Global Facilitation Network for Security Sector Reform (GFN-SSR)

Right-financing Security Sector Reform

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What is the right balance between the size of the security sector required in weak and fragile states and the fiscal sustainability of the sector? How can security and development institutions achieve an effective balance between these considerations? This paper from the Center for International Cooperation and the Political Economy Research Institute outlines a “right-financing” approach to security sector reform (SSR). It argues that right-financing the security sector is a necessity if sustainable solutions for the problems of statebuilding are to be found.

Right-financing is concerned with determining an acceptable balance between “right-sizing” security forces and ensuring service quality and fiscal sustainability over time. The right-financing approach to SSR is intended to improve security services’ quality and sustainability, benefiting the international community and recipient governments and their citizens. Issues of scale, prioritisation, effectiveness and efficiency are fundamental to the delivery of security services in post-conflict situations. Right-financing aims to establish responsive security capacities without imposing on governments a fiscal burden that can undermine the statebuilding process.

The costs of providing security in post-conflict situations are unavoidably high. Current SSR strategies and programming, however, often fail to pay sufficient attention to public finance issues:

• In the majority of cases, the medium- and long-term fiscal implications of short-run policy decisions have not been factored sufficiently into early post-conflict engagement processes.
• Post-conflict political settlements relating to force establishment often gain political buy-in prior to any assessment of the implications of their costs. As a result, agreed political commitments are often unsustainable, leading to ad hoc revisions.
• Donors often overlook national fiscal capacities when making SSR assistance decisions. They often burden states with unsustainable security sectors, mortgaging aid budgets to long-term security sector support and breeding aid dependence.
• Short-term restructuring decisions are often based on national governments’ desire to protect their own authority and international donors’ concerns over international security.

To address cost efficiency and sustainability issues, security and development institutions should adopt the right-financing approach to SSR. This approach should involve:

• Building fiscal dimensions of security into peace agreements, post-conflict needs assessments, development strategies and expenditure planning. This can minimise problems caused by fiscally blind security policies and help to mainstream SSR.
• Aligning short-run security policy priorities and spending decisions with long-term budgetary and political realities. SSR policy and funding should be fiscally sensitive and consider the short- and long-term security and fiscal impacts of different options.
• Moving to a service delivery model for the security sector. Delivery should be measured against benchmarks which reflect provision of security to citizens. Donors should collaborate to develop appropriate security sector benchmarks and indicators.
• Strengthening international capacities to support right-financing. Policy-makers should consider pooling expertise to strengthen assessment of security systems. They should promote involvement in SSR from finance ministries and experts.

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