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Armed Violence Reduction – Between Disarmament and

Development?

Dr. Fouzieh Melanie AlamirHead of Competence Center „Security Sector“, GIZ

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AVR is a highly generic concept

• Armed violence hampers development in many dimensions

• By the same token, development instruments have important contributions to make in helping reduce armed violence

• But that does not necessarily mean that armed violence reduction (AVR) can serve as a handy concept to be operationalized by development practitioners

• From a development perspective, the phenomenon of armed violence is so multifaceted that it requires a highly differentiated approach depending on the respective nature of armed violence

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Armed violence in the context of acute conflicts and war

• Armed violence as a result of conflicts and war in itself is a complex phenomenon

• Violence among militant adversaries in acute situations of fighting can hardly be addressed by development instruments at all

• Development approaches vis-à-vis armed violence against the civilian population by regular or irregular combatants are rather limited to ex-post and curative measures (e.g. work with refugees, victims of sexual violence)

• A lever for development instruments is to work on conflicts via mediation and confidence building measures, but requires a minimum level of political willingness of combatants to sit and talk

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Armed violence in the context of peacebuilding processes

• From a development perspective, armed violence in this context is primarily a governance issue and is tackled by a wide array of measures to support institution building processes and strengthening of good governance, such as judicial reforms, security system reforms, and organizational development in all facets

• In addition, development actors can contribute to DDR, SALW control, and illicit trafficking, e.g. by strengthening capacities of responsible institutions, setting standards, ensuring diligent processes

• Moreover, development cooperation can tackle cognitive and normative dispositions in a society by peace education, reconciliation, transitional justice in order to reduce the likelihood of a resort to violence

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Armed violence in fragile contexts

• Armed violence in fragile contexts is an indicator of state fragility, be it armed violence exercised by irregular groups that undermine the state monopoly of power, or the large-scale domestic use of armed violence by security forces

• As in peacebuilding contexts, armed violence in fragile countries is primarily a governance issue and is primarily tackled by development contributions to justice and security sector reforms as well as measures against illicit trafficking

• Indirectly, all development instruments that support the strengthening of government institutions, good governance, or economic development can contribute to diminishing the likelihood of outbreak of violence

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Criminal armed violence

• Criminal armed violence is often a result of state fragility. In this case the development instruments mentioned above come to bear

• In non-conflict and not fragile environments, criminal armed violence is considered to be a challenge for law enforcement agencies in conjunction with education and social policy instruments; usually this does nit fall into the realm of development policy

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Interpersonal armed violence

• Interpersonal armed violence may occur in all contexts

• While development instruments can address institutional (law enforcement), policy (governance) and social (conflict resolution mechanisms) factors, it fails to tackle psychological factors

• In non-conflict and not fragile environments, interpersonal armed violence is considered to be a task for law enforcement agencies in conjunction with education, social policy and psychological instruments, where development policy is no assigned actors

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Simultaneity of different phenomena of armed violence

• A specific challenge, particularly of many peacebuilding processes or fragile contexts, is that different phenomena of armed violence (conflict driven, criminal, or interpersonal violence) occur at the same time, are often hard to differentiate and sometimes interdependent

• Against this background, development programs are unlikely to address armed violence in general, but rather tackle specific phenomena separately with tailormade concepts and approaches

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Conclusions

• AVR is too broad a concept to be of added value for operational development programming

• It is rather specific conflicts or issues such as DDR, community policing, SSR, gang and youth violence, illicit trafficking, or the like, where development programs can make a contribution to addressing these specific phenomena of armed violence

• Mainstreaming AVR as a general orientation into development programming is therefore not recommended, as it is rather understood as a sub-issue of conflict, peace and security which have been largely mainstreamed

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Conclusions

• In practical terms, the collaboration between development and security actors is less complicated than often assumed, if there is a clear common objective and a political will to pursue a joint approach

• Speaking from a GIZ background of experience, the collaboration with other departments and actors has not been a major problem at the operational level

• It is rather the lack of strategic, cross-sectoral political objectives and approaches at the politico-strategic level, both nationally and internationally, which have hampered more comprehensive solutions in addressing armed violence phenomena

• In order to answer the question in the title as to whether AVR is a matter between disarmament and development, I’d rather say it is an issue at the interface of security policy and development policy which needs to be broken down to concepts and approaches addressing specific phenomena of armed violence