QCEA: Intergroup on Peace Initiatives - Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration

The Meeting was attended by a number of MEPs, MEP’s Assistants and representatives of NGOs working in the field of Conflict Prevention. It was chaired by Tobias Pflüger, Co-President of the Intergroup for Peace Initiatives.

The speakers were:

Inger Buxton, European Commission, DG Relex
Domenico Rosa and Rory Keane, European Commission, DG Development
Lulsegged Abebe, International Alert
Wolf Christian Paes, Bonn International Centre for Conversion

What is DDR?

DDR (Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration) is a process in post conflict situations where people involved in the conflict are reintegrated into the civilian community. It must form part of a Security Sector Reform to be effective because when former combatants are demobilized and when civilian populations are asked to reintegrate them into the community, then security has to be guaranteed through means of a properly structured and governed security sector.

DDR as a process is often part of a peace agreement and the detail of how it is to be implemented will usually be part of peace negotiations.

DDR is funded through external donors, where funds are put into an international Trust Fund which is often managed by the World Bank or the UNDP and they also arrange for the implementation on the ground.

EU involvement

The three speakers from the European Commission explained the involvement of the EU in such processes. Often, and particularly in the past, this has been primarily as a major donor. The EU has contributed significant sums to such programmes in the Greater Great Lakes Region and in Liberia, and to a lesser extent in Cambodia, Colombia, Guatemala, Eritrea, Sierra Leone, Namibia, Djibouti, and Guinea Conacry.

More recently, the European Commission, through the Rapid Reaction Mechanism (RRM) is contributing to DDR in Aceh; this intervention is being undertaken in parallel with an ESDP Monitoring Mission there. The ESDP Mission is monitoring the demobilisation/troop withdrawal and the RRM is funding a reintegration programme delivered by the IOM.

Funding for DDR from the European Commission comes through both longer term external assistance programmes and through the RRM.

The Greater Great Lakes DDR programme (Multi-country Demobilisation and Reintegration Programme) is the first programme where the European Commission is involved in a project which addresses DDR on a regional rather than sub-regional basis. This is the result of lessons learnt from other programmes which were undertaken on a sub-regional basis.

The EU, although a major donor in such programmes, does get involved in the management of programmes through engagement with the management structures put in place by the lead agencies.

Experience in Liberia

Lulsegged Abebe of International Alert gave a presentation of the reality of DDR on the ground in Liberia. There have been two successive DDR process there, one in 1996/7 and the other in 2003/4.

He described how the implementation of DDR in a situation where the conflict is not confined to one country and where borders are porous is made more difficult by the movement of people.

He also indicated that the information about the number of people to be disarmed and/or demobilised is not necessarily clear at the outset and not necessarily accurate. When individuals are given cash-incentives for participating in the programme (sometimes without even having to hand in actual weapons) the numbers become even more volatile.

Where the cash incentives vary between neighbouring countries, the picture becomes even more blurred.

In Liberia, in the second of the DDR programmes, some 102 000 people were demobilised during 3 phases of the programme. During the same three phases of the programme, only 22 737 weapons were collected. There is an obvious mismatch between these figures which can be explained both by the fact that not all those demobilised gave up weapons and by the fact that some may not have been ex-combatants, i.e. they had not weapons to begin with.

However, it is also very likely that some of the demobilised ex-combatants retained some weapons which can then circulate in the area (both in Liberia and neighbouring countries) where they can continue to fuel violence.

Funding for DDR programmes have, in the past, proved insufficient. As a result, the reintegration part of the programme lags behind or is lost on the way. However, without proper reintegration, the demobilisation can only ever have short term impact.

Some Critical Reflections and Recommendations for Future Programmes

Wolf Christian Paes from the Bonn International Centre for Conversion then provided some critical reflections both from his own experience on the ground and in the context of the experience related by Lulsegged Abebe.

There is a problem with the way such programmes are funded. The funding can be described as a sort of ‘pay as you go’ system. Work is done whilst funding is available and when it runs out activity stops until more funding is identified. This leads to funding gaps which in turn leads to breaks in programmes which can only work if they are undertaken on an ongoing basis. One of the problems with funding is that DDR is not seen as a ‘sexy’ programme, partly because it can be interpreted as assisting the perpetrators.
More recent DDR programmes have been based on financial incentives for individuals participating in the programme. Beyond that, they are given specific promises with regard to reintegration, even where such promises can’t be kept. The management of expectations and disappointment then becomes a problem.
There is sometimes a disconnect between demobilisation and disarmament. In other words, many of the people in the programmes are not really ex-combatants. This means that the case load anticipated is much smaller than the case load in the field; the programmes are unable in terms of finance and human resources to deal with this.
Some of the programmes are run through multi-donor trust funds managed by the World Bank or UNDP. Some of the major donors (including EU Member States) have questioned the management of these trust funds and prefer to engage in bilateral funding of programmes. The two types of programmes are not always well coordinated. Sometimes especially the reintegration part of such programmes are not well structured, put out to tender and money awarded to almost any proposal that comes in even if it is not well thought out.
Reintegration projects (particularly employment projects) are not well suited to the employment/labour market or the economy in the country. Many such projects focus on training people in computer technology and similar trades with little emphasis on agriculture and other trades which would be more appropriate in rural areas without access to electricity.
The ability of donors and implementing agencies to learn lessons from previous programmes is limited in practice.

Wolf Christian Paes then went on to make a number of recommendations:

There should be no cash payouts to ex-combatants, and if they were completely unavoidable, they should be restricted to cash for actual weapons handed over.
Programmes should be fully funded to allow continuous running of the programme.
The EU and its Member States should be more proactive in designing DDR programmes. He conceded that this was improving as evidenced by the Greater Great Lakes programme.
Reintegration should be community based rather than aimed at individuals because it is more cost-effective, because it is politically more effective and because it allows both perpetrators and victims of the violence to be included.
Regional conflicts and regional post conflict situations need to be addressed with regional responses – i.e. as in the case of the Greater Great Lakes programme rather than as in Liberia.
Security Sector Reform and DDR need to be integrated with each other to ensure that the situation after DDR is one in which all of the population can feel safe.
The process of learning lessons from past programmes must be more effective.

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