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Madam President, I thank Nigeria for organizing this briefing. I would also like to thank Assistant Secretary General Dmitri Titov, Special Representative on sexual violence in conflict Zainab Hawa Bangura and Assistant Coordinator of UNDP Izumi Nakamitsu for sharing their insights with us today. At the Council’s debate on security sector reform (SSR) last year we called on the UN to do more in helping states coming out of conflict to reform their police and military forces. We advocated for reinforced efforts to ensure that security institutions in post-conflict environments are a source of safety, security, and trust rather than extortion and fear.

Over a year since that debate and the adoption of resolution 2151, we can ask ourselves if enough is being done to put this resolution into action. Are the voices of women, youth, and civil society well heard by those implementing SSR? Is the vetting effective enough to bar those who have committed rape and abuse from joining police and military ranks? Have we become better in meeting the needs of countries concerned?

As has been said many times, ensuring national ownership of SRR processes is essential. To succeed, national authorities must lead, own and drive reform efforts. The UN and other contributing actors on the ground can assist governments in their efforts, with a clear objective to create an effective, accountable and human rights-respecting national security structures. In this regard we welcome DPKO’s initiative “Compact”, aimed at helping to better coordinate the responsibilities between the UN and national Governments.

Madame President,

The subject is wide ranging indeed, and I would like to touch upon just a few of the issues related to SSR.

While the pressure to rebuild security sector institutions as a country emerges out of conflict may be enormous, governments must make sure that SSR activities involve all segments of the society and responds to the concerns of the most affected and vulnerable groups. That is the best way to ensure the common ownership of the reform and prevent lingering grievances from resurfacing at a later stage. Support of the UN good offices on the ground in this respect could be helpful.

An army or a local police force made up exclusively of one ethnicity, one tribe, or one faith in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious community would inevitably challenge their impartiality and put into question the readiness of such forces to protect all members of the community and raise suspicions of bias, for example, in situations like the violence we have witnessed in CAR.

Likewise, an exclusively male police force as well as prosecutorial bodies will raise legitimate concerns and fears among local women about their safety and security and will inevitably prevent them from complaining about sexual violence, rape or other abuse when it happens.

Integrating a gender perspective into the daily work of armed forces, police, law and order institutions would make these institutions more inclusive and accountable, strengthen popular trust in these institutions, and improve the overall effectiveness of security sector reform. Specific programmes aimed at preventing sexual harassment and violence must be implemented so that both the general female population as well as women serving in the armed forces or police are guaranteed safety and recourse to justice in cases of abuse. Witness and victim protection mechanisms must be also put in place.

In this regard, we would like to emphasise the action plan of the Secretary-General on women’s participation in peacebuilding as well as other existing instruments, as the ones referred to by SRSG Bangura in her briefing. They offer practical tools which should be taken forward by the UN system and supported by Member States and regional partners as well as the countries concerned.

Madam President,

Justice and accountability are an integral part of peace and reconciliation efforts. If left unaddressed, a lack of accountability for past crimes can lead to a reopening of old wounds and thus a resurgence of conflict, bringing the efforts of any country emerging out of conflict to naught.

Security sector reform should entail, inter alia, solid human rights training, mentoring and due diligence policies, as well as an embedded culture of individual responsibility, from top to bottom, for the abuses of office, including human rights abuses.

In countries plagued by repeated cycles of violence, members of the security forces are known to have participated in serious human rights abuses and crimes against humanity, including killings, summary executions, mass rapes, torture, arbitrary arrests and abductions. Vetting mechanisms should be a central component of SSR, in order to break with past abuses and to build disciplined, rights-respecting forces that protect civilians instead of preying on them. Cleaning up the ranks also serves to strengthen the trust between local populations and the armed and police forces as well as the general confidence in the irreversibility of post-conflict recovery.

In this regard we welcome the steps taken by DRC to introduce vetting and build a security sector free from child recruitment and sexual violence. We encourage the Government to further develop cooperation with MONUSCO in implementing “zero tolerance policy” to human rights and humanitarian law violations.

Verification and vetting are currently being undertaken in Central African Republic, where preparations are under way for the national elections. The pressure to have FACA in place and ready to provide security for the people during this vital transition time should not lead to compromising on the integrity of the forces. As per Security Council resolution 2217 (2015), the transitional authorities must ‘investigate swiftly alleged violations and abuses in order to hold perpetrators accountable and to ensure that those responsible for such violations and abuse are excluded from the security sector”. Granted, it is a challenging task, and MINUSCA’s assistance in this respect remains important. 

The sharing of information and cooperation between national authorities and peacekeeping missions, as well as with relevant international actors contributes to the success of the vetting process. In this regard we would like to welcome the efforts in Cote d’Ivoire where UNOCI, UNDP and the Ministry of the Interior are developing terms of reference for police vetting.

Finally, the success of security sector reform requires having a clear picture on how effective particular measures have been, what works and what doesn’t, and how best to avoid the typical mistakes in the process. Implementation of monitoring instruments, such as sets of indicators and benchmarks, as those developed in Cote d’Ivoire and Liberia, have an important role to play in ensuring sustained relevance and effectiveness of support provided to national governments.

In this context, specific focus on SSR during UNSC field trips an annual closed‐session briefing by DPKO on the implementation of S/RES/2151 (2014) in peace operations contexts as proposed by the Nigerian Presidency in its concept paper could offer a useful venue for discussion and exchange of lessons learned.

Finally, let us not forget the importance of holistic, system-wide long term approaches as underlined by UNDP Assistant coordinator Nakamitsu, and the underlying linkages between DDR and SSR. If and where DDR fails, is only partial or incomplete, a solid security sector reform will be so much harder to achieve.

I thank you.