Principle 5: Accountable security.

 Living in freedom from fear is a basic human need and right. There can be no peace without security. A stable and secure political order requires accountable security institutions to provide security as a public good, to respect Humanrights Law and Humanitarian Law and to follow agreed principles governing the use of force in society. Security institutions and forces must have sufficient capacity, clear mandates and missions, and regulatory oversight to meet the evolving security needs of a population moving towards sustainable peace. Ending violent conflict and creating a secure and safe environment for political, social and economic life to flourish are vital for meaningful and durable peacemaking efforts to take root and should be the primary goal of peace operations. Development and military assistance should respect the dignity of affected populations and align with concrete, locally led efforts to address the underlying drivers of violence, including social and economic issues. 

- Implications and recommendations -

State forces (including the police and intelligence services) are often viewed as threatening and predatory, and international assistance (training and equipment) can shore up illegitimate institutions and actors. Private security forces often serve specific economic actors or interests. Benchmarks for assessing the legitimacy of security actors must thus be consistently monitored.

National leadership and political elites will inevitably view central security institutions (including intelligence services) as arenas of sovereign autonomy and power, and external assistance must be linked to concrete commitments to respect human rights and international norms, appropriate restraint and oversight, and institutional rightsizing.

• Promoting horizontally integrated approaches to enhance coherence and complementarity between diplomatic, development and security actors that go beyond coordination of efforts and allow all actors to contribute effectively within their domains. Acknowledging the need to engage with non-state armed actors at all stages of the process, in particular when they enjoy legitimacy within a community, provide essential services and are willing to renounce violence and force to participate in peacemaking and securitybuilding efforts.
• Increasing investment in and engagement with security sector reform and governance programmes to improve robust and legitimate civilian oversight and direction of security institutions, accountability mechanisms for violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, and gender-responsive recruitment, policies and practices, to enhance the legitimacy (input and output) of security actors and institutions.
•  Guaranteeing that stabilisation and security-building efforts are designed around the protection and security of civilians including children, youth and women in armed conflict, coupled with efforts towards positive transformations towards sustainable security and justice provision. 
• Enforcing accountability for violations of human rights and international humanitarian law by armed forces, non-state armed groups or other security actors. This is crucial to address grievances that could be exploited by armed groups to bolster their legitimacy and recruitment. 
• Ensuring legal and regulatory oversight and that of private security providers, especially when engaged by business actors, to avoid human rights violations and other abuses. 
• Incorporating the principles of subsidiarity and local hybrid solutions into the design and oversight of security provision that is gender responsive at the local and community level. 

• Stabilisation strategies must be consistent with people-centred security provision and meet a broad test of legitimacy and proportionality. They must also work to reduce physical and structural violence and towards the creation of a secure environment in which social, political and economic life can flourish.
•  Exit strategies for multilateral peace operations should be designed with, and work towards, a clear, shared vision of the conditions necessary for orderly transitions and must be based on assessments of the legitimacy and effectiveness of state (and security) institutions. They should be coupled with longer-term engagements to support local communities in their efforts to build sustainable and legitimate politics.

Rationale

All peacemaking and peacebuilding efforts have paid great attention to stopping violence, bringing armed groups to the negotiating table and investing in longer-term, people-centred and accountable security provision. Many of these efforts have been relatively successful, as peace processes in Colombia, Northern Ireland, or Liberia attest. But many have been only partially implemented or actively undermined over the longer term by spoilers fostering conflict and violence. Relapse into violent conflict is all too common, with the civil wars in Mali and South Sudan bearing tragic witness to this phenomenon. Many international and regional peace operations have protected civilians, facilitated the disarmament and reintegration of armed groups, promoted better governance of the security sector, contributed to the implementation of peace agreements and provided security in the aftermath of conflict. The effectiveness of these peace operations is often conditional on their smooth integration with other actors, to break out of mission and mandate silos that can create conflicting objectives and operations.

 

Horizontal integration aims for greater coherence and cooperation among security-related actors engaged in peacemaking activities and across international, regional, and national arenas. In most contemporary conflicts, diplomatic and political engagement with armed groups is required given their capacity to undermine peacemaking efforts and return to violence. Under certain conditions, armed groups are a necessary part of the solution, in particular in situations where they perform protective functions for communities that view them as more legitimate than state, regional or international actors. Local communities can sometimes influence the behaviour of armed groups, and engaging with them involves understanding their aims, recognising their role and legitimacy (if any) and finding ways to foster an interest in contributing to sustainable peacemaking. Beyond the short-term objective of creating a secure and stable environment lays the challenge of creating the conditions for accountable and sustainable, people-centred security provision as a public good accessible to all. Even relatively successful cases have often failed to build security institutions that allow people to live free from fear of everyday or systematic violence, whether from gangs and criminal groups, politically motivated militias, or state violence. As a result, communities often turn to informal security and justice providers, and security provision is available only to those who can afford it or who are affiliated with state elites. This deepens the vulnerability of certain groups and undermines the fundamental bargain at the heart of state authority. Establishing accountable and sustainable, people-centred security involves policies and practices that follow the principle of subsidiarity to deliver a safe and secure environment at the local or community level.

All security institutions from armed forces to national gendarmerie or police forces, to local, hybrid, private or community-based security providers - must be insulated from capture by regime or sectarian security interests, and overseen by and accountable to the people they serve. Accountable security sector governance is a necessary accompaniment to institution building, since capacity building of security actors, including at the community level, can easily create an enhanced tool for violence and repression.

In many contexts, state authorities and security and justice institutions operate in parallel to a variety of non-state actors who use force (legitimately or otherwise). Embracing the careful development of hybrid and integrated solutions can facilitate novel ways to bring security provision closer to (and representative of) the population. the exclusion of former armed groups from peace processes ignores that many of them evolved in response to a pervasive sense of marginalisation and exclusion that must be addressed. The "terrorist" label can also disconnect armed groups from their constituents, potentially making them more radical and violent rather than addressing the underlying sources of mobilisation for violent extremism.

Failures of or challenges to stabilisation operations have triggered serious efforts to rethink their limits and logic. Stabilisation efforts are a political as well as a security matter that should place the protection and security of civilians at their heart and facilitate, rather than hamper, longer-term, inclusive political settlements. While a necessary first step, stabilisation operations have often entrenched existing elites and power relations, reinforced unaccountable or repressive state security forces, excluded significant groups and jeopardised longer-term efforts to build legitimate and sustainable peace. When stabilisation operations are overly militarised or securitised, they struggle to address the political drivers of violence and the role of criminal groups and non-state armed actors in creating insecurity.