A Women’s Guide to Security Sector Reform seeks to encourage and empower women to take part in shaping and transforming the security sector in their communities and countries. Even if they have not formally studied security, women often have essential knowledge of community security needs, and have an important contribution to make to security sector reform (SSR).

On 2-4 May 2012, the Centre for Strategic Studies (CSS) at the University of Botswana hosted a SADSEM/DCAF Security, Defence and Gender Training and Education Workshop. The workshop brought together seven Southern African Defence and Security Management (SADSEM) network institutions, DCAF and several local gender resource persons. The eighteen workshop participants initiated a process to review and adjust SADSEM’s training curriculum for their executive short courses on security and defence issues in order to ensure that it incorporates gender issues.

For women and girls, gender-sensitive legislation is one of the greatest gateways to security and improved status within society. Outdated legal frameworks, discriminatory legislation, and inaccessible justice systems are just some of the issues women and girls contend with the world over. In the case of the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), the legal framework has yet to adapt to contemporary developments. The history of the region can be read in the current legislation, which is a patchwork of laws from various current and historical administrations.

Intervening states apply different approaches to the use force in war-torn countries. Calibrating the use of force according to the situation on the ground requires a convergence of military and police roles: soldiers have to be able to scale down, and police officers to scale up their use of force. In practice, intervening states display widely differing abilities to demonstrate such versatility. This paper argues that these differences are shaped by how the domestic institutions of sending states mediate between demands for versatile force and their own intervention practices.

Hosted by the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy Studies (CEDHD) and the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF), the conference focussed on developing national security policies in North-West Africa, under the title “Integrating Human Security into National Security Policies in North-West Africa”. The event took place in Rabat 23-24 November 2010 and brought together high-ranking representatives from Algeria, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco and Senegal as well as a number of international experts.

Introduction

Kristin Valasek

DCAF Special Programmes announces the release of the Gender Self-Assessment Guide for the Police, Armed Forces and Justice Sector . This is a tool to help security sector institutions become more gender responsive.

A gender responsive security sector institution:

• Is more effective in meeting the needs of communities

• Is a more productive work environment

• Has stronger accountability structures

• Enjoys higher public trust and improved cooperation, and increased national, regional and international standing

Dear friends and colleagues,

DCAF is pleased to announce the launch of the French version of the Gender and Security Sector Reform Training Resource Package.

Developed as a companion to the Gender and SSR Toolkit, the Gender and SSR Training Resource Package is a series of practical training materials to help trainers to integrate gender perspectives into SSR training, and to deliver effective gender training to security sector audiences.

Achieving local ownership is crucial for the success of justice reform programmes as part of international rule of law assistance and security sector reform (SSR) activities. This paper examines and compares the UN approaches to and experiences with local ownership in its efforts to reform the justice system in Kosovo and in Liberia. It thereby seeks to foster a better understanding of the concept and its implementation in practice.