Demobilization and reintegration: revisiting the Uganda experience

Presented during the USAID Workshop on

Demobilization and Reintegration Programs

Nairobi 20 – 21 March 2001

By Anton Baaré

An emerging model

Over the past years, a generic model for Demobilization and Reintegration Programs (DRPs) has emerged that, I would hold, is generally shared by key multilateral (the UN system, World Bank) and bilateral players. This model is based on common experience and includes, among others:

The roles and comparative advantages of key actors in DRPs recently have received considerable attention.[i] This generic model outlined above is reflected in the 1999 lessons learned document of the Department of Peace Keeping Operations of the United Nations, several World Bank publications, and publications of the United Nations Executive Committee on Humanitarian Affairs Task Force on Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration.[ii]

Demobilization in Uganda

The demobilization in Uganda started in 1992 and was substantially completed in 1995, although it remains debatable when a DRP can be considered ‘completed’. The lessons learned from Uganda DRP have been documented in various reports and studies. The Uganda DRP has, not in the least by the World Bank, often been presented as a ’model case’. Pertinent lessons learned in Uganda have been applied, for example, in DRPs in Cambodia and Sierra Leone.

In this brief presentation on lessons learned from the Uganda DRP, I would like to focus on some lessons and dilemma’s that may have received less attention, or that are emerging only now. I have excluded lessons and dilemmas related to the high rates of HIV/AIDS infection of the target groups of the Uganda DRP. These have been covered in a separate session.

I have arranged the lessons I want to highlight under a number of headings to provide a framework for subsequent discussions.

Peace-time demobilization: even under favorable conditions successful DRPs reintegrate people into poverty

It is important to realize that the Uganda DRP was a peace-time demobilization; as such, it took place in a fundamentally different context from the DRPs that currently are a top priority for the international community (Sierra Leone, Eritrea-Ethiopia and the DRC), which all are conflict related DRPs that are part of a peace agreement or cease-fire arrangements. It is important to keep this difference in mind when applying best practices from Uganda elsewhere.

An under-exposed lesson from Uganda is that, even under relatively favorable circumstances, for the large majority of DRP beneficiaries economic reintegration of ex-combatants still amounts to reintegration in to poverty. Key success factors for reintegration were found outside the Uganda DRP, i.e., in the enabling national policy framework, relative peace, and sustained economic growth to name a few elements, are not in place in most cases.

Phrasing a success as ’reintegration into poverty’ serves as a reminder to all involved in planning and financing of DRPs: this type of program can be part of a post-conflict reconstruction effort, but cannot substitute for development efforts. While this often is realized in principle, in practice DRPs often are expected to achieve more ambitious results than realistically can be attained even under the most favorable of circumstances.

The military objective of DRPs needs to be acknowledged

Beneficiaries of the Uganda DRP were soldiers in the national army who served under an effective and unified military command. Disarmament, a crucial issue in other DRPs, was therefore never part of the Uganda exercise. Restructuring of the armed forces in conjunction with the DRP was not seen as part of the program, but was somehow to happen outside the sphere of development and reconstruction assistance. This limited approach was predominantly derived from the limitations of the policies that guided the engagement of development agencies in DRPs. Including, perhaps, the need to [at head quarters-level] send a clear signal that official development assistance was not used in support of what could be construed as ’military purposes’.

In line with this deliberate strategy, the objectives of the Uganda DRP were framed in development assistance-friendly language: a macro-economic objective formulated in terms of reductions in military expenditure and peace dividends, a derived social objective to deal with those affected by the military down-sizing. Notably, the military objective of the Government of Uganda was not explicitly mentioned. Only in 1994, the Government acknowledged publicly that a military objective was as an integral part of the exercise.[iii] Its objective was a leaner and more professional army.

Since then, it has become more acceptable for development agencies to acknowledge the role of official development assistance in realigning and strengthening the national security frameworks in countries emerging from conflict. Significant progress has been made, for example in the OECD/DAC for a that allow for a more specific linking of official development assistance and military restructuring. In Uganda, however, donors, did not significantly leverage their support to the DRP to engage the Government on its long-term vision for the role of the army. In this respect, a key lesson from the Uganda DRP may well be that of an opportunity missed by the donor community to more proactively link support to DRPs to restructuring the national army. The Uganda DRP did not address the role of a restructured military in society. The exercise was not conceptualized as part of a more comprehensive support program in favor of a national security framework less dominated by the military than currently is the case. A matter of concern, for example, is that indications are that in the recent presidential elections DRP veterans have been acting as the extended arm of the army.

