Willi Graf - Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation
1. Thematic session VII: Armed Violence Reduction Programming in SDC Willi Graf Deputy Head Domain Regional Cooperation ( www.sdc.org.af www.deza.admin.ch ) Federal Department of Foreign Affairs FDFA Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation SDC Domain Regional Cooperation Ministerial Review Conference on the Geneva Declaration, 31 Oct – 1 Nov 2011
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Editor's Notes
Security situation in Afghanistan Level of international engagement versus Switzerland as niche player Support of security sector by many donors, mainly for increasing the efficiency of the security sector -in general less considered: soft measures for increasing the security of people, but also including the control and accountability of the security actors Switzerland works in alternative ways, in the domain of Governance and Protection. Examples: Human Rights : policy and institutional support to human rights actors, including the National Human Rights Commission, the Government (HRSU at Ministry of Justice), as well as the civil society. Access to Justice : strengthening state institutions and awareness raising for the population, which means to support duty bearers as well as rights holder. SSR : supporting police reform, e.g. integrating women in police forces The international community is supporting police reform. With a focus on a stabilization agenda, the efficiency of the forces raises most attention, whereas gender aspects get easily in the background. But for reducing and preventing armed violence, a full reform of the police is necessary. If the police should apply human rights standards and deal with all forms of violence including gender based violence, the integration of women in the forces is key. In this way, Switzerland’s programmes aim at reducing those risk factors which can lead to armed violence. Key is to take Conflict sensitive Programme Management as an integral part of programming. Capacity for analyzing the local context had to be considerably increased, and resources for a flexible adaption of the program depending on the evolving situation is required. This can also be seen by the way Human Rights are integrated in the program. A careful, locally based step-by-step approach based on local needs and understanding is required e.g. also in order to avoid that Human Rights might become politicized as a vehicle of the West.
Security situation in Afghanistan Level of international engagement versus Switzerland as niche player Support of security sector by many donors, mainly for increasing the efficiency of the security sector -in general less considered: soft measures for increasing the security of people, but also including the control and accountability of the security actors Switzerland works in alternative ways, in the domain of Governance and Protection. Examples: Human Rights : policy and institutional support to human rights actors, including the National Human Rights Commission, the Government (HRSU at Ministry of Justice), as well as the civil society. Access to Justice : strengthening state institutions and awareness raising for the population, which means to support duty bearers as well as rights holder. SSR : supporting police reform, e.g. integrating women in police forces The international community is supporting police reform. With a focus on a stabilization agenda, the efficiency of the forces raises most attention, whereas gender aspects get easily in the background. But for reducing and preventing armed violence, a full reform of the police is necessary. If the police should apply human rights standards and deal with all forms of violence including gender based violence, the integration of women in the forces is key. In this way, Switzerland’s programmes aim at reducing those risk factors which can lead to armed violence. Key is to take Conflict sensitive Programme Management as an integral part of programming. Capacity for analyzing the local context had to be considerably increased, and resources for a flexible adaption of the program depending on the evolving situation is required. This can also be seen by the way Human Rights are integrated in the program. A careful, locally based step-by-step approach based on local needs and understanding is required e.g. also in order to avoid that Human Rights might become politicized as a vehicle of the West.
Security situation in Afghanistan Level of international engagement versus Switzerland as niche player Support of security sector by many donors, mainly for increasing the efficiency of the security sector -in general less considered: soft measures for increasing the security of people, but also including the control and accountability of the security actors Switzerland works in alternative ways, in the domain of Governance and Protection. Examples: Human Rights : policy and institutional support to human rights actors, including the National Human Rights Commission, the Government (HRSU at Ministry of Justice), as well as the civil society. Access to Justice : strengthening state institutions and awareness raising for the population, which means to support duty bearers as well as rights holder. SSR : supporting police reform, e.g. integrating women in police forces The international community is supporting police reform. With a focus on a stabilization agenda, the efficiency of the forces raises most attention, whereas gender aspects get easily in the background. But for reducing and preventing armed violence, a full reform of the police is necessary. If the police should apply human rights standards and deal with all forms of violence including gender based violence, the integration of women in the forces is key. In this way, Switzerland’s programmes aim at reducing those risk factors which can lead to armed violence. Key is to take Conflict sensitive Programme Management as an integral part of programming. Capacity for analyzing the local context had to be considerably increased, and resources for a flexible adaption of the program depending on the evolving situation is required. This can also be seen by the way Human Rights are integrated in the program. A careful, locally based step-by-step approach based on local needs and understanding is required e.g. also in order to avoid that Human Rights might become politicized as a vehicle of the West.
