Security Sector Reform in Tunisia: A lost cause?
In the wake of the Ben Ali regime, Security Sector Reform in Tunisia still remains a major challenge for the nascant democratic state. Civil society organizations, Dr. Moncef Kartas (project coordinator of the North Africa Security Assessment , Small Arms Survey) can play a leading role in deciding on “what kind of security we want”.
While he claimed that “external assistance in Security Sector Reform is unavoidable,” Dr. Kartas also underlined that these aid programmes need to be undertaken with longterm commitment. Otherwise, insufficient outcomes of internationally-led SSR will be used by the security forces to argue that reform is futile.
The interview was conducted on January 22, 2015. Dr Kartas visited the Netherlands to partake in a panel on ‘Guns and Borders: Libya’s Arms Bazaar Fueling Conflicts in the Arab World’ as part of the Henriette van Lynden lecture series organized by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