Transcend the fallacy of the targeted versus broad-based support discussion

Contrary to what appears to be a widespread perception, the design of the Uganda DRP did not evenly balance demobilization and reintegration components. It mainly focused on demobilization and what in World Bank terminology since has been called ’reinsertion’. Elements of reintegration support were included in the initial design of the Uganda DRP but these never amounted to a well-coordinated reintegration effort, even though these program components incrementally received more emphasis as the result of subsequent joint donor reviews of the program. In fact, from a Ugandan perspective – and I hope my colleagues will correct me on this if I’m wrong – the reintegration program envisioned and promoted by the Government of Uganda never took off.

I dare to say that from a donor perspective the Government of Uganda promoted a narrowly targeted reintegration program that was found inappropriate by donors. Donors at the time opted for a ’broad-based’ approach to supporting the reintegration of ex-combatants. The ’targeted’ versus ’broad-based’ approach debate reemerges in other DRPs, and in each case bilateral donors have been likely to take a similar position as in Uganda, i.e. favoring broad-based, often community driven, assistance to reintegrate ex-combatants over targeted assistance during a ‘reinsertion’ phase.

The vision in Uganda was that concurrently with the implementation of the DRP, ex-combatants would be incorporated in ongoing or newly started ’community based’ programs.This vision materialized to some extent. However, options for reintegration support that looked good on paper (for example linking reintegration support to the NURP 1 project), were largely irrelevant to the ex-combatant. The ‘targeted-versus-broad-based’ debate features prominently in discussions on the design of DRPs. Where DRP preparations include consultations with civil society, governments or fighting groups typically argue a targeted approach, and NGOs and bilateral agencies a broad-based approach.

The lesson learned from Uganda is that when opting for supporting a broad-based approach to reintegration more emphasis should be placed on ensuring the timelinessand relevance of this support. I hold that it is necessary to design programs that provide a single framework for facilitating the transition from a targeted approach to a broad-based approach. This should not be misunderstood to imply that one agency should implement a reintegration program. Rather it calls for specific partnerships to be formed and operationalised. As long as the issue is approached as an ‘either/or’ choice, key issues that should be addressed will remain unattended to. In particular, more emphasize could be placed on ensuring that specific measures and program designs are in place from the outset that ensure the smooth transition from targeted assistance to broad based assistance. This lesson has been applied in the Sierra Leone DRP, although the verdict on the effectiveness of its implementation is still out.

Naïve gender analysis leads to poorly conceived support

The special needs of women affected by conflict have deservedly received considerable attention. A little-exposed lesson from Uganda illustrates that one should be careful to incorporate special assistance to ‘wives’ of ex-combatants as part of the DRP.

Our monitoring of the social impact of the DRP in Uganda showed that there were different categories of ‘wives’: the ‘temporary’ barrack-wives who lived at the barracks and often had children from multiple relationships with soldiers; the ‘wives’ that soldiers got involved with in the vicinity of their duty station but outside the barracks; the village wives that they left behind when he joined the army; and, finally, the new village wives that he married after demobilization on return to his village. As part of the standard monitoring 50 percent of the veterans indicated that their family situation had changed during the first year after demobilization: in most of these cases they got married or started living together with a new woman. For the veteran, this is a positive indicator of social reintegration, for the women rejected or reduced to ‘foreign’ co-wife it meant increased hardship and a diminished claim on household resources. In a significant number of cases, home communities refused to accept a woman from an other region or ethnic group. This would be even more so if the veteran had AIDS: after his death or even before that the woman would be chased away and blamed for the veteran’s condition.

If this was so, one could argue, it would be all the more reason to target support to the wives of veterans in Uganda. They clearly were negatively affected by the demobilization exercise; existing vulnerabilities of women were increased by the change of status and relocation of her ex-combatant partner.

The lesson from Uganda would be that addressing the special vulnerabilities of women affected by demobilization should be done in a manner that does not make women more dependent on their (ex) partners. The key dilemma is that most of the assistance provided to ‘wives of veterans’ required that the veteran acknowledge the women who claimed to be his wife! More likely than not, such acknowledgement would be withheld from ‘barrack wives’, and as time passed, it would become increasingly likely that assistance would benefit established or new ‘village wives’. While these women in many cases were as poor as their neighbors, they often were established community members with functioning social networks to draw on. The assistance put in place failed to reach the most vulnerable groups of women, i.e. those at the barracks (whose best options most likely were to get attached to a new soldier) and those who tried to resettle in the home villages of her husband but who were rejected and ‘chased away’ before any reintegration assistance would be available.