Synthesis of Lessons

While background research can help SSR practitioners prepare for a project or mission, team members with extensive local knowledge - ideally nationals - can provide not only a better understanding of the context, but also aid in partnership building and logistics. All team members need to be reputable and perceived as neutral to those undertaking the reform process; however, this should be addressed more explicitly with regard to local or regional team members due to their increased proximity to the process being supported.

Impact

Action Steps

• Prioritize strong knowledge and experience of local context when selecting teams
• Aim for team members that are nationals; if that is not possible, relevant regional skills could be useful
• Include cultural briefings as part of the teams' preparatory activities before deployment on the field

It is often assumed that local team members for a mission or a project have the resources and capacity to keep up with intense project work schedules filled with many interviews and working sessions. In 20% of the Lessons Identified reports, an over-estimation of local partners’ capacity created a challenge. It was also noted that this problem can occur even when constraints, such as poor transportation and infrastructure, are addressed during project design. If a team member has been seconded by a national institution, they often still have to perform their normal job functions while also contributing to the project or mission. Local team members, for various reasons, may not always inform internationals about their availability or logistical restraints, so it is important for internationals to clarify these issues through an open discussion early in the project and develop mitigating strategies.       

Impact

If logistical, professional and personal constraints of the local partners are not factored in the mission's or project's implementation plan, their engagement would be negatively impacted. This would undermine the local ownership of the process. An unanticipated imbalance between the limitations and enabling factors for international and national stakeholders' engagement, would lead to an imbalance in relations and roles between the two parties.

Action Steps

• Include national counterparts in the palnning of a mission or project, informing them of the agenda, planned activities and methodologies. This will enable teams to understand and factor in the available capacities on the international and national sides, allocating responsibilities accordingly.

Many lesson contributors noted that when forming project teams, over-emphasis on recruiting the right technical expertise (police or military personnel for example) can result in insufficient focus on the necessary ‘process’ or programme management skills, such as assessments, planning, change management, and M&E. This issue was also a central topic in a recent expert panel discussion hosted by ISSAT.

The lessons also recommend thinking through different disciplines that can inform a team’s research and data gathering, such as economics, sociology, and anthropology.

Impact

While no assessment, review, or evaluation will paint a complete picture of a situation it is trying to capture, sufficient time should be invested into capturing as detailed a picture as possible. As Dr. Mallika Joseph from the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies describes it, investing more time in an assessment can lead to fewer mistakes during programme implementation.

This might mean that the team needs to review the allocated time with the donor during the planning phase once initial analysis has been undertaken.

Action Steps

• After initial scoping and analysis of data, assessment teams should discuss priorisation processes and time allocation with donors for managing expectations and realistic decision-making.

SSR processes usually take place in politically-charged environments such as post-conflict or transitional countries. They are also linked to high-level political governance structures. SSR activities whether mostly technical and limited in scope (trainings, briefings, etc.) or strategic and wide in scope (national security design, army restructuring, etc.) touch upon the distribution and balance of power in a country.

This might cause expected and unexpected political repercussions which should be anticipated when planning an activity. 

As an example several projects highlighted that while transparent communications is important to a programme, the release of assessment findings or programme design recommendations to relevant stakeholders should be done early enough to have adequate time for managing (and waiting for) feedback, political clearance and buy-in.

Timelines in programme planning need to incorporate inputs from local partners on when they can realistically accomplish certain tasks based on time and resource constraints and other commitments. Remembering that inclusive invariably requires engagement outside of teh capital. A locally driven process can be slow, frustrating, and it might fail. However, if adequate time is not allowed for a locally driven process, then failure becomes an even greater possibility.

 Lessons have shown that new concepts introduced into an already-established national process may seem like an irrelevant interruption to nationals, or worse, an undermining of work already underway. To mitigate such a negative reaction, first, assess whether the introduction of a new concept truly adds value to a process that is underway and assess the adverse effect of not introducing the concept. If there is value added, then be sure to develop a communications strategy to convey why new concepts are being introduced and what the benefits are compared to the costs of interrupting the workflow. Empathise with your counterparts and do not just presume a rational explanation will suffice to bring them on board. Take into consideration that you are not the first international to present new concepts and approaches and ensure that there is sufficient commitment on behalf of the donor to see the changes through the process of their conception, communication and adoption.

Impact

The concepts of security , state , institutions , and population and the relationships among them are different in different cultural and linguistic contexts. "Politique de defence"  across the Francophone world might not be restricted to the military dimension but also include what the Anglophones would call security. Still, different usages of both terms can be observed across different francophone countries in Europe and Africa. While some have adopted a more flexible approach and use both terms security and defence others have maintained the umbrella term of politique de defence . In each case the same term might refer to different aspects of the security system. Experience has shown that they need to be redefined on case-by-case basis.

Germanophones for example use one word to refer to "security" and "safety".

Action Steps

• Initial analysis must include a mapping and study of the terminology used in the country and to what aspects of the reform it refers to
• Ensure a thorough contextual analysis is undertaken first, to avoid the introduction of inappropriate ideas, especially in the case of western concepts which practitioners can sometimes assume to be the answer. 
• Do not introduce new concepts to accomodate easy reference for international stakeholders.
• Introduce new concepts only after their value added has been clearly identified as important to the process and outweighs the risks of creating confusion or a layer of information foreign to the local community

When conducting a programme that introduces a new concept, try to develop the methodology based around the complexity of the concept and utilise, where possible, existing structures or institutions. This may mean planning additional time or phases of a project to accommodate different levels of capacity to absorb and apply new concepts. Even for highly skilled local and international partners, some concepts may involve a steep learning curve, and rushing a concept’s implementation before it has been properly absorbed may undermine local ownership.

Lesson contributors recommend being creative when considering capacity building approaches and trying to develop innovative approaches, of a more learning-by-doing, to be as a complement or alternative to traditional stand-alone training sessions. While standalone sessions can be useful to introduce new concepts, they often don’t sufficiently address local needs and objectives or enable robust methods of evaluating impact.

Impact

Several lessons identified reports emphasised the importance of building local partner capacity during assessments or programme design, even if that is not a stated objective of the project. As one lesson framed this approach, "Assessments should not be considered as only extracting information, but can also provide a valuable capacity-building experience".

Impact

If capacity building is a secondary project objective, short-term missions supporting these projects could focus efforts on stakeholders who are most likely to be engaged in the reform process on the medium to long term and who are in the appropriate position for quick absorbtion of new concepts and practices for later dissemination among wider circles of stakeholders.

This should not be done on the detriment of the universal and nation-wide aspect of the project's main activities. The risk here would be to plunge it into an elite-focused ownership.  Targeting appropriate agents to act as multipliers for acquired knowledge should be done while being aware that it is only a measure to mitigate the limited impact of short term interventions but not to undermine the universal and national aspect of SSR processes.