Security Sector Reform--Good Practices and Lessons Learned

The Stimson Center just released a repository of good practices in security sector reform. It includes 7 governments, 11 international organizations, and several dozens NGOs and think tanks. Built for the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations' Office of Rule of Law and Security Institutions (DPKO OROLSI), it is meant to serve as the basis for developing more formal UN guidance and policy on SSR.

The repository (and excel doc) is a matrix with about 900 SSR activities which are cross-referenced over 190 documents for six functional areas of SSR. The functional areas are:

• defense sector reform
• doing SSR in stabilization environments
  
• threat assessments and reviews
• national security strategies and policies
• governance and oversight of the security sector, and
  
• management of the security sector.

It also includes a section on cross-cutting issues in SSR (for example local ownership). The matrix is divided into two sheets, one for official government and international organization sources, the other for scholars and researchers. When possible, the matrix provides links to the publicly available documents. The matrix is also paginated--meaning if a particular activity in SSR is of interest, you can quickly see which documents discuss that issue.