Revitalising Security Sector Reform

SOC ACE researcher, Dr Liam O’Shea (SGI/RUSI), convened the Anti-Corruption & Building Integrity in Defence and Security Network to discuss how to revitalise the security sector reform (SSR) agenda in response to a changed world.

The meeting was held in conjunction with Dr Jonathan Marley from the OECD who is leading the refresh of the OECD’s Handbook on Security Sector Reform.

With SSR slipping down the agenda over the last 10 years, there’s an appetite to renew and re-establish the concepts and principles of security sector reform. The Network raised the need to consider issues of security sector financing, state threats, private military companies, non-state armed groups, disinformation, and migration and displacement, among others, in any new SSR conceptualisation. It also highlighted the imperative to consider the complex, overlapping issues of organised crime, terrorism, and corruption.