This report outlines the insights and conclusions of a conference hosted by the United States Institute of Peace's Center for Security Sector Governance from June 30 to July 1, 2011, titled "Security sector transformation in North Africa and the Middle East". The event brought together geographic and security sector reform (SSR) experts from think tanks and the academic community; officials from the U.S. government, United Nations, and a range of other bilateral donors and international organizations; civil society groups based inside and outside the Middle East; and private sector organizations. The conference explored the opportunities for SSR in the wake of the Arab Spring, considering potential entry points for assistance and the challenges faced by international donors and domestic reformers alike. There was a general consensus that the Arab Spring presented an unprecedented opportunity for democratic change in the region, and that SSR, judiciously applied, could help advance that transformation.

Critical examinations of efforts to make governments more efficient and responsive Political upheavals and civil wars in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have obscured efforts by many countries in the region to reform their public sectors. Unwieldy, unresponsive—and often corrupt—governments across the region have faced new pressure, not least from their publics, to improve the quality of public services and open up their decisionmaking processes. Some of these reform efforts were under way and at least partly successful before the outbreak of the Arab Spring in 2010. Reform efforts have continued in some countries despite the many upheavals since then. This book offers a comprehensive assessment of a wide range of reform efforts in nine countries. In six cases the reforms targeted core systems of government: Jordan's restructuring of cabinet operations, the Palestinian Authority's revision of public financial management, Morocco's voluntary retirement program, human resource management reforms in Lebanon, an e-governance initiative in Dubai, and attempts to improve transparency in Tunisia. Five other reform efforts tackled line departments of government, among them Egypt's attempt to improve tax collection and Saudi Arabia's work to improve service delivery and bill collection. Some of these reform efforts were more successful than others. This book examines both the good and the bad, looking not only at what each reform accomplished but at how it was implemented. The result is a series of useful lessons on how public sector reforms can be adopted in MENA.

This report draws on the discussions and conclusions of a conference on security sector transformation in North Africa and the Middle East hosted by the United States Institute of Peace's Center of Innovation for Security Sector Governance on May 10, 2012. The conference brought together a group of activists from the region with U.S. government and international officials and SSR experts in a morning public forum and an afternoon private roundtable session. There was a general consensus that more than a year after the initial successes of the Arab Spring, security sector reform remained an essential requirement of achieving democracy in transition states.

After a decade of popular uprisings and civil wars, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region experiences a deep governance crisis. The transformation, weakening or even the collapse of state institutions has changed the security framework, with direct implications for the safety and security of civilian populations across the region. Security Sector Governance and Reform (SSG/R) has to cope with hybridity and institutional fatigue.This report explores the MENA region’s governance crises, providing case studies on Libya, Iraq, Tunisia, and Yemen. How can we effectively bring about meaningful SSG/R in hybrid security orders? In which way is “institutionalised insecurity” challenging traditional patterns of governance in vulnerable settings?

The need for security sector transformation (SST) is prominent in the work of scholars, policy makers and practitioners that focus on the security sector and its governance in Africa. At the heart of this approach is the requirement for comprehensive change in the orientation, values, principles and practices that shape the provision, management and oversight of security on the African continent. The evident obstacles to achieving such far-reaching goals mean that it is particularly important to identify the practical utility of the SST concept in supporting positive behaviour change within different African settings. It is also necessary to clarify the relationship between the concept of security sector transformation and the evolving security sector reform (SSR) discourse. This volume seeks to provide such additional clarity to SST and its relationship to SSR. It includes contributions from a range of acknowledged experts analysing dynamics of security sector transformation at the domestic level as well as 'beyond the state'. The resulting insights are intended to help elaborate an understanding of the challenges to and opportunities for the realisation of an operational security sector transformation agenda in Africa.

Prioritizing Security Sector Reform: A New U.S. Approach argues that security sector reform should be at the core of a new U.S. policy to strengthen the security sector capacity of countries where U.S. interests are at stake. Today's fragile environments feature a host of postconflict and postauthoritarian states and transitioning and new democracies that have at least one critical thing in common: Their security sectors are dysfunctional. Why these states cannot fulfill their most basic function-the protection of the population and their government-varies widely, but the underlying reason is the same. The security sector does not function because security sector institutions and forces are absent, ineffective, predatory, or illegitimate. In place of large, boots-on-the-ground interventions relying on expensive train and equip programs with only fleeting impact, Washington needs a new approach for engaging in fragile environments and a policy for prioritizing where it engages and for what purpose. The volume offers case studies to exemplify the context in which a new U.S. approach might be warranted, discusses other countries' experiences with security sector reform policies and examines how the United States should design and implement a security sector reform policy. Book jacket.