Security situation in Afghanistan Level of international engagement versus Switzerland as niche player Support of security sector by many donors, mainly for increasing the efficiency of the security sector -in general less considered: soft measures for increasing the security of people, but also including the control and accountability of the security actors Switzerland works in alternative ways, in the domain of Governance and Protection. Examples: Human Rights : policy and institutional support to human rights actors, including the National Human Rights Commission, the Government (HRSU at Ministry of Justice), as well as the civil society. Access to Justice : strengthening state institutions and awareness raising for the population, which means to support duty bearers as well as rights holder. SSR : supporting police reform, e.g. integrating women in police forces The international community is supporting police reform. With a focus on a stabilization agenda, the efficiency of the forces raises most attention, whereas gender aspects get easily in the background. But for reducing and preventing armed violence, a full reform of the police is necessary. If the police should apply human rights standards and deal with all forms of violence including gender based violence, the integration of women in the forces is key. In this way, Switzerland’s programmes aim at reducing those risk factors which can lead to armed violence. Key is to take Conflict sensitive Programme Management as an integral part of programming. Capacity for analyzing the local context had to be considerably increased, and resources for a flexible adaption of the program depending on the evolving situation is required. This can also be seen by the way Human Rights are integrated in the program. A careful, locally based step-by-step approach based on local needs and understanding is required e.g. also in order to avoid that Human Rights might become politicized as a vehicle of the West.
Security situation in Afghanistan Level of international engagement versus Switzerland as niche player Support of security sector by many donors, mainly for increasing the efficiency of the security sector -in general less considered: soft measures for increasing the security of people, but also including the control and accountability of the security actors Switzerland works in alternative ways, in the domain of Governance and Protection. Examples: Human Rights : policy and institutional support to human rights actors, including the National Human Rights Commission, the Government (HRSU at Ministry of Justice), as well as the civil society. Access to Justice : strengthening state institutions and awareness raising for the population, which means to support duty bearers as well as rights holder. SSR : supporting police reform, e.g. integrating women in police forces The international community is supporting police reform. With a focus on a stabilization agenda, the efficiency of the forces raises most attention, whereas gender aspects get easily in the background. But for reducing and preventing armed violence, a full reform of the police is necessary. If the police should apply human rights standards and deal with all forms of violence including gender based violence, the integration of women in the forces is key. In this way, Switzerland’s programmes aim at reducing those risk factors which can lead to armed violence. Key is to take Conflict sensitive Programme Management as an integral part of programming. Capacity for analyzing the local context had to be considerably increased, and resources for a flexible adaption of the program depending on the evolving situation is required. This can also be seen by the way Human Rights are integrated in the program. A careful, locally based step-by-step approach based on local needs and understanding is required e.g. also in order to avoid that Human Rights might become politicized as a vehicle of the West.
Security situation in Afghanistan Level of international engagement versus Switzerland as niche player Support of security sector by many donors, mainly for increasing the efficiency of the security sector -in general less considered: soft measures for increasing the security of people, but also including the control and accountability of the security actors Switzerland works in alternative ways, in the domain of Governance and Protection. Examples: Human Rights : policy and institutional support to human rights actors, including the National Human Rights Commission, the Government (HRSU at Ministry of Justice), as well as the civil society. Access to Justice : strengthening state institutions and awareness raising for the population, which means to support duty bearers as well as rights holder. SSR : supporting police reform, e.g. integrating women in police forces The international community is supporting police reform. With a focus on a stabilization agenda, the efficiency of the forces raises most attention, whereas gender aspects get easily in the background. But for reducing and preventing armed violence, a full reform of the police is necessary. If the police should apply human rights standards and deal with all forms of violence including gender based violence, the integration of women in the forces is key. In this way, Switzerland’s programmes aim at reducing those risk factors which can lead to armed violence. Key is to take Conflict sensitive Programme Management as an integral part of programming. Capacity for analyzing the local context had to be considerably increased, and resources for a flexible adaption of the program depending on the evolving situation is required. This can also be seen by the way Human Rights are integrated in the program. A careful, locally based step-by-step approach based on local needs and understanding is required e.g. also in order to avoid that Human Rights might become politicized as a vehicle of the West.
