Reintegration support for young ex-combatants: a right or a privilege?

Under-age and youthful combatants are the major participants in contemporary African conflicts and, therefore, the largest group to be disarmed, demobilized and reintegrated when peace agreements are signed. Programmes to support this process, so-called disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) programmes, usually have two main objectives: 1) to reduce security risks; and 2) make ex-combatants less dependent upon their home communities once returned. However, badly designed or implemented DDR programmes can jeopardize a country's fragile peace and rehabilitation process. This article uses the Sierra Leone case to explore the efficacy of DDR programmes. It questions whether the reintegration options offered to the demobilized ex-combatants were appropriate to the context. In a country where more than 70 per cent of the population depends on (semi-)subsistence agriculture, the most popular reintegration package among the young ex-combatants was vocational training - only 15 per cent of the ex-combatants chose the "agricultural package". The article questions whether young ex-combatants are simply disinterested in farming, and, if so, whether vocational skills training programmes offer realistic alternative livelihood opportunities. This article argues that most ex-combatants have not been able to achieve sustainable livelihoods skills due to failures in DDR programmes. The existence of a large reservoir of marginalized, foot-loose youth has been widely acknowledged as one of the root causes of the conflict in Sierra Leone. There is clear evidence that one result of the poor DDR design and implementation is that this reservoir has not been sufficiently drained in Sierra Leone.