Rebuilding security in a failed or post-conflict area is far from being an easy task. Security reforms have to be undertaken in a way that strengthens the social and political order. Weak security reforms linked to a poor strategy of implementation and control can lead to another failure of the area. The absence of effective and democratic governance of the security sector can be a significant casual factor of failure and conflict(53).
Rebuilding security means dealing with four groups of actors that are: the armed forces and the police forces that represent the core security actors; the management and oversight bodies consisted of the executive and legislative authorities, the financial management bodies and the civil society organizations; the justice and the rule of law institutions; and finally the non-statutory forces that are the private organizations, the ethnic militias, liberation army and political party militias(54). Working with all these actors, the security reforms try to provide the government with the necessary efficient and effective instruments in order to ensure the public security of citizens and the state. Therefore, the respect of the human rights, the rule of law and a democratic control must prevail.
In other words, security challenges in a post-conflict area deal directly with the responsibility of the state to protect their citizens and so to re-establish the sovereignty of the state. Sovereignty means the capacity of a state to protect the citizens against extreme abuse of human rights, internal and external threats(55). In failed states, the responsibility to protect represents a major concern of the international community and it places this concern at the top of their priorities; without this security reforms, the other factors of the rebuilding process have no chance to be reached(56).
Furthermore, Nicole Ball’s analysis on security reforms gives some important guidelines in the road of a successful process. These guidelines deal with the development of a local ownership, monitoring about the politics of reforms, decentralisation of the capacity to secure, a well understanding of the local and cultural context and finally a framework which copes with regional and national issues(57). This analysis deals directly with an important point that is the establishment of a subnational decision-making process or in other words, subnational governance. So, rebuilding security is not easy but necessary in order to realize the other challenges, namely the economic challenges.
53 Jake Sherman, Strengthening security sector governance in West Africa, Center on International Cooperation, New York University, 2009.
54 OECD, Security System Reform and Governance, DAC Guidelines and Reference Series, Paris: OECD 2005, pp. 20-21.
55 David Chadler, R2P or not R2P? More State Building, Less Responsibility, Global Responsibility to protect 2 161-166, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2010.
56 David Chadler, The responsibility to protect? Imposing the ‘Liberal Peace’, International Peacekeeping, 11:1,
59 – 81, 2007.
57 Nicole Ball, Strengthening Democratic Governance of the Security Sector in Conflict-Affected Countries, Vol 25, Public Administration and Development, pp. 25-38, 2005.