Robert Muggah

No Magic Bullet: A Critical Perspective on Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) and Weapons Reduction in Post-conflict Contexts

The end of war does not necessarily signal a return to security. The introduction of a ceasefire, peace agreement or even discrete interventions seeking to disarm warring parties, does not necessarily guarantee improvements in the safety of either civilians or former combatants. In fact, many so-called ‘post-conflict’ environments yield even more direct and indirect threats to civilians than the ‘armed conflicts’ that preceded them. The ‘post-conflict’ designation unhelpfully disguises a vast array of real and perceived threats facing most societies emerging from war, as protracted violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Sudan and the Great Lakes of Africa so painfully attests. The hubris that once accompanied the signing of peace accords and the transition to ‘post-conflict reconstruction’ has now been replaced by a more weary kind of pessimism.

Context matters: interim stabilisation and second generation approaches to security promotion

The scale and ferocity of post-war violence regularly confounds the expectations of security and development specialists. When left unchecked, mutating violence can tip ‘fragile’ societies back into all out warfare. In the context of formal peace support operations, conventional security promotion efforts are routinely advanced to prevent this from happening. These include disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) and wider security system/sector reform (SSR). There are also lesser known but no less important interventions to promote security that deviate from—but also potentially reinforce and enhance—DDR and SSR. Faced with dynamic post-war contexts, erstwhile warring parties, peace mediators and practitioners have crafted a host of innovative and experimental security promotion initiatives designed to mitigate risks and symptoms of post-war violence including interim stabilisation measures and second generation DDR. Drawing on a growing evidence base, the article sets out a host of contextual determinants that shape the character and effectiveness of security promotion on the ground. It then issues a typology of emergent practices—some that occur before, during and after DDR and SSR interventions. Taken together, they offer a fascinating new research agenda for those preoccupied with post-war security promotion.

The Anatomy of Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration in the Republic of Congo

This analysis begins with a general account of the political and humanitarian context of the Republic of Congo (RoC) before and after the signing of the Ceasefire Accords in 1999. In laying out the general context of the violence, it also briefly describes a number of interventions undertaken by the Government of Congo (GoC) and the international community to promote and ensure security. It reflects on the considerable confusion among stakeholders over the definitions, objectives and sequencing of each phase, from disarmament and demobilisation to reintegration (DDR)—a challenge not unique to actors in the RoC. This article offers a tentative glossary of terms to inform future efforts in the domain of DDR and closes with a consideration of the impacts and roles of key stakeholders in the DDR continuum, and some of the challenges they might face in the future.

Transforming Our World: Implementing the 2030 Agenda Through Sustainable Development Goal Indicators.

Abstract The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development recognizes violence as a threat to sustainability. To serve as a context, we provide an overview of the Sustainable Development Goals as they relate to violence prevention by including a summary of key documents informing violence prevention efforts by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Violence Prevention Alliance (VPA) partners. After consultation with the United Nations (UN) Inter-Agency Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators (IAEG-SDG), we select specific targets and indicators, featuring them in a summary table. Using the diverse expertise of the authors, we assign attributes that characterize the focus and nature of these indicators. We hope that this will serve as a preliminary framework for understanding these accountability metrics. We include a brief analysis of the target indicators and how they relate to promising practices in violence prevention.

Rethinking small arms control in Africa: it is time to set an armed violence reduction agenda : Analysis

Policy-makers and practitioners concerned with small arms control have traditionally focused narrowly on ‘supply-side’ forms of regulation and containment. Concerned that excessive arms availability might destabilise fragile and post-war countries, they typically advance a host of activities such as weapons embargoes, export and import controls, disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration programmes and weapons collection schemes. These initiatives often achieve fewer dividends than expected. This article argues for a broader conceptualisation of ‘availability’ that accounts for both supply and demand dimensions. Availability would thus extend from arms production and diverse forms of weapons circulation to the manifold factors shaping acquisition and the multiple ways arms are used and misused. A broad spectrum treatment directly acknowledges the many faces of armed violence and allows for more sophisticated diagnosis, treatment and cure. This article considers how a host of ‘second generation’ armed violence prevention and reduction activities might enhance efforts to promote security in the aftermath of Africas wars.

The enemy within: rethinking arms availability in sub-Saharan Africa

Over the past decade small arms and light weapons availability has been singled out as one of sub-Saharan Africas highest profile challenges. Yet the construction of the threat of arms availability as one of authorised trade and illicit trafficking across international borders has resulted in a narrow focus on regulating lawful exports and imports and brokers. While these are real and legitimate concerns, the authors contend that small arms and light weapons availability should be re-evaluated as a complex social phenomenon involving dynamic supply and demand dimensions. A limited emphasis on controlling authorised transfers to war zones glosses over the challenges of illegal markets, the gradual emergence of national arms production capacities across Africa and the systematic diversion of weapons and ammunition surplus from the domestic stocks of security services into civilian hands. It also obscures a more dynamic landscape of armed violence across the continent which extends beyond war zones. Whilst the conventional interpretation of arms availability is favoured by African diplomats and international arms control experts, such a reading potentially obscures the weaknesses of security governance and the myriad motivations and means shaping small arms and light weapons acquisition and misuse amongst armed groups and civilians.

Partner or Perish: Reviewing Public-Private Partnerships for Return and Resettlement of IDPs in Colombia

The following article was generated out of an urgent need to document new and innovative ways of addressing conflict-induced displacement (CID) in a politicised forum of increasing violence and incremental policy change. Drawn from interviews and field visits in three states of Colombia, the article elaborates a provisional model that systematises general trends and obstacles encountered by public and private actors seeking to form partnerships in involuntary relocation processes. The model demonstrates the importance of bottom-up processes and the need for leadership, flexibility, transparency and trust between and among public and private actors. It also shows that even as the coalescing of genuine partnerships requires time, relocation activities must be executed expeditiously.