Nicole Ball

The handbook has been produced by a collaborative effort among researchers and practitioners across Africa. It provides guidance on undertaking a process of security-sector transformation consistent with democratic governance principles and a human security agenda. It is primarily intended for security-sector practitioners both in the security organisations and among the civil authorities charged with managing and monitoring the activities of the security organisations. It is secondarily intended to assist policy makers, civil society, and those agencies that provide financial and technical support to efforts to strengthen security-sector governance in understanding the issues involved in a transformation process.

Democratically governed security and justice sectors are a core objective of the Security Sector Development (SSD) agenda. But few such programmes put governance front and centre.

The Burundi-Netherlands Security Sector Development Programme has broken new ground in the promotion of democratic security sector development. It has begun to break down barriers to security-sector secrecy, increase dialogue on governance aspects, enhance security-sector accountability to civil authorities and its adherence to (inter)national law, although many hurdles still remain.

It has achieved these results by proactively addressing the politics of change at all levels and on a daily basis, establishing results progressively, prioritizing the gradual development of national ownership and matching timeframe with ambition and environment, recognizing that small steps can be important milestones in countries setting out along the road to democratic governance.

In this report, senior visiting fellow Nicole Ball of Clingendael's Conflict Research Unit analyzes the Dutch SSD program in Burundi, its governance achievements and its challenges going forward.

This document is a review of security and justice sector reform (SJSR) programmes and lessons learned from 2001 to 2005 that were part of DFID's Africa Conflict Prevent Pool (ACPP). The programmes were reviewed based on the criteria of coherence, effectiveness, and impact.