Despite billions spent on defence reform globally, policymakers lack the tools and methodology to accurately assess “the state of the defense sector in a given country, to provide them with a systematic way of determining a country’s capabilities to achieve various security goals [...] or to monitor the success of defense sector programs over time.” 
SSR Blog
Yearly Archive
Year | 2010
RAND report introduces Defense Sector Assessment Rating Tool (DSART)
By: Geoff Burt | Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010RESDAL releases 2010 Comparative Atlas of Defence in Latin America and the Caribbean
By: Geoff Burt | Friday, December 17th, 2010The Security and Defense Network of Latin America (RESDAL) has released the fourth edition of its Comparative Atlas of Defence. The publication, a result of two years of research which features for the first time description and analysis of defence and security realities in the Caribbean region, is now called the Comparative Atlas of Defence
Call for Applications: CIGI’s Africa Initiative Graduate Research Grant
By: Geoff Burt | Thursday, December 16th, 2010The Africa Initiative Graduate Research Grant offers full-time graduate students the opportunity to conduct field-based research in Africa for three (3) months in one of five thematic areas: conflict resolution, energy, food security, health, and migration, with special attention to the cross-cutting issue of climate change. Participants will receive a grant of up to $10,000
Want local ownership? Then fund locals, not foreigners
By: Edward Rees | Tuesday, December 14th, 2010Timorese security sector NGO Fundasaun Mahein is the only civil society organization of its sort in Timor-Leste. Founded by Nelson Belo, a survivor of the Santa Cruz Massacre and the co-founder of the Judicial System Monitoring Programme, the organization is beginning to make headway in carving out a truly local approach to SSR. Fundasaun Mahein means Guardian Foundation
SSR Resource Centre interviews rule of law expert Jasteena Dhillon on informal justice
By: Geoff Burt | Friday, December 10th, 2010On June 28, 2010, The Centre for International Governance innovation hosted a talk by rule of law expert Jasteena Dhillon. Afterwards, she sat down with Geoff Burt from the SSR Resource Centre to share her experiences with informal justice and security sector reform. Dhillon cautioned that while there are opportunities for complementarity between formal and
Camp Victory, Afghanistan—an inside look at the training of the Afghan National Army
By: Geoff Burt | Tuesday, December 7th, 2010Last week the Centre for International Governance Innovation sponsored a screening of Camp Victory, Afghanistan by Carol Dysinger. The film, based on over 300 hours of footage shot between 2005 and 2008, is a remarkable look at the process of training the Afghan National Army. As Dysinger said to the audience after the screening, she
SSR Resource Centre releases two new Country Profiles
By: Geoff Burt | Friday, December 3rd, 2010The SSR Resource Centre has released two new country profiles, for El Salvador and the Palestinian Territories. To download the profiles, visit the Countries section of the Resource Centre. We plan to release a number of new profiles in the coming few weeks, so please check the blog for updates.
Third edition of the Security Sector Reform Monitor: Southern Sudan examines corruption
By: Geoff Burt | Friday, November 26th, 2010The third edition of the Security Sector Reform Monitor: Southern Sudan examines the endemic corruption that has emerged in Southern Sudan after a prolonged civil war. In contrast to the many researchers who claim that corruption is embedded in Sudanese society, this edition of the Monitor suggests that the situation in Southern Sudan is a
Final thoughts on the NATO summit in Lisbon
By: Aly Verjee | Wednesday, November 24th, 2010Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was right. NATO’s new strategic concept has more than a few vague sentences and blanks to be filled in later. To take a few particularly choice and detail-deficient articles: “9. During the next decade, proliferation will be most acute in some of the world’s most volatile regions.” (Breaking news?) “19.
SSR Resource Centre expert blogs from final day of Lisbon summit
By: Aly Verjee | Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010On Saturday, the final day of the summit, we had a videoconference to hear the opinions of Afghan university students on the present situation in Kandahar, Herat, and Kabul. The Bulgarian and Slovak foreign ministers stopped by to share their thoughts on the approved strategic concept. Slovakia’s Mikuláš Dzurinda described the concept as “a new
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