With the Comprehensive Peace Agreement’s mandate for Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) set to expire in July 2011, discussions are now underway between the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), the South Sudan DDR Commission, and international actors on how the programme can be extended and possibly retooled in the post-independence period.
This Issue Brief reviews the serious limitations, as well as some of the modest successes, of the current programme. Based on field research and interviews with ex-combatants and women associated with armed groups going through reintegration training, it examines the consequences of conflicting conceptions of DDR among key stakeholders.