CIAO DATE: 04/05

Development Donors and the Concept of Security Sector Reform

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide a survey of current discussion on 'security sector reform'. Created only in the late 1990s, the term has spread rapidly in international discourses. It is now used in a number of contexts, ranging from its origin in the development donor community2 and to debate on reform in the transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe to changes in the major industrialised countries of Western Europe (Winkler, 2002). That the term is used widely suggests that the time was ripe for it. It would seem obvious that there was a need to find a new term for a plethora of phenomena and activities related to reform of the sector of society charged with the provision of security.

However, as in many other cases, the widening of the term has not led to a clarification of what is meant by it. Several observers confess that they are quite puzzled by the term. Some already seem to be wary of using it, suggesting other words, such as 'security sector transition' (Hills, 2000a), 'security sector transformation' (Chuter, 2000; Cooker and Pugh, 2002) or different approaches to the issue. The Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery (BCPR) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) also began to promote a new term in 2003, namely 'justice and security sector reform' (JSSR) (UNDP, 2002b) and the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) has switched to 'security system reform'.

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