Institute for International Relations

Three year regional project “Civil Society Capacity Building to Map and Monitor Security System Reform in the Western Balkans 2009-2011”

The project’s main goal is to increase the capacity of the civil society in the Western Balkan region to effectively oversee security sector reform both on the national level, and through a cooperation network on the regional level. CSS is one of the six cooperation partners to the project which is funded by the Norwegian Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Reform – Agreement No RER 08/076

Name of client
DCAF (Democratic Control of Armed Forces), Geneva

Origin of funding
Norwegian Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Dates
March 2009 – December 2011

Description of project

Specific objectives
The purpose of the project is to analyze and research the security system reform in each of the partner countries. The project is divided into categories (transparency, representativeness, participativeness, human rights protection, executive and judicial control).The project is going to last for three years, and in it is planed to make an almanac at the end of the project (2011) with the research results of all the partner institutions for their state.

Coordinators and Regional Partners

1. DCAF – Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) – coordinator and project manager
2. CCMR – Centre for Civil and Military Relations, Belgrade, Serbia
3. Analytica – Thinking laboratory, Skopje, Macedonia
4. CEDEM – Centre for Democracy and Human Rights, Podgorica, Montenegro
5. CSS – Centre for Security Studies, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
6. IDM – Institute for Democracy and Mediation, Tirana, Albania
7. KCSS – Kosovar Centre for Security Studies, Pristine, Kosovo

The project is developing through the following issues:

• The project deals with the chronology of relevant events for the security sector reform (SSR) in each of the partner state (creating the context analyses of the Security Sector Reform);
• The research through of project will be based on the modern literature, using the contemporary articles and books to thoroughly develop the reform;
• Through the given criteria, the reform will be researched through the unified model for all the partner state.

Main project activities:

• Analysis of security and defence strategies of every partner state
• Development of grading system for every criteria used in the project
• Dealing with the laws and acts (decrees) to gain the legal perspective on the reform
• Trimesteral meetings and workshops to align the researches
• Monthly reports with the descriptions of the results of research for each institution