Tag Archives: oversight

Student Position Paper – Civil society oversight role in SSR – Donatella Rostagno

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In post-conflict contexts, it is vital to develop a coherent Security Sector Reform (SSR) in order to build sustainable peace. In order to be coherent and successful, SSR should be context specific and should respond to the principle of local ownership of all the stakeholders, including both the providers of security services and the beneficiaries (population and civil society) (DCAF-ISSAT, 2014). If external donors want to proactively and coherently support the development of democratic, transparent and accountable security institutions, then particular attention and efforts should be put on enhancing Security Sector Governance (SSG) thus creating the right conditions for the development of security institutions that respond to democratic oversight and control. SSR programmes have to be developed and implemented to enhance change and improve SSG (Schroeder, 2010).

It is widely recognized that SSR should be people-centered and locally owned, in order to allow people and civil society organisations to hold security and justice institutions accountable. It is only by ensuring the active participation of the people most affected by either the improvement or the deterioration of the security and justice sectors, that their oversight role is strengthened and trust in state security and justice institutions is reinforced.

However, the international community has too often embraced a technical approach by focusing on equipping and training security institutions and on the operational effectiveness of security providers. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), for example, donors have invested in short-term operational objectives, especially to deal with the crisis in the East of the country. Not enough resources have been invested in longer-term initiatives aimed at changing the way security is managed enhancing therefore the role of civil society and the parliamentary security and defence committee (Boshoff et al., 2010). Our NGO therefore calls the international community to ensure that security institutions actually operate under democratic control and are accountable to the population. Resources allocated to building the capacity of parliamentary security and defense committees and civil society organisations should be increased and better structured.

In many contexts, the international community has invested a great deal of resources in SSR in order to ensure security throughout the country and create the right conditions for development. However often progress is quite slow and weak and although it is widely recognized that the effectiveness of the security sector depends on accountability, programmes lack the necessary focus on making sure that civilians and civil society organisations can actually play the oversight role.

Our NGO calls on the international community to make sure that civil society is aware of the particular role it should play, is trained to understand SSR in their context and develops the right knowledge and skills to make security forces accountable. This people-centered approach is needed in order to develop an understanding of local communities’ security needs and priorities as well as the dynamics and trust or distrust in formal security actors.

In their cooperation with security institutions and support to SSR programmes, international donors should communicate the importance of enhancing SSG in order to make sure that the goal of developing effective, inclusive and accountable security institutions and contribute to international peace and security and sustainable development is achieved. Our NGO is convinced that developing programmes aiming at strengthening democratic oversight and control is the only way to ensure that rights and interest of the citizens but also of the people who are employed in the security sector are protected.

In order to achieve the objective of strengthening civil society’s oversight role, coherence and harmonization of donors policies is needed and unfortunately these are often not coordinated and sometimes even opposed (Wulf, 2004). Although at a conceptual and policy level there seem to be widespread agreement among the members of the international community on the basic elements of SSR, on the ground coherence among different stakeholders has been much less apparent (Bryden, 2015). Unfortunately, the lack of coordination and overlapping or contradictory mandates can easily result in a lack of clear priorities and in a lack of optimization of how resources are allocated. Clearly, the lack of coherence has translated into an incapacity of international donors to assist all stakeholders in reforming the security sector and in supporting the capacity building of civil society to play the oversight role.

In conclusion, investments in SSR should aim at enhancing SSG ad make sure that security institutions serve the interests of the population and enjoy the trust and confidence of the population. In order to achieve this objective, civil society must have the means and develop the capacity to monitor security forces and take part in the political debate on security policy and reform since the very early stage of the process (Department of criminology, 2015).

Postscript

It is generally acknowledged that good SSR has to do with “democratic forms of accountability, transparent decision-making processes and security apparatus that is fully subordinated under the control of a civilian authority” (Schroeder, 2010: 11).

Mark Sedra (2010: 6) identifies a number of key norms and fundamental principles of SSR according to which the participation of civil society organisations (being them media, human rights NGOs or grassroots organisations) exercise a control role on SSR policies and practices. Moreover institutional mechanisms should be created with a role of control over the way SSR is carried on in terms of human rights record and financial management.

There are different dimensions to a good SSR (local ownership, effectiveness, accountability and political sensitivity) but often the international community supporting SSR programmes prefers to concentrate on elements measurable in the short-term such as training and logistic support. Accountability is a difficult dimension to be measured and it requires work with security institutions to make sure that ownership of SSR is not only meant as elites’ ownership but also non-state actors and the wider society.

Engaging civil society in the security sector can prove to be difficult: in post-conflict environments civil-society can be quite weak and fragmented, it is not easy to identify who from civil society should take part in SSR programmes, civil society can often lack trust in the government and from the government. For all these reasons often donors find it difficult to concretise civil society participation in SSR. However better coordination and coherence of donor’s policies would be needed in order to develop programmes that focus on all stakeholders’ capacity building and that in turn, would enhance the participation of civil society in SSR at all levels.

Thoughts on governance in the security and defence sector

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This short paper aims to share few thoughts on governance issues in the security and defence sector based on my personal assessment of cote d’Ivoire. Transparency International published an outstanding index in 2013 (GI2013) by assessing corruption risks in the defence sector. The topics (themes) that I cover below, all come from that Index. One can easily apply the guidelines to any country and adapt them to the national reality.

