Publication

This paper discusses efforts to construct or reconstruct the security sector in post-conflict environments. It examines such efforts in six countries where severe conflict led to significant international engagement: Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Haiti, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, and East Timor. The author identifies various critical factors in shaping the outcome of reconstruction efforts, and evaluates them from several perspectives. He observes that external actors have tended to take a limited and unbalanced approach to the security sector, focusing on building the efficiency of statutory security actors, and neglecting the development of managerial and governance capacity.