Requirements for supporting Security Sector Reform

'Double Dutch or going Dutch? How institutional factors influenced Security Sector Reform policy in the Low Countries’

This report is originally published by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. Chapter 2, pp. 21-28, entitled ‘Double Dutch or going Dutch? How institutional factors influenced Security Sector Reform policy in the Low Countries’ on the development of Dutch SSR policy and practice is written by Erwin van Veen.

Empirical evidence suggests that many Security Sector Reform (SSR) programs do not deliver their desired results. It is particularly striking that the political nature of security provision and governance in fragile and transformative countries is often not matched by a corresponding political strategy on the part of the Western donors that support SSR programmes. In fact, the ways in which donors plan, organize, operate and implement their contributions to SSR programs is often fundamentally at odds with the political realities of fragile societies.
 
While the disappointing results of SSR programmes are often due to the conflict complexities and political turbulence of the environments in which they unfold, institutional factors on the part of donors also play a large - and underappreciated - role in programmatic success and failure.
 
This report of the German Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) critically examines how donor governments and international organizations design, implement, evaluate and adapt their SSR policies and programs in order to propose suggestions for much-needed improvement of existing SSR practice.