A pluralizing tool for a pluralizing notion: the Governance of Policing as a framework to approach domestic security in Burundi

Biaumet, Gilles
(2015) 2nd International Conference on Public Policy — Location: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano (1.July.2015)

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  • Biaumet, GillesUSL-B
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Abstract
As a low income, turmoiled transitional country, Burundi has faced and still faces the challenge of mastering its security systems after a long, protracted civil war characterized by large-scale massacres ever since its independance. Identified in the 2000 Arusha Accords for Peace and Reconciliation as the main forces behind the violence, the instruments of state power in charge of safety are seen as having failed in their mission of civil security and have been held directly or indirectly responsible for the massacres. Undergoing a massive Security Sector Reform (SSR) since Arusha and the access to power of the Conseil National pour la Défense de la Démocratie – Forces de defense de la démocratie (CNDD-FDD), the ruling party, defense and security forces have been reorganized with massive support of bilateral and multilateral aid in the professionalization of a national police force. In the same time, private domestic security initiatives – whether they are business-driven in the capital-city or citizen-driven in the country, where small auto-defense groups are created from the large pool of former combatants – are dramatically increasing. These last 50 years, authors in criminology and political science have struggled to stabilize the notion of policing in a long debate over the institutionalized, functionalist or pragmatic approaches of social control. The definition proposed by Jones & Newburn and consensually combining these three aspects seems to perfectly fit Burundese security sector, a plural and heterogeneous landscape of “organised forms of order-maintenance, peacekeeping, rule or law enforcement, crime investigation and prevention and other forms of investigation and associated information-brokering – which may involve a conscious exercice of coercive power – undertaken by individuals or organisations, where such activities are viewed by them and/or others as a central or key defining part of their purpose” (JONES & NEWBURN, 1993). In this context where police is neither a monolithic institution, nor a limited number of legalized functions, nor even a set of well-identified practices it seems difficult to understand how policing is shaped, especially in a country where international donors are undoubtedly influential on public policies of security.
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Biaumet, G. (2015). A pluralizing tool for a pluralizing notion: the Governance of Policing as a framework to approach domestic security in Burundi. 2nd International Conference on Public Policy, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/187685