Security Sector Reform Best Practices and Lessons Learned Repository
Compiled by Madeline England and Alix Boucher, with James McGurrin and William Durch
FOPO, at the request of the Security Sector Reform Unit in UN DPKO’s Office of Rule of Law and Security Institutions, spent eight months collecting and analyzing good practices in six key areas of security sector reform (SSR):
- Defense sector reform
- SSR in stabilization environments
- Threat assessments and reviews
- National security policies and strategies
- Governance and oversight of the security sector
- Management of the security sector
For case examples, the UN asked Stimson to look at Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. The results will be used by the SSR Unit to develop technical guidance for SSR field personnel. The resulting SSR repository looked across seven governments, eleven international organizations, and numerous NGOs that engage in SSR, aiming for understanding from multiple perspectives, horizontally across countries and vertically from strategy down to practice. FOPO developed a database of 500+ relevant documents and, under Chatham House rules, interviewed 35 SSR experts from the various sources of the project. These sources are listed below, with a sample list of the NGOs surveyed.
|
Governments (7) |
International Organizations (11) |
Third parties (66+) |
|
Canada France Netherlands Norway South Africa United Kingdom United States |
African Union Council of Europe ECOWAS European Union NATO Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) OECD OSCE SADC United Nations (HQ, UNDP, UNIFEM, UNODC) World Bank |
African Security Sector Network (ASSN) Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) International Crisis Group (ICG) Netherlands Institute of International Relations (Clingendael) Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) Global Facilitation Network for SSR (GFN-SSR) Institute for Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS) Institute for Security Studies (ISS) United States Institute of Peace (USIP) RAND Saferworld Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) |
The SSR repository contains three major components: (1) a collection of more than 500 documents on SSR policy, strategy, and
programming;
Interactive SSR reference spreadsheet:
The interactive SSR reference spreadsheet can be downloaded here.[1] At the moment it provides hyperlinks to public government and international organizations' documents in the repository, and links to other documents for which we were able to obtain electronic copyright permission.
To understand how to use the spreadsheet, please read the accompanying Guidelines for using the spreadsheet.
Bibliography of the reference spreadsheet. This includes citations for the 193 documents included in the spreadsheet.
Practice notes can be downloaded here:
Defense Sector Reform: A Note on Current Practice by Alix J. Boucher
National Security Strategies and Policies: A Note on Current Practice by Alix J. Boucher
Threat Assessments and Reviews (or Conflict Assessments and Defense Reviews): A Note on Current Practice by Alix J. Boucher
Security Sector Governance and Oversight: A Note on Current Practice by Madeline L. England
Management of the Security Sector: A Note on Current Practice by Madeline L. England
Security Sector Reform in Stabilization Environments: A Note on Current Practice by Madeline L. England
Related documents:
Compiled bibliography of all six practice notes.
For a complete bibliography of all 500+ documents included in the document repository, please contact FOPO directly at 202-223-5956.
List of NGOs and civil society organizations that study or engage in SSR or SSR-related activities.
The SSR repository was made possible with support from the United Kingdom’s inter-agency Strategic Support for International Organisations (SSIO) program. More information on FOPO’s rule of law project can be found here.
[1] When downloading and opening the Matrix in Excel, you may be prompted to ENABLE MACROS, which is necessary for the Spreadsheet to be fully functional.
If your copy of Excel has set macro protection to Very High or High, you will need to change that to Medium or Low prior to opening the spreadsheet. Macro security is set by opening Excel and from the menu bar choosing Tools -> Macro -> Security. On the resulting popup, check either the Medium or Low option. Click OK, exit Excel, and re-open it to have the revised setting take effect.
With the Medium setting, users are prompted as to whether they wish to enable macros. With the Low setting, macros will be enabled without prompt.
