From DDR to Security Promotion: Connecting national programs to community initiatives

Disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) is a set of activities that forms part of strategies for peacebuilding after civil war. DDR has become the standard way of addressing security threats in immediate post-conflict situations. However, DDR is designed to promote national security, rather than human- or community security. This creates severe obstacles for success, if success is seen in terms of overall security promotion rather than defined merely in numbers of arms collected and people demobilized. The reason is that if security at community level is not improved, then people will be unable to abandon armed violence as a way of protection and of making a living. Disarmament in such a situation will probably be only temporary. Thus, it is a necessity for DDR to aim at community security. However, when community security becomes the aim, then this opens up questions about whether DDR is the most appropriate strategy. At best, it can be part of a more wide-ranging strategy, which in addition to top-down DDR programs also involves community-based activities. Altogether, such a holistic security promotion strategy should endeavor to make people and communities better able to protect themselves and to create a living that does not depend on war and violence. In other words, it should aim at making guns redundant. ‘Community-based’ and ‘Second-generation’ DDR initiatives lend inspiration for such a wider security promotion approach. What they show is that the optimal approach is very context-specific. Analysis of the conflict, of local security mechanisms, and of the needs and capacities of communities, therefore has to be the first step, despite the fact that this takes valuable time.