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Supporting Security, Justice and Development

Author: C Stone
Date: 2005
Size: 34 pages (247.9 kB)

Summary

An understanding of how insecurity and poverty are linked is increasingly informing development assistance. How can assistance with policing and justice be strengthened? This paper, part of a larger study commissioned by the UK government, draws together lessons from the experiences of recent UK funded policing and justice programs in seven countries: Afghanistan, India, Jamaica, Malawi, Nepal, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

The UK's Security Sector Reform (SSR) strategy embraces reform of the military and intelligence services along with police and other security and justice agencies. Its work on Safety, Security and Access to Justice (SSAJ) includes policing, courts and penal regimes, civil and commercial justice, and alternative dispute resolution. These programmes are pursued on a holistic, sector wide basis, rather than focusing on individual institutions. They proceed from an understanding that government ownership and assessing the problems from the users perspective are fundamental to success.

Assuring civilian oversight of uniformed services and advancing the security and justice concerns of poor people and other vulnerable groups are difficult tasks in all societies. The challenge is probably greater in countries experiencing armed conflict (Nepal), of emerging from it (Sierra Leone, Afghanistan). In these countries, the guidance on the pursuit of sector wide reform has been difficult to follow on the ground. This is partly because of short-term funding arrangements, the confinement of civilian leadership to silos and less expertise in sector-wide approaches amongst development agency staff.

Ten lessons learned are identified from the UK's experience of police and justice reform:

Design and implementation should integrate short-term work on community safety with long-term organisational and institutional change.
Design and coordination processes should anticipate tensions within the security sector, particularity between the army and the police.
Civil Society Involvement should be stronger in order to balance the focus on the supply of security and justice with appropriate focus on the demand.
Improvements in safety and access to justice are assumed to contribute to poverty reduction. The logic models created at the design stage and the assessments conducted during implementation should be improved to demonstrate those links explicitly.
Actual progress on human rights should be accelerated so that programs are less likely to be set back by human rights abuses.
Gender issues should be mainstreamed.
Sector-wide co-ordination led by the partner government is a key intermediate outcome, but the strategy for achieving this coordination should be reconceived so that it develops more quickly and is less easily set back.
As part of UK programs, strong Whitehall co-ordination should be encouraged.
Co-ordination of UK departments and managers in country should be strengthened.
Recruitment, deployment and retention of experts and managers should receive greater attention.

Following on from these lessons, 15 specific recommendations for project implication are made, including:

SSR and SSAJ should remain distinct programs, but be closer aligned.
Police and military advisers should develop more collaborative relationships to encourage the same in institutions of partner governments.
A fully staffed SSAJ team should be established in the Department for International Development (DFID).
A repository of good practice with civil society organisations should be established centrally.
DFID and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office should establish a critical incident review process to examine events leading up to and following any serious violation of human rights.
The UK should commit to work on SSAJ and SSR in Middle Income Countries that could serve as anchors of security regionally and globally.

Access full text: available online

Source: Stone, C. et al., 2005, 'Supporting Security, Justice and Development: Lessons for a New Era', Vera Institute of Justice, New York
Author: Vera Institute of Justice, http://www.vera.org