The Struggle to Satisfy: DDR Through the Eyes of Ex-combatants in Liberia

What Makes an Ex-Combatant Happy? A Micro-Analysis of Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration in South Sudan

“…Therefore, DDR programs must focus not only on direct payments of cash during the disarmament phase, but also on improving ex‐combatants' prospects of employment through DDR training. Work focusing on DDR in Liberia supports this contention, finding that unsuccessful DDR in 2003 was largely due to dissatisfaction among the ex‐combatants about their personal economic situation (Jennings ; Spear and Harborne ). These scholars conclude that the transition to postwar stability would have been smoother if the DDR program had provided ex‐combatants with jobs and satisfactory incomes.…”

Child safeguarding in a peacekeeping context: lessons from Liberia

“…There is a vibrant literature on "peacekeeping economies", understood as an economic activity, such as sex workers or domestic workers, that would not occur, or would occur at a much lower scale, without the international presence (Jennings and Boas 2015). The specific "unintended consequences" of the peacekeeping presence in Liberia has also been discussed at length (Aning and Edu-Afful 2013; Edu-Afful and Aning 2015; Henry 2015), especially the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration programmes (Jennings 2007(Jennings , 2009; Munive and Finne Jakobsen 2012), which were a major component of the Liberian peace process after nearly 15 years of intermittent armed conflict and an integral objective of UNMIL. The specific literature on Liberia and security sector reform has focused on the "feminisation" of local actors understood as gendered power of internationals to "protect" local women, who are portrayed primarily as victims (Ryan and Basini 2017).…”

UN Peacekeeping Economies and Local Sex Industries: Connections and Implications

“…On the minus side, the expectation that the enterprises, infrastructure, and services established during the peacekeeping economy will eventually downsize or fold entails the loss of many livelihoods, and points to the unsustainability of this particular form of investment or employment provided by the peace operation. That said, many locals in peacekeeping environments tend to have a pragmatic view of the mission, and recognize that they should attempt to optimize the benefits they can receive at any given point, rather than put their faith in an improved situation down the line (Pouligny 2006; see also Jennings 2007). In other words, the concrete benefits of a livelihood over the duration of the mission -even an unreliable one -outweigh the drawback of its impermanence.…”