DDR and Transitional Justice

 

Valledupar, Colombia, March 2008. Demobilized paramilitaries of the AUC create murals as a component of the reintegration program. Photo by Ana Patel.

While programs for the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of ex-combatants are not new, they have never been designed or implemented with an explicit awareness of their relationship with transitional justice measures. With resolution of conflict now widely seen as inextricably linked with efforts to redeem the claims of justice, there is a clear need to examine the many ways in which DDR programs can contribute to, or hinder, the achievement of justice-related aims.

With this in mind, ICTJ’s Research Unit has conducted a multi-year research project examining the relationships between DDR programs and transitional justice measures. It aimed to test the hypothesis that the goals of these two types of initiatives can reinforce each other and break cycles of violence by reestablishing trust and promoting reconciliation between different groups.

The project held its first meeting of experts in October 2005. In its first phase, country studies on DDR and transitional justice were commissioned, forming the basis for an authors' workshop in July 2006. The project’s second phase focused on a series of thematic studies that built upon the empirical results of the case studies. A meeting for thematic paper authors was held in May 2007.

The results of this project are now available. The nine country case studies are available online:

• Afghanistan
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Cambodia
• Colombia
• El Salvador
• Liberia
• Rwanda
• Sierra Leone
• South Africa

The thematic studies have been published in an edited volume, Disarming the Past: Transitional Justice and Ex-combatants, edited by Ana Cutter Patel, Pablo de Greiff, and Lars Waldorf. This book is the fourth volume in the Advancing Transitional Justice series co-published by ICTJ and the Social Science Research Council. The volume includes the following chapters:

• Amnesties and DDR Programs, Mark Freeman
• Beyond “Peace vs. Justice”: Understanding the Relationship Between DDR Programs and the Prosecution of International Crimes, Eric Witte
• Ex-Combatants and Truth Commissions, Lars Waldorf
• Establishing Links Between DDR and Reparations, Pablo de Greiff
• Transitional Justice and Female Ex-Combatants: Lessons Learned from International Experience, Luisa Maria Dietrich Ortega
• DDR, Transitional Justice, and the Reintegration of Former Child Combatants, Roger Duthie and Irma Specht
• Local Justice and Reintegration Processes as Complements to Transitional Justice and DDR, Roger Duthie
• Transitional Justice, DDR, and Security Sector Reform, Ana Cutter Patel

 
Alongside the development of these sets of studies, Research Unit staff participated in the Stockholm Initiative on Disarmament Demobilization Reintegration (SIDDR), a year-long working process convened by the Swedish Government, throughout 2005.

In 2006, the unit offered input on the topic of social and economic reintegration of combatants in Mindinao and addressed the Advisory Board of the World Bank's Multi-Country Demobilization and Reintegration Program (MDRP).

In June 2007, the unit presented a paper on DDR and Transitional Justice at a conference organized by the United Nations Office of the Special Advisor on Africa that took place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Some of the first material from this project was published in 2008. Ana Patel published a chapter entitled "DDR and Transitional Justice" in the book Security and Post-Conflict Reconstruction: Dealing with Fighters in the Aftermath of War (Routledge, 2008). In addition, Pablo de Greiff published the chapter "DDR and Reparations: Establishing Links Between Peace and Justice" in Building a Future on Peace and Justice (Springer, 2009).

Most recently, ICTJ worked with the UN DPKO to develop a module for the UN's Integrated DDR Standards on transitional justice, which was published in 2009.

 

(Updated February 2010)