almanac on security sector oversight in the Western Balkans

Introduction
While official cooperation and exchange between Western Balkan states have significantly
improved in the last few years, the transparency of security governance across the
region is still weak. Information about which security actor is in charge of which domain,
what their competencies are, who controls different actors and what their budgets are
is not consistently available in all countries. This lack of transparency impedes national
oversight of the security sector and also hinders the confidence building necessary for
regional security cooperation. In a post-conflict environment where security issues are
still predominantly discussed from collectivist and ethno-nationalist perspectives, greater
availability of information and analysis based on thorough research could help prevent
the emergence of new security dilemmas.
The second assumption behind this publication is that the civil society has to be empowered
to become an active participant of democratic civilian control and oversight, alongside
politicians, if security sector reforms are to be sustainable and citizen-oriented. It is
expected that participation of citizens and civil society organisations in oversight of security
policies contributes considerably to the social legitimisation of security institutions
in society. The key question in this phase is not whether the security sector should be
reformed or why, but how to accomplish reform in the most efficient and effective way
with a participation of all relevant actors, including statutory and on-statutory actors.
This publication aims to provide an independent research-supported overview on the key
achievements and weaknesses in the accountability of security sectors of Albania, Bosnia
and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia and to and what
effect this has on the countries’ democratic transition. The Almanac on Security Sector
Reform in the Western Balkans is a key output of a three-year long collaborative research
project of seven Western Balkan think-tanks and the Geneva Centre for the Democratic
Control of Armed Forces (DCAF), focused on improving the capacity of civil society organisations
to map and monitor security sector governance and encourage security sector
reform. The partners of this project, which was entitled “Civil Society Capacity Building
to Map and Monitor SSR in the Western Balkans” and which ran from early 2009 to early
2012 included: Analytica, Skopje; Belgrade Centre for Security Policy – (BCSP), Belgrade;
the Centre for Security Studies (CSS), Sarajevo; the Center for Democracy and Human
Rights (CEDEM), Podgorica; the Kosovar Centre for Security Studies (KCSS), Pristina; the
Institute for International Relations (IMO), Zagreb; and the Institute for Democracy and
Mediation (IDM), Tirana. Additionally, the project was supported by DCAF and funded by
the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In addition to in-country research, the main
activities of the project were capacity building workshops used for peer education and
training of participating civil society organisations (CSOs) in the key issues for oversight
over the security sector. The unique component of this project has been an attempt to
advance the methodology for mapping and monitoring security sector reform which was
originally developed by the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy. 1
1 For more details see the chapter nine Stojanović, S. ‘Security Sector Reform Index: Measuring to
Advance Democratisation’.
8