Introduction to the DDR Forum: Rethinking the Reintegration of Former Combatants

Abstract

Over the past two decades, international efforts to support the socio-economic adjustment of ex-combatants to the uncertain and often messy realities of postwar situations, have presented donor countries, NGOs and international organizations with complex, often formidable, institutional and logistical challenges. Many of these have been exhaustively and often expertly covered in the still burgeoning literature on disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR). While they continue to merit scholarly and policy attention, the underlying focus of this special issue of International Peacekeeping is less on what we in the past have referred to as the mechanics of DDR -that is, how best to plan, organize, coordinate and fund DDR activities -than on the context and politics of reintegrating ex-combatants following protracted periods of armed conflict and civil war.1 In part this focus is justified by a simple desire to redress an imbalance in writings on DDR: a large of body of literature, prescriptive and policyoriented in character, already exists dealing with the mechanics of DDR activities; much less has been devoted to issues of political context and processes. More fundamentally, it stems from a concern with the tendency -naturally encouraged by too heavy a focus on the nuts and bolts of operations -to treat the challenges of DDR largely as problems of effective delivery, abstracted from any specific historical and political frame of reference. This is no trivial or purely academic concern. The fact remains that decision-makers and practitioners in donor countries and international organizations have not departed fundamentally from what is essentially a managerial or technocratic approach to DDR, that is, from an approach that, almost by definition, remains divorced from a deeper engagement with the political, historical and cultural setting and dynamics of individual conflicts. One consequence of this, as Sabiiti Mutengesa perceptively observes in his reassessment of DDR in Uganda in the 1990s, is that 'the utility and efficacy of DDR' are overstated while the 'actual dynamics of protracted conflicts in less developed conflicts' are downplayed.2 As the contributions to this special issue show, the reintegration of ex-combatants following bloody and disruptive civil war has taken a variety of different forms. The extent to which any of these has proved effective and sustainable has depended much less on adherence to a fixed formula drawing on 'best practices' than on innovative, often pragmatic, solutions rooted in an understanding of conflict dynamics and wider political circumstances. 3 The immediate background to the project, which began back in 2005, was the fact that DDR had by this time become a key component of nearly all large-scale peace operations (whether under the auspices of the UN or regional organizations), and that involvement in DDR had become a central activity for development agencies and armed forces in leading donor countries, as well as for UN agencies and the Bretton Woods institutions...

Local Understandings of Disarmament-Demobilization-Reintegration (DDR): Former Combatants’ Perspectives on DDR in Colombia

“…Negotiating parties may have different understandings of the disarmament and reintegration process, depending on their local positions regarding the conflict and their expectations from the peace process. The local political, historical, and cultural setting of conflicts require that we shift focus from the mechanics of such processes to local dynamics and perceptions of local actors and groups (Berdal and Ucko, 2013). The position of the negotiating parties is expected to be shaped by domestic interests and the domestic political context.…”

Needs vs expediency: Poverty reduction and social development in post-conflict countries

“…Ex-combatants, as well as others with little to lose in taking up arms, are also potential spoilers. Thus, peacekeeping and stabilization efforts prioritize DDR (Hagmann and Hoehne 2009;Berdal and Ucko 2013) and may pay particular attention to young men and their employment (Berman et al 2011). This is in contrast to the greater focus on women and children that may follow from a needs-based approach.…”

Invisible Labour: The Political Economy of Reintegration in South Sudan

“…For some critical observers, vocational training persists because it is what donors and implementing actors know and are willing to fund, and it therefore involves little risk (McMullin 2013, 190-2). Despite the abundant literature on lessons to be learned from previous DDR processes there is little evidence that DDR programmes actually produce the desired outcomes (Schulhofer-Wohl and Sambanis 2010; Dudwick et al 2013) and important loopholes and gaps remain, in particular concerning the mechanisms at stake in successful social and economic reintegration of former combatants (Berdal and Ucko 2013;Bowd and Ozerdem 2013;McMullin 2013;Munive 2013;Podder 2012Podder , 2013.…”