Local Ownership, Inclusivity and Civil-Military Synergy in EU External Action: The Case of EU Support to Security Sector Reforms in Mali
Abstract
The evolution of the European Union (EU) as a security and peacebuilding actor rais- es questions as to its identity as a largely civilian power alongside the development of its military capabilities. Specifically, a key challenge lies in how its civilian and military capabilities relate to each other as they develop, with increasing expectations from the EU to act effectively across its peacebuilding and conflict prevention interventions. The EU aims to do more to link top-down and bottom-up approaches, but there is currently a lack of focus on the latter. In exploring the challenges and opportunities for the EU to enhance its potential for civil-military synergies in crisis management, the paper takes a holistic whole-of-society perspective, asking questions about the level of inclusivity and local ownership in its approaches. The paper takes a closer look at the European Union Training Mission (EUTM) and European Union Capacity Building Mission in Mali (EUCAP Sahel Mali) as a specific case. Based on the findings, this paper argues the EU could be more effective, especially at the operational level, by taking a more bottom-up approach in the areas of designing, planning, monitoring and evaluating interventions. The EU will need to find ways to better embed its interventions in local realities, for instance by working with local civil society in the EU’s security sector reform efforts, and offering platforms for more civilian oversight and feedback mechanisms. Only then, with a stronger focus on the inclusivity and local ownership aspects of civil and military action of the EU, will it be able to better address the ‘intangible aspects’ of security sector reform.
References
Aulin, Jenny, and, Divin, Charlotte. 2017. Towards Local Ownership of International Interventions in Mali. GPPAC Policy Note. 2017/1 (June). The Hague: Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC).
Aulin, Jenny, and Vogelaar, Gabriëlla. Towards a Comprehensive Approach? Civil Society and Security Sector Perspectives on Dutch Missions. The Hague: Cordaid, GP- PAC and Pax.
Ball, Nicole. Putting governance at the heart of security sector reform: Lessons from the Burundi-Netherlands Security Sector Development Programme. Conflict Research Unit, The Clingendael Institute. March 2014. https://www.clingendael.org/sites/ default/files/pdfs/Putting%20governance%20at%20the%20heart%20of%20SSR.pdf> , accessed 2 August 2018.
Bojičić-Dželilović Vesna. 2016. Owning the Peace in International Interventions: a Delusion or a Possibility? Scoping Study on Local Ownership. London: London School of Economics and Political Science.
Boštjančič Pulko, Ivana. 2018. (In)effective Planning Capacity of CSDP Missions: Comparative Analysis of EULEX Kosovo and EUFOR Althea. Journal of Regional Security 12 (2): 123–156.
Djiré, Moussa, Sow, Djibril, Gakou, Kissima, and Camara, Bakary. 2017. Assessing the EU’s Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding Interventions in Mali. Case Study Report Mali. Bamako: Université des Sciences Juridiques et Politiques de Bamako.
Dudouet, Véronique, and Lundström, Stina. 2016. Post-war Political Settlements: From Participatory Transition Processes to Inclusive State-building and Governance. Research Report. Berlin: Berghof Foundation.
Ejdus, Filip. 2017. “Here is your mission, now own it!” The rhetoric and practice of local ownership in EU interventions. European Security, DOI: 10.1080/09662839.2017.1333495.
Ejdus, Filip & Juncos, Ana E., 2018. Reclaiming the local in EU peacebuilding: Effectiveness, ownership, and resistance, Contemporary Security Policy. 39 (1): 4–27.
EU. 2008. Security Sector Reform – draft document on deployable European expert teams, 14576/1/08 REV 1, Brussels, 21 October.
EU. 2015b. Joint communication to the European parliament and the European council: Capacity building in support of security and development – Enabling partners to prevent and manage crises, JOIN (2015)17, Brussels, 28 April.
EU. 2016c. Shared vision, common action: a stronger Europe, a global strategy for the European Union’s foreign and security policy, Brussels, June.
EEAS (a). 2017. Military and civilian missions and operations. https://eeas.europa. eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage_en/430/Military%20and%20civilian%20 missions%20and%20operations. Accessed 7 August 2017.
EEAS (b). 2016. Factsheet on EUCAP Sahel Mali. June 2016. http://eeas.europa.eu/ archives/docs/csdp/missions-and-operations/eucap-sahel-mali/docs/factsheet_eu- cap_sahel_mali_en.pdf. Accessed 29 July 2018.
EEAS (c). EUCAP Sahel Mali – About. https://eeas.europa.eu/csdp-missions-opera- tions/eucap-sahel-mali/3900/node/3900_en. Accessed 2 August 2018.
EUCAP Sahel Mali (a). https://eucap-sahel-mali.eu/. Accessed 7 August 2017. EUCAP Sahel Mali (b). Activities. https://eucap-sahel-mali.eu/activities_en.html Accessed: 7 August 2017.
