Disarmament, demobilization and reintegration in postconflict societies: a case study of south Sudan

Abstract

In the study of international conflict management, special interest in post-conflict peace building was developed since the question of peace-building has become the major focus in the contemporary world and more especially in the African continent, whose countries have suffered one civil war after the other, and therefore disturbing the societal balance in these countries. Various measures have been undertaken to try and reconstruct these post conflict societies and these include a whole range of what can be termed as peace support operations. They include: socio-economic reconstruction, restoration or reconstruction of democratic institutions of governance, police reforms, security sector reforms and DDR. Focus is on the implementation of DDR as part of the post-conflict peace process. The problem identified by the researcher is that most of these programs kick off but are rarely completed. Even those that get completed do not record much success. This study therefore has tried to find out what really happens that the programs do not succeed. It tries to find out what challenges are encountered in the implementation of DDR programs that impede the success. The objectives for this study therefore include finding out whether DDR can succeed in restoring a post conflict society into peace, to find out what factors contribute to the failure of DDR, and to uncover what can be done in order to attain successful DDR. From the findings of this research, DDR programs fail because of a few logistical, methodological and political challenges in the whole process from the preparation to the implementation phase. Although this is a single case study, it appears to be representative of what many DDR programs have suffered especially in Africa which happens to attract many actors with different interests, hence creating problems such as conflict of interest, funding challenges, issues of timing for the programs, as well as local capacity issues.