1/ Legislative scrutiny over defence and security policies:

There is a formal provision for effective and independent legislative scrutiny of defence policy in Cote d’Ivoire (article 71 of constitution). However, in practice, that provision is insufficient because the national Defence Policy formulation process itself is not mentioned in the constitution as being part of the National Assembly (NA) mandate for scrutiny.

Indeed, Article 71 of the constitution stipulates that only “Military Personnel status”, “the Police status” and “Defence organization” are all subjected to the national assembly inputs. This is largely unsatisfactory and limits the action of the National Assembly.

The budget issue is also mentioned in that article 71, so it is the responsibility of the NA to vote the national defence budget before it is implemented. There is to this date no evidence of such vote for the past 4 years.

At last, despite the fact that the legislative scrutiny is referred to in the constitution, the influence of the NA on the defence policy formulation has always been very limited if not ineffective.

So as a general recommendation, legislative scrutiny over defence and security policies in any country is necessary and clearly proves a good level of transparency.

2/ Public debate over the defence policy:

Unfortunately, in cote d’Ivoire, the national defence policy is not debated and publicly available. One major reason for that is the opacity surrounding this issue. Moreover, a national security strategy has been adopted by the National council for Security (CNS). Unless this security policy is adopted by the national assembly, it will not be publicly available.

Therefore, one must admit that efforts have been made to bring issues related to national defence to the public.

The security sector reform is bringing the authorities to formally formulate a national defence policy which is inclusive and holistic. For instance, the national SSR strategy is available publicly and has been debated openly (all SSR actors participated) before being adopted. On the other hand, a public consultation (survey) has not been done to this end.

At last, the national assembly has not yet examined and passed the Law related to  the National Security and defence  Policy. This is due to the fact that this policy has not been made available to the national assembly.

As a general rule for a country to prove a certain level of transparency and good governance, it is critical to involve the public in the formulation of any defence or security policy through a public consultation (survey).

3/ Anti corruption policy dedicated to the defence and security sector:

Cote d’Ivoire has an openly stated general anti-corruption policy. Indeed, “the national plan for good governance and against corruption” and “the order N° 202013-660 of September 20th of 2013 about prevention and fight against corruption” are the main anti-corruption instruments.  They also apply to the military forces and the police.

However there is no openly stated and actively implemented anti-corruption policy towards the defence sector exclusively. “The military code “ does not specifically address corruption issues that might concern the soldier. In 2013, the Ministry of Defence initiated an Ethical Charter and a military code of conduct.  To this day there is no evidence of any of those two initiatives to be effectively adopted by the national assembly or any other institution. Nor are they publicly available. To this date the ministry of defence has arrested many soldiers involved in racketeering, extortion and fraud. Still efforts have to be made to implement the rules equally among soldiers involved in such crimes.

So in order to be effective, an anti-corruption policy must be clearly stated and strongly implemented.

4/ Whistleblowing as a solution to fight corruption:

Whistleblowing as a mean to fight corruption is more and more encouraged by the government. There is a law that protects whistleblowers from any type of threat (Order N°202013-660, chapter 3). This law applies to any citizen whether he belongs to the defence or the security ministries.

It is almost impossible to say whether this law offering protection is working in practice because security must prevail for any whitleblower. However, the chapter dedicated to this matter exists. The law has to be applied. Besides, the lack of trust among military personnel prevents any whistleblowing activity.

Whistleblowing as a mean to fight corruption in the security forces is a effective way provided there are clear guidelines and that allegations are not made on a subjective basis.

5/ Objective appointment and promotion within the security and defence forces:

The military personnel are unfortunately not subjected to an independent, transparent and objective appointment system in cote d’Ivoire. Nepotism and tribalism have for the past 3 years harmed the whole selection process for appointments in the military. Indeed, there is a committee in charge of appointments within the military but this committee lacks independence and transparency. Most of the time appointments will be made accordingly to political orders coming from above. Since the end of the crisis in 2011, tribal biased appointments have been denounced by international NGOs such as International Crisis Group and Amnesty International.

Regarding promotions, theoretically, military personnel are promoted through an objective and meritocratic process. Besides, within the defence and security institutions can be found specific committees in charge of assessing potential candidates for promotion, in conformity with the law and internal rules. However, political consideration and favoritism sometimes weaken the process. In many cases external institutions influence decisions made by those committees. So there is no independent oversight on this matter.

Appointment and promotion are key matters when it comes to governance in the defence and security sectors. So they both have to be tackled very seriously.Objectivity and merit must prevail in the decisions made. Moreover, mechanisms created to manage appointments and promotions must be independent.

6/ Defence purchases coherence with identified and quantified requirements:

In cote d’Ivoire, most of the defence purchases made do not derive from any coherent assessment mechanism. So there are no clearly identified and quantified requirements. For some specific security situations, needs are identified and purchases made. So it is more opportunistic than thoroughly planned. For instance the latest purchase of surveillance and war vessels in 2014, does not comply with the national security strategy or any other policy document. However these maritime acquisitions derive from the need to counter maritime piracy and to show neighbors the maritime capacity of cote d’ivoire in case of dispute or crisis.

Coherence and conformity must prevail when it comes to defence or security purchases because requirements exist within security and defence policies and acquisition laws and must be implemented as planned.