Introduction

A key component of peace processes and postconflict reconstruction is the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of excombatants. According to the World Bank, in 2005 more than one million former combatants were participating in DDR programs in some twenty countries around the world at an estimated cost of $1.9 billion. DDR is big business, and it is serious business: Both livelihoods and lives are at stake.

Elsewhere I have argued that DDR programs imply multiple transitions: from the combatants who lay down their weapons, to the governments that seek an end to armed conflict, to the communities that receive – or reject – these demobilized fighters (Theidon, 2007, 2009). These transitions inevitably imply a complex and dynamic tension between the demands of peace and the clamor for justice. And yet, traditional approaches to DDR have focused almost exclusively on military and security objectives, a focus that in turn has caused these programs to be developed in relative isolation from the growing field of transitional justice and its concerns with historical clarification, justice, reparations, and reconciliation. Similarly, evaluations of DDR programs have tended to be technocratic exercises concerned with tallying the number of weapons collected and combatants enrolled. By reducing DDR to “dismantling the machinery of war,” these programs have not considered adequately how to move beyond demobilizing combatants to facilitating social reconstruction and coexistence (Knight, Michael, &. Ozerdem, 2004, p. 2).