Toward a Sustainable Strategy of Peacebuilding : An Examination of Negative and Positive Justifications of Security Sector Reform (SSR)

This preliminary work on the validity of strategies of SSR in peacebuilding identifies two ways of justifying SSR; the negative and the positive. The negative justification is derived from the political need for a termination of military intervention in the aftermath of an armed conflict. The positive justification is based upon the observation of domestic needs of developing peacebuilding activities in the security field within the framework of a certain political goal like the establishment of the rule of law. The paper argues that while the two are not contradictory to each other, the emphasis upon one element may distract attention from appropriate careful examinations of the other.