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

DDR 2008: Analysis of Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) programmes in the World during 2007

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How should disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programmes be implemented? This School for a Culture of Peace report argues that DDR should be seen less as a technical procedure and more as a process dependent on the context of where it is implemented. The paper therefore aims to draw lessons from a comparative analysis of DDR programmes in 19 countries.

Three Asian, fourteen African countries, and two countries from the Americas form the basis of this DDR analysis. All peacebuilding processes related to armed conflict must go through a final stage in which, after the signing of agreements, combatants surrender their arms, demilitarise and reintegrate into civil life. This complex process is called the DDR of ex-combatants. DDR is part of broader agreements over justice, police reform, the restructuring of armed forces, elections, political change and so on, as negotiated in a peace process. Therefore, DDR is part of a wider strategy of peacebuilding.

Overall, the analysis of DDR programmes in 19 countries teaches a number of lessons:

• The planning of DDR programmes must begin during the peace process in order to avoid instability as much as possible and the duplication of structures and activities.
• One of the biggest difficulties faced by programmes lies in the mechanisms for transitional justice. The usual results of ceasefires, and the signing of peace agreements include amnesties and transitional structures with few mechanisms related to core concepts of truth, justice, and reparation.  
• Among the main weaknesses identified in security sector reform, in view of post-war restoration, is the absence of a coherent strategy to include all available human and economic resources, and how they relate to parallel processes of disarmament and justice in an interconnected system.
• In the area of financing, some countries have a special preference for financing through select international agencies rather than through direct contributions. An integrated system of financing offers the best guarantees, so long as national DDR structures, which incorporate an integrated structure of security, execute it.
• Reintegration programmes must be seen as part of security sector reform.  In this sense, we can understand demobilisation as a new means to reintegration.

When evaluating DDR programmes both improvements and lessons learned should be highlighted. This will help current or future DRR programmes avoid repeating mistakes. In general:

• countries should execute DDR in an integrated manner and not only chronologically;
• peace agreements must include DDR and implement it in a coordinated fashion, not separated by phases;
• peace agreements must incorporate mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation, but also integrate these into other related processes such as transitional justice and security sector reform;
• initiatives such as the United Nations Integrated Strategy on DDR, announced in December 2006, face the challenge of evaluating their impacts and widening their agendas in step with other initiatives; and
• an essential challenge for DDR is national empowerment, not only government empowerment but also of civil society.

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