The security of communities matters because it has a direct and positive bearing on the daily lives of individuals as well as an indirect, longer-term effect on their development opportunities. Insecurity, in contrast, disables both activities and prospects. This shortens the time horizon and expectations of the future, which reduces hope and investment and truncates human development. Programmatic interventions are a potentially powerful vehicle for improving the security of communities as they can combine activities, resources and collective effort in a focused format of delivery. They also offer a human-centred approach at the micro-level that can complement prevailing state-centric security promotion initiatives at the macro-level.
Security and insecurity in communities tend to be functions of existing authority structures, elite incentives and political forces that shape, perpetuate and use security actors and institutions to acquire and maintain power and privilege. This is why community security programmes must account for, and be responsive to, the structures of power and political forces that influence local security. However, current programmatic practice shows an excessive focus on the needs of communities, often conceptualised as entitlements. Not only is this not reflective of the realities or obligations and rights in many volatile settings, it also downplays the agency of community actors and may lead to programmes that focus on palliative measures. Available evidence suggests that the principle of security as an entitlement should be better reconciled with the empirical reality that security is often organised as a means of enforcement. This starting point means that programmes will often have to engage in ongoing thinking and negotiations about how they might affect the existing distribution of power, whether this is feasible/acceptable in a particular local context and how the associated obstacles might be overcome.
The present report substantiates why ‘needs-’ or ‘entitlement-based’ thinking by itself is inadequate for generating a good understanding of security in a particular community. It proposes a complementary approach to analysing community security that is more power-oriented. This approach offers a set of lenses to examine the different disabling and enabling roles that security actors can play in a community, and how communities perceive or experience these roles in relation to underlying authority structures.
In addition, the report examines a number of internal organisational and process characteristics of international non-governmental organisations that influence how they undertake the analysis necessary for designing and implementing their community security programmes. Research shows that, in addition to the sophistication of the organisations’ analytical approaches, these issues remain key factors for how intervening organisations understand community security. This analysis suggests that there is a general need for international non-governmental organisations to generate and demonstrate greater awareness of their own institutional strengths and weaknesses, and how these affect their analytical and programming processes.
These are reflected in the following recommendations and substantiated in the remainder of the report.
Recommendation 1: Ensure that analysis intended to support community security programme design contains an explicit ‘power and politics lens’ | Recommendation 2: Develop an understanding of how the organisation’s general structure influences its approach to development programming | Recommendation 3: Map how analysis is structured within the organisation so that strengths can be built upon and weaknesses mitigated |
|---|---|---|
Why is this necessary? Security arrangements challenge or uphold the status quo by enabling or preventing certain behaviours and compelling compliance. Mapping them helps understand the security landscape and offers entry points for actor-specific analysis. | Why is this necessary? The research suggests that the general structure of international non-governmental organisations influences how they approach developmental programming (including community security). | Why is this necessary? The research suggests that the way in which analysis is organised within international non-governmental organisations is at least as influential on their understanding of local power and security dynamics as the sophistication of their analysis. |
How can this be accomplished? Institutions of power, and how security structures uphold those institutions, can be analysed by examining what role community members ascribe to particular security actors: Guardians are actors described as enabling activities. The way their performance is considered by community members indicates whether and how they prioritise people’s need for security in their daily lives. Enforcers are actors who systematically discourage and disrupt activities that would challenge the dominant institutions of power. They can be recognised by community members as either a reassuring or a threatening presence. Actors of recourse are those to whom community members turn when enforcers and guardians overstep their bounds or fall short of local performance standards. They may not be visible or accessible to everyone. | How can this be accomplished? Consider which of the following organisational profiles best matches the organisation, builds on associated strengths and mitigates the risks (see table 1 in Section III): In ‘centralised and directive’ organisations, headquarters retains most or full authority over organisational activities. The focus is on setting organisational direction, central guidance and control over country offices. In ‘centralised and facilitative’ organisations, headquarters retains much authority over organisational activities but focuses more on the empowerment and facilitation of country offices. ‘Decentralised’ organisations operate more as a network, comprised of country offices that are either partially or completely autonomous, and united by a shared corporate philosophy rather than central structures. | How can this be accomplished? Map the organisation against four structural dimensions of undertaking analytical work, using associated strengths and mitigating risks (see tables 2-5 in Section III): Where is analytical work located in the organisation? 1) headquarters staff; 2) country office staff; 3) mixed teams; 4) consultants. How much analytical specialisation does the organisation feature? 1) specialised experts; 2) generalised responsibility. How is the process of analysis structured? 1) a dedicated, specific process and tools; 2) an ongoing process that can be informal. How is budget for analysis allocated? 1) a separate budget line/fund; 2) a portion of each project or programme. |