EUTM Mali. 2015. http://eeas.europa.eu/csdp/missions-and-operations/eutm-mali/ index_en.htm. Accessed 7 August 2017.
Gakou, Kissima 2016 et al. Working Paper 2–3: Articles addressing current topics related to the EU from a whole of society perspective. The Hague: Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC).
Jayasundara-Smits, Shyamika. 2016. Civil-Military Synergy at Operational Level in EU External Action. Best practices report. The Hague: Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC).
Jayasundara-Smits, Shyamika, and Gabriëlla Vogelaar. 2016. Community of Practice Roundtable: Civil-Military Synergies in EU Action. The Hague: Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC).
Jayasundara-Smits, Shyamika, and Gabriëlla Vogelaar. 2016. Time to Bite the Bullet: Fostering Civil-military Synergy in EU Crisis Management and Peacebuilding Operations. Research Gate.
Lintern, Snowy. 2017. What civilian-military synergies? Recasting EU civilian crisis management. EU Institute for Security Studies. Report No. 31: 35–40.
Martin, Mary, Vesna Bojicic-Dzelilovic, Chris Van der Borgh, and Georg Frerks. 2016. Theoretical and Methodological Framework. London, London School of Economics and Political Science, and Utrecht, Utrecht University.
Tardy, Thierry. 2017. The new forms of civilian crisis management. Recasting EU civilian crisis management. EU Institute for Security Studies. Report No. 31: 9–22. https://www.iss.europa.eu/sites/default/files/EUISSFiles/Report_31.pdf.
Tardy, Thierry. 2017. The EU: from comprehensive vision to integrated action. EU Institute for Security Studies. Brief No. 5 (February).
Tobie, Aurélien. 2017. A fresh perspective on security concerns among Malian civil society. SIPRI Insights on Peace and Security. 2017/2 (July).
Schirch, Lisa (ed). 2016. Handbook on Human Security: A Civil-Military-Police Curriculum. The Hague: Alliance for Peacebuilding, GPPAC, Kroc Institute.
Schirch, Lisa, and Deborah Mancini-Griffoli. 2015. Local Ownership in Security: Case Studies of Peacebuilding Approaches. The Hague: Alliance for Peacebuilding, GPPAC, Kroc Institute.
Sweeney, Simon, and Neill Winn. 2017. “CSDP and the Open Method of Coordination: Developing the EU’s Comprehensive Approach to Security.” Journal of Regional Security 12 (2): 95–122.
Van der Borgh, Chris, Mary Martin, and Vesna Bojicic-Dzelilovic. (unpublished). EU capabilities in conflict prevention and peacebuilding: Challenges, strengths and opportunities of a Whole-of-Society approach. Research report. London, London School of Economics and Political Science, and Utrecht, Utrecht University.
Vogelaar, Gabriëlla, and Rick Hoefsloot, with inputs from Georg Frerks, and Toon Dirkx. Unpublished. A European Way to SSR? Why local ownership should be at the heart of the EU’s SSR efforts. GPPAC Policy Brief. The Hague: Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC).
Wall Kristen, Aulin Jenny, and Gabriella Vogelaar. 2014. Empowerment and Protection Stories of Human Security. The Hague: Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC).
Woollard, Catherine. 2017. “Civil society and civilian crisis management: Recast- ing EU civilian crisis management.” EU Institute for Security Studies. Report No. 31: 69–75.
Zandee, Dick, Hans Hoebeke, Hans Merket, and Minke Meijnders, eds. 2015. The EU as a security actor in Africa. In-depth study Clingendael Monitor. The Hague: Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations.
Authors retain copyright of the published papers and grant to the publisher the non-exclusive right to publish the article, to be cited as its original publisher in case of reuse, and to distribute it in all forms and media.
The published articles will be distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY). It is allowed to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and remix, transform, and build upon it for any purpose, even commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given to the original author(s), a link to the license is provided and it is indicated if changes were made. / The published articles will be distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA). It is allowed to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and remix, transform, and build upon it for any purpose, even commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given to the original author(s), a link to the license is provided, it is indicated if changes were made and the new work is distributed under the same license as the original.
Users are required to provide full bibliographic description of the original publication (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages), as well as its DOI code. In electronic publishing, users are also required to link the content with both the original article published in Journal of Regional Security and the licence used.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted to deposit author’s pre-print / author’s post-print (accepted version) / publisher's version (PDF) of their work in an institutional repository, subject-based repository, author's personal website (including social networking sites, such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, etc.), and/or departmental website prior or during the submission process / at any time after the acceptance of the manuscript / at any time after publication.
Full bibliographic information (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages) about the original publication must be provided and links must be made to the article's DOI and the license.