Publication

Security Sector Reform (SSR) is now widely recognized as a crucial part of any conflict intervention or post-conflict reconstruction project. This paper argues that the limited success of human rights training as part of SSR is a result not (only) of failures to teach human rights or build requisite systems of accountability, but rather of a fundamental need to reconceive what respecting human rights involves. Reform efforts need to treat human rights compliance as the effect of rebuilt, mutually respectful, practical social relationships, not as external standards to which compliance is secured by exhortation or incentive.