Crisis Prevention and Recovery

International Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Congress (ICIDDR)

Jordan Ryan, Assistant Administrator and Director, Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery, UNDP

6 May 2009, Cartagena, Colombia

Mr. President, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, dear friends,

On behalf of the United Nations Development Programme, I thank the Government of Colombia for hosting this important event and for giving us the opportunity to address this gathering.  This is an historic congress: indeed, it is the first time that so many national delegations, experts and practitioners from all continents meet to share country specific experiences on disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) in a global forum.

Let me begin with a true story.  I have just completed three years in Liberia’s UN Peacekeeping mission and while there I met many ex-combatants.. One was 25 year old Precious who had just graduated from a vocational training center in Monrovia.  President Johnson Sirleaf and I were at the ceremony, where approximately 300 young men and women had just learned essential skills in masonry, auto-mechanics, carpentry, tailoring, and other trades. After the ceremony, I asked Precious what skill she had learned.  “Auto-mechanics,” she replied with confidence.  I knew then that Precious had a chance of surviving as the trade she had learned was desperately needed in her community.  This, unfortunately, is not the case in many DDR programmes across the globe, where women are taught more traditional trades such as tailoring regardless of the economic needs at local level.

As many of you know, DDR is a highly political multi-dimensional process where former political/military belligerents have to work side by side, build trust in one another, and agree to disarm and return to civilian life. As our discussions have shown, DDR is not, and should never be understood simply as a technical exercise of disarming and demobilizing ex-combatants and associated groups. The challenge for us, as international actors, is to make sure that our support to national DDR processes is effectively contributing to move this political process forward.

A related issue is how we, as international actors, support and enhance genuine and broad national ownership of DDR processes. Our efforts depend on increasing the capacity of relevant national institutions well beyond central government. This is extremely challenging when supporting transitional governments that may lack legitimacy, highly contested political transitions, or fragmented societies and collapsed economies. Striking the right balance between supporting national ownership and strengthened national capacities and the pressure to ensure the rapid delivery of a DDR programme remains a challenge.  Nonetheless, it is key to achieve sustainable peace.

The UN has 20 years of experience in DDR work. We have enjoyed both successes, and we have made our share of mistakes along the way.   In these brief remarks, I have summarized three key lessons we have learned over the years:

Lesson 1: Together we can do so much more

We have learned the hard way that it is only when we work together and make the appropriate links with other actors and programmes that we can make a difference in people’s lives. 
Increasingly on DDR the UN is working to deliver as ONE.  The UN inter-agency working group (which comprises 17 UN agencies) has developed integrated DDR standards (IDDRS), as well as other guidance for UN DDR practitioners.

The UN system and UNDP have worked together with our government partners and bi-lateral donors as well as international financial institutions to collaborate in developing coherent approaches and responses to DDR needs.  We have invested considerable resources over the last years in developing integrated coordinated policies and operational guidance on all DDR issues across the UN system, and beyond, through our integrated mission planning process. Presently, all UN DDR missions are jointly planned by all relevant HQ organizations, with strong inputs from UN Country Teams.

The UN and UNDP are working in non-peacekeeping and peacekeeping contexts to synergize our human and financial resources to positively impact our DDR programming efforts.  For example, in Liberia, the UN Joint Employment and Empowerment of Young Women and Men programme, the UNDP Regional Programme for Social Cohesion and Youth Employment, the ILO and the UN Mission are all collaborating to provide sustainable employment opportunities for ex-combatants and other community members.   While we have undoubtedly made tremendous strides in our ability to ensure that our programmes are coherent, coordinated and driven by a common approach, much more work needs to be done in this area at country level.   

Lesson 2: Employment opportunities must be relevant at community level

As Precious’ story reminds us, vocational training is only successful when it is tailored to the local context.  In her case, the National DDRR Programme in Liberia, with UNDP support, had carefully researched local market economics to ensure that beneficiaries received training that reflected the economic needs at community level.  In fact, there were many cases in Liberia where a woman from a community with an abundance of tailors or cosmeticians was advised to pursue training in another trade that was economically viable.  Stereotypes did not get in the way.   Liberian women were trained in auto-mechanics, plumbing, motorbike repair and other “male” trades.   

