Security and Justice Provision after Conflict and Transition
Roundtable
August 22–24, 2023
Banjul, Gambia
English | Français
The Africa Center for Strategic Studies will convene in-person, two-day expert roundtable about security and justice coordination strategies to foster stabilization and mitigate civilian harm after conflict and post-authoritarian transitions. Subject matter experts will include national security analysts, military justice officials, civilian justice officials, and civil society experts focused on inclusive security and access to justice.
These actors’ insights and coordination is needed to further the stabilization of fragile states, maintenance of peace, and provision of human security. All of these outcomes depend on African partner nations’ strategic coordination of security and justice reform and their leveraging of these processes to build citizens’ trust in military, law enforcement, and justice institutions. Though security and justice reforms are frequently discussed in silo, deterring some of the continent’s prime security challenges – including violent extremism and organized crime, as well as armed conflict – hinge upon coordination with the justice sector. This includes both formal and informal institutions and their military and civilian components.
Bringing these stakeholders together presents an opportunity to leverage the African Union Transitional Justice Framework (2019) and Security Sector Reform Framework (2014) to catalyze new strategic approaches to the planning and sequencing of security and justice reforms in countries affected by conflict or addressing legacies of violence. The exchanges will also facilitate identification and implementation of lessons learned about the “co-production” of security across military and civilian justice systems, and the ways that those systems link to security strategies for mitigating civilian harm and recovering from conflict.
Roundtable Objectives
- Enhance peer learning on how African states’ strategic decisions about the sequencing, methodology, and coordination of security and justice service provision can affect their mitigation of civilian harm and delivery of sustainable citizen security.
- Analyze ways that military justice actors and their civilian counterparts can learn from and reinforce each other in mitigating civilian harm through the assurance of access to justice in post-conflict and transitional settings.