standards. For example, a police chief, a respected elder (group), or the media may have official or moral authority to influence security actors’ conduct.[49] Working toward a situation where security is provided as an entitlement implies looking for ways community members ‘demand accountability from […] security and justice institutions, and [asking] how they cope when these are ineffective, corrupt or oppressive’.[50]
The objective here is to gain a more fine-grained understanding of how security actors’ behaviour is perceived and described by the local communities they engage. As such, it is imperative not to let normative impressions overshadow local views. For example, if a woman describes religious police as ‘enabling’ her to wear a veil without fear of persecution, that ‘guardian perception' must be duly recognised. Its value is analytical: it helps reveal which institutions these security arrangements uphold or challenge, and who benefits from and supports them. This information has direct implications for building constituencies and initiatives for reform.
There are no ‘archetypes’ of enforcers, guardians or actors of recourse; security actors are perceived differently by different community members. Gathering local perceptions of the roles these actors play in a community can reveal the interests they are compelled to serve and their incentives, or their reluctance, to support reform.
The following quotes, drawn from fieldwork in Nairobi,[51] provide examples of how community members’ descriptions of security actors, viewed through the analytical lens proposed, can divulge such insights.
Guardians – quotes indicating those who are seen to enable and protect people:
‘There is an idea to create a “grassroots HRD kitty” [Human Rights Defenders communal savings] to help if someone is in a threatening situation. We understand each other’s needs. We can provide one another with safe houses, where children can come too. We call each other when we go to the police station, so that someone knows where we are, we can alert each other if something is not right. Or sometimes we go together; it’s a safety measure.’
‘Sex workers have their own network of solidarity. Working with these strong groups is useful to create awareness among them of their rights.’
‘Pequininos [slum-based NGO, Nairobi] are really good…The Pequininos defend the street kids from thugs. They give them small jobs like collecting trash. They tell people not to harass them. If the police raid Mlango Kubwa, they speak up for the street kids if they’re arrested.’
Enforcers – quotes indicating how people are made to comply with the status quo:
‘We [Human Rights advocates] get cultural pressure to “act like a woman”, which means not acting too strong, not speaking out. We get pressure from our husbands and our families.’
‘Police don’t provide us with protection, they come to collect money. They mainly focus on the business people. Most people who have a business are in the illicit brewing economy. The police don’t come to protect people at all; they come to tax [take bribes from] the brewers.’
‘Mothers will confront each other if their sons are caught in petty crime, try to stop it while it is still early, just small crimes in the neighbourhood. Women will warn the other mothers to get their son in order or he will be killed [by mob lynching] later.’
Actors of recourse – quotes that indicate who people go to when security systems fall short:
‘Can’t go to a person who had directly committed the crime; you have to go to their boss or the ring leaders. You invite a dialogue with the leaders of the community, the elders. But if they refuse to come you can suspect that they support the criminals. Then you know who they are working with.’
‘The judicial system is arranged by the elite for the elite. It only works for those who have resources. Lawyers only work for those with money, so only those with money get out of jail. This is why people get frustrated and resort to mob justice.’
Luckham and Kirk (2012) op.cit., p. 11; Power’ is itself, in its simplest form, typically defined as the ability to compel the actions of others. It can be expressed by an actor, but also in terms of the way institutions (norms, values, laws and rules) compel certain behaviours. The complexity of the topic is, for practical reasons, dealt with only sparsely here. For a deeper examination, see Hudson and Leftwich (2014) op.cit., pp. 82-87; Dahl (1957) ‘The Concept of Power’, Behavioral Science, 2(3): 201-215.
Hudson and Leftwich (2014) op.cit., p. 106.
Ó Súilleabháin (2015) op.cit.
For example, staging political protests or traversing land used by drug traffickers are activities that can only be pursued with protection, as they either directly challenge or unintentionally intersect with powerful interests.
Here again, the idea of ‘impersonal political orders’, which would encourage a focus on ‘official’ actors, is not to be presumed. Community security approaches have long understood that mapping only the official security actors in a community usually provides an incomplete picture of the ‘real players’ that influence local security. See Price (2016) op.cit.
Sometimes referred to as the ‘Robin Hood’ phenomenon, this underscores the need to have more nuanced frames through which to view actors who have an influence on local security.
An example of the media being called upon as an actor of recourse was documented in Wall, Aulin and Vogelaar (eds) (2014) Empowerment and Protection: stories of human security, The Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC), The Hague, p. 37.
This quote is modified slightly from Luckham and Kirk (2012) op.cit., p. 12. The specification of ‘state security and justice institutions’ was removed in order to be inclusive of any and all institutions designated by local communities, regardless of their association with the state.
Price, et al.(2016) Hustling for Security: managing plural security in Nairobi’s poor urban settlements, Plural Security Insights, The Hague.