Lesson 3: Invest in psycho-social counseling

While those who have witnessed the horrors of war may never forget, they must be given the opportunity to heal and empowered to face the future with confidence.  Psycho-social counseling is not only cost-effective; it reaps tremendous benefits as communities learn to trust each other again while adapting to the post-conflict environment.   When we seize the opportunity to reintegrate ex-combatants, we must ensure that we simultaneously empower them to contribute to their society’s peaceful development.   Doing so requires an investment in psycho-social counseling and the creation of a sense of responsibility among DDR beneficiaries.

CHALLENGES

These three lessons are key to any successful DDRR programme.  The key to our success, however, will depend on whether or not we address the extraordinary challenges of reintegration.   These can be summarized in three categories: i) linking reintegration to wider recovery efforts, with a specific focus on employment, income and livelihoods, ii) funding for reintegration, and iii) gender.

Employment, income, livelihoods

The sustainability of reintegration efforts depends upon the capacity of DDR programmes to link more creatively with broader recovery and development programmes, particularly those programmes that are focused on employment, income and livelihoods, and the delivery of basic services.

If our reintegration programmes cannot do a better job of providing alternative livelihoods for ex-combatants and actually offering them employment and income generation opportunities then our DDR efforts will ultimately fail. The UN, together with the World Bank, the IMF and the African Development bank has recently approved a new policy on employment generation, income creation and reintegration in post-conflict environments. As is the case with the IDDRS, the policy is good, and comprehensive, but the challenge remains to translate this policy into concrete programmes on the ground.

To enhance the prospects for sustainable reintegration the UN is increasingly linking its efforts to support the reintegration of ex-combatants and associated groups into broader national planning tools and development frameworks (e.g. joint assessments, PRSPs etc). However, more efforts are needed in this regard.

Funding for reintegration

Let me now turn to the issue of funding for DDR, and particularly the resources available for reintegration.  As you all know in peacekeeping contexts, the UN assessed budget can be used to fund disarmament, and demobilization activities, including reinsertion. However, reintegration activities are entirely dependent on voluntary contributions.  In non-peacekeeping contexts where most DDR programmes actually take place, the entire DDR process relies on voluntary contributions from donors. This was the case in Afghanistan, Kosovo and Central African Republic. And this is the key challenge for us all.

As a result of the lack of predictable funding, the shape, scope and sustainability of reintegration is too often determined by the availability of resources, rather than the reintegration requirements coming from thorough assessments.

Gender and DDR

Finally a few words about the gender dimensions of DDR and its importance for sustainable reintegration. Gender responsiveness is critical for the success of DDR programmes.  Currently our capacity to address the different vulnerabilities and needs of women and girls in DDR programmes is often not being met. The reason for this can range from lack of knowledge, resources or coordination during planning and implementation phases. Yet we know that women and girls can no longer be considered an afterthought.

The launch of the UN integrated DDR standards in December 2006 provided detailed gender-sensitive policies on DDR, but we still need to translate the policies into gender-responsive DDR programmes.   As for the valuable disaggregated data on age and sex that has been collected over the past few years by some programmes, it is often left unanalyzed, or if analyzed is disregarded, particularly during the crucial planning and design of reintegration.   

A piecemeal approach to the gender dimensions of DDR still prevails. Women’s specific needs, be it as ex-combatants, women associated with armed forces and groups or ex-combatants female dependents are often considered too costly or added too late to the process.   UNDP is committed to addressing these issues: reaching out to women through specific programmes such as the ones in the Republic of Congo and Indonesia/Aceh and conducting a special initiative to create positive alternatives to the use of violent behavior of male ex-combatants exemplify this approach.

CONCLUSION

As we have heard over the last few days, DDR remains one of the most challenging and complex issues that the UN and the international community are called upon to support in very different contexts around the world.  In the last two decades we have come a long way in enhancing our understanding of DDR.

Any DDR effort will always be at the intersection of stabilization, peacebuilding, recovery, reconciliation and longer-term development processes.  As a result we have to continually review how we undertake DDR, so that we can learn from our shortcomings, implement corrective measures, and become better at fulfilling our mandate.  Events such as this Congress are thus important for our collective learning and for improving our work on the ground.

I thank you for joining us in Cartagena this week and for contributing to the richness of our discussions.   All of us here know the responsibility we have of getting it right.  Ex-combatants like Precious are counting on us, and we cannot afford to fail.

Thank you.