Switzerland has recently done an internal mapping exercise to identify the state of art of current AVRP programming. The findings show, that quite an impressive and wide range of activities is already being under taken, but that it could be done more and – most relevantly – better, as far as the application of the Armed Violence Lens is concerned. So far, Switzerland does not have any specific AVRP-strategy in place, but is integrating it as far as possible in existing approaches, which has advantages as well as disadvantages. Switzerland and particularly SDC is mainly engaged in AVPR through indirect programming, as well as programming on larger development issues. SDC‘s engagement is focussing very much on statebuilding aspects and structural reforms allowing for development. This means also to focus rather on institutions than on instruments. On the other side, the PD IV for Human Security has a strong focus on peacebuilding. That is explainging why direct programming is rather done in the frame of the Human Security programmes of the PD IV as well as the Ministry of defense. Switzerland plays a very strong role on the policy level for reducing armed violence; one example was the binding legislation for marking and tracing small arms and light weapons, which finally was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2005, among other. The core engagement of SDC lies on the field of indirect AVRP programming. This includes among others civilian peacebuilding, human rights, and legal and judicial development. In the development programmes, overall goal is poverty reduction. It has proofen to be a strength to work very closely with partners on a local level, whereas building capacities from local to national level is important. CSPM not only helps us to do the least harm possible, but also to achieve better results in fragile and conflict affected states. For indirect programming as well as for programming on broader development issues, CSPM is very helpful to include the AV-lens. It‘s not relevant for integrating direct aspects of AVPR in programmes, though.
Switzerland has recently done an internal mapping exercise to identify the state of art of current AVRP programming. The findings show, that quite an impressive and wide range of activities is already being under taken, but that it could be done more and – most relevantly – better, as far as the application of the Armed Violence Lens is concerned. So far, Switzerland does not have any specific AVRP-strategy in place, but is integrating it as far as possible in existing approaches, which has advantages as well as disadvantages. Switzerland and particularly SDC is mainly engaged in AVPR through indirect programming, as well as programming on larger development issues. SDC‘s engagement is focussing very much on statebuilding aspects and structural reforms allowing for development. This means also to focus rather on institutions than on instruments. On the other side, the PD IV for Human Security has a strong focus on peacebuilding. That is explainging why direct programming is rather done in the frame of the Human Security programmes of the PD IV as well as the Ministry of defense. Switzerland plays a very strong role on the policy level for reducing armed violence; one example was the binding legislation for marking and tracing small arms and light weapons, which finally was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2005, among other. The core engagement of SDC lies on the field of indirect AVRP programming. This includes among others civilian peacebuilding, human rights, and legal and judicial development. In the development programmes, overall goal is poverty reduction. It has proofen to be a strength to work very closely with partners on a local level, whereas building capacities from local to national level is important. CSPM not only helps us to do the least harm possible, but also to achieve better results in fragile and conflict affected states. For indirect programming as well as for programming on broader development issues, CSPM is very helpful to include the AV-lens. It‘s not relevant for integrating direct aspects of AVPR in programmes, though.
The Parliament is about to approve an increase of SDC‘s engagement in FCS states with the new credit line for the next 4 years. SDC will increase ist engagement in FCS countries for about 15-20%. That means, Switzerland will increasingly be engaged in contexts, where armed violence is a major impediment for development – whether it concerns violence in a fragile situation or a situation affected by conflict. As part of the Monrovia roadmap, the G7+ group and international partners have agreed to set people‘s security among the 5 core objectives for peacebuilding and statebuilding. Switzerland strongly supports this roadmap, which also means, that the reduction of armed violence needs to become an objective in the cooperation, where relevant. In this context, existing approaches will have to be further developed and adapted, in order to mainstream AVPR in our programme strategies. When analyzing the context, it is important to include armed violence. For setting priorities in programming, objectives for reducing armed violence need to be considered and integrated in those cases, where it is of key relevance. This goes hand in hand with the recommendations coming out from the WDR 2011; which is the most effective way to move ahead, is for us still work in progress. A lot of work has been done, but much more will have to be done, as we need progress with achieving the MDG.
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