SSR Practitioners' Courses
UK courses Courses held abroad

UK courses

GFN-SSR runs four three-day SSR practitioners' courses each year in cooperation with SSDAT. These are residential programmes, held in Birmingham. The course is is designed to give an overview of security sector reform and its constituent parts, as well as provide an opportunity for discussion of good and bad practice in SSR and issues to consider when developing programmes and projects.

The following topics are among those covered, although there are slight variations from course to course:  defence reform; the rule of law and the reform of the justice sector; reform of intelligence services; building an SSR strategy for Bolivia; disarmament, demobilisation and re-integration of combatants; control of small arms light weapons; gender and SSR; and the role of the private sector in SSR. We aim to make sessions as interactive as possible to allow for open discussions and for participants to act out "real" SSR challenges, to recognise how complex SSR programmes are and the various pitfalls and contextual issues to be considered, as well as to identify lessons learned for future SSR programmes. The networking component is always cited by participants as a real benefit of the course and we encourage a lot of information discussion and sharing of experiences from different perspectives.

There is a maximum of 25 participants on each course, comprising representatives of three UK Government departments (MoD, DFID, FCO) as well as external participants from international organisations, governments and NGOs. Presenters include both UK Government officials and practitioners from other governments, NGOs, the private sector and academia.

Course Dates for 2008:

• 10-12 March
• 16-18 June
• 15-17 September
• 8-10 December

Course Dates for 2009:

• 6-18 March 2009
• 15-17 June 2009

For further information or to sign up to attend a course, please contact: enquiries@ssrnetwork.net

Information on the content of previous courses, including links to presentations given, can be found by clicking on the links below:

• SSR Practitioners' Course June 2008
• SSR Practitioners' Course March 2008
• SSR Practitioners' Course December 2007
• SSR Practitioners' Course September 2007
• SSR Practitioners' Course June 2007
• SSR Practitioners' Course March 2007

Courses held abroad

In addition to our UK courses, GFN-SSR also runs security sector reform courses in other countries. Each is tailor-made to suit the local needs and knowledge of the location and course participants.

Information on the content of previous courses, including links to presentations given, can be found by clicking on the links below:

• SSR in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
  Kinshasa, January 2008