Feature | Evolutions in Security Sector Reform
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if they work expeditiously. Increasing the number of public prosecutors and defenders has had some success in improving rates of case flow. Ultimately though, it remains difficult to convince host governments to dedicate adequate resources to prisons when their average citizen lives in poverty. Strategic planning is an area where missions have the potential to impact justice and corrections systems. UN missions have access to, and potential leverage with, senior political leadership, while being viewed as more politically neutral than other international actors. In countries where host state officials engaged in strategic planning and where a corresponding action plan was developed for timed program implementation, these practices were observed to diffuse across the broader national framework of government, as well as NGOs. Support to legislatures and national reform commissions is among the most difficult but potentially most important elements of UN missions’ support for rule of law. Law reform has the power to provide long-term solutions to issues that host governments and missions find themselves hard-pressed to address. For example, law reform can reach some of the root
issues in pre-trial detention and prison overcrowding by introducing alternatives to incarceration, adjusting or tightening sentencing guidelines. However, the best technical advice cannot overcome political or procedural obstacles to enactment of reformed laws nor is the mission’s leverage alone likely to do so. Mission programming to improve access to justice mainly focuses on improving capacity and processes of the formal justice system. It seems time that UN peacebuilding efforts pay greater attention to informal justice systems, as functioning customary justice reflects the social ties that bind communities and is the form of dispute resolution that large majorities of the populations in mission countries use day to day. Customary justice may be the only remnant of effective governance left when the mission first deploys. The “do no harm” principle alone suggests that greater time and effort be devoted to understanding the post-conflict roles of these institutions. Finally, if donors could be made to overcome their prisons-last mentality, prison assistance offers potentially big and reasonably quick wins for UN operations. Investments in long-term prison guard training, in-house mentoring programs, prison farms, mobile courts,
paralegal training programs and public defenders have led to improved prisoner treatment and substantial drops in prison populations over time. This article has given a snapshot of some of the findings from Stimson’s study of the impact of police, justice and corrections in UN peace operations. The full report is available in PDF form on the Stimson website at http:// www.stimson.org/books-reports/understandingimpact-of-police-justice-and-correctionscomponents-in-un-peace-operations/. ■ References Durch, William J., Madeline L. England and Fiona Mangan, with Michelle Ker. Understanding Impact of Police, Justice and Corrections Components in UN Peace Operations (Washington, DC: The Stimson Center, 2012), http://www.stimson.org/books-reports/ understanding-impact-of-police-justice-andcorrections-components-in-un-peace-operations/. Network of Networks on Impact Evaluation (OECD/ DAC, UNEG, World Bank IEG, and the International Organization for Cooperation in Evaluation), NONIE Guidance on Impact Evaluation, 2009, http:// www.worldbank.org/ieg/nonie/guidance.html.
Photo: UNPOL training session with Liberian National Police Credit: UN Photo/Staton